Hiked 15.4 miles, staying in Tray Mountain shelter.
Got seriously dumped on with rain last night. Luckily it started just after everyone went to bed and was in their tent. Unlucky for me my tent wasn't staked out perfectly which allowed water to pool and early in the morning the bottom half of my tent collapsed...awesome. Luckily I didn't get too drenched but it was annoying.
As planned we started pretty early to try to beat the afternoon storms. Most of the morning we were hiking through thick fog which was very serene. It's really nice to hike early in the morning, you see so much more wildlife.
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| Foggy Morning Trail |
The first half of the day was very easy rolling hills. After the first 5 miles we met up with Why Not and hiked the rest of the way. The last 5 miles were very tough. Two gaps to hike down into separated by a 4000 footer each. We did get trail magic at Unicoi Gap, fresh bananas, helped a lot. We booked it up Tray mountain with the rain clouds visible and coming fast. We made it to the shelter with minutes to spare.
The shelter is virtually on the top of Tray mountain. After the initial burst the storm cleared momentarily and we all got to go sit on an overlook and watch the clouds dance around down below. The shelter affords an excellent view of the valley below and if the weather were better it would be an amazing sunrise in the morning visible from your sleeping bag.
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| Standing Indian Gap |
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| View from Tray Mountain |
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| View from Tray Mountain |
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| View from Tray Mountain |
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| View from the shelter |
Due to the thunderstorms expected tonight we are playing tetris to fit as many as possible into the shelter. Aside from a few weekend hikers we have Wombat, Moose, Why Not, Dip'n'sip, GQ, Field Stripper and Caboose, who are all thru hikers that have been with us for a few days. Being on the top of a mountain the thunderstorms should be quite something tonight.
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| Sitting on overlook watching the clouds |
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| Tray Mountain shelter overlook |
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