Day 8 - Cheese Factory Site Camp on Tray Mountain to Deep Gap Shelter
9.4 miles
Rainy, windy, and cold.
Today was not pleasant but we made it through. And we're sleeping warm and dry tonight and that's a gift after the day we experienced.
In the wee hours of the morning Toesalad and Otter crawled into the 3 person Hilleberg the girls and I shared for the night. It had been raining for a few hours and their tent was leaking, apparently due to insufficient seam sealing.
As the five of us squished together in a three person tent for the remainder of a fitful sleep I was a bit grumpy that my sleep was interrupted. And the tent got kind of steamy with all that body heat and close proximity, though not too smelly as we had just returned to the trail from our resupply.
But mostly what I experienced was a feeling of intense closeness with my family (duh). I don't know that we'd ever all shared a bed before and certainly not one barely the width of a Queen sized mattress. I felt a deep sense of safety and security in that space. I wouldn't want to do this often but it was memorable.
We left camp at 9:45. Even though we were cramped in the tent, it was hard to get going in the morning with the intermittent rain. I just wanted to stay in bed.
We saw Bloodroot and Red Hawk today, they left camp this morning before we did. It seems everyone leaves camp before we do. And at midday, just when we needed a break we came across Ken and Preacher who had set up a tarp.
They offered us a space to sit, more crowding together (rain seems to do that), we took a break for maybe 15 minutes and Preacher prayed with our family.
It was too cold today to break for long. As soon as we stopped moving our bodies cooled down so we kept moving.
The hiking today was wet, muddy and kind of miserable, at least for me. The kids did awesome. I complained more than they did.
We arrived at the shelter at 4:30, tired and wet. That's a great time for us considering we left camp at 9:45 this morning. We had very few breaks due to the weather and that helped our hiking pace.
This is the first shelter we've slept in. We staked our spots in the sleeping loft, ate supper, hung our food bags, tidied our gear down below and were cozy in our sleeping bags, drawing or reading, when at 8:30 a group of at least 4 more guys showed up. I couldn't tell exactly.
Full house in the shelter tonight but we are so thankful we didn't have to set up our wet tents.
We'll see how well we sleep with all these people in the shelter. It's interesting to share such a small space with a group of strangers and hear their conversations.
Weather should clear tomorrow, which would be wonderful.
