Heat Exhaustion: Day 24

I woke up in the pitch dark to thuds on the roof. I checked my phone and it read 1:00AM. I sat there trying to figure out what was going on when I realized that Nasary was on the roof. Well, I guess sleep isn’t completely necessary I thought to myself. At times I couldn’t tell what was louder. Nasary on the roof, or the tarp over the broken window slamming in the wind. I wasn’t able to to sleep until he got down off the roof and came inside. I woke the next morning after getting roughly 4 hours of sleep due to the photographer and the wind. I sat there in my quilt not wanting to move. I then decided to cook food next to my bed because I was feeling a bit lazy and this was when went south. Not realizing that my quilt was so close to the flame, my pricey quilt began to melt and the down started flying. I quickly pulled the quilt away but the damage was already done. Just another thing to add to my trail name I guess. I was able to sew up the hole and put a large patch of leukotape over it to save the quilt and it actually did not look terrible. It would live to see many more days. This morning we had a 5 mile descent to start. Today was going to be the last day in the Smokey’s for us, but we were ready to move on. The infamous Standing Bear Hostel was midway through our day and we planned to eat lunch and resupply before continuing on to Hot Springs NC. Having real food in the middle of a hiking day can be very detrimental but also wonderful to your body. Danny and I shared a digiorno pizza and promptly took a nap. We spent more than our fair share of time at Standing Bear and set off back to the woods in the hottest part of the day. We immediately started climbing and the humidity set in on us. We were taking breaks every 5 minutes due to being nauseous from the pizza and the inability to breathe. It felt as if we were drinking in the air. “That’s it I’m calling it.” Kyle said. “You two don’t look so hot.” He said to us as we sat panting on a log. The last water source for 9 miles was a creek a quarter mile up the trail. There, there were campsites and we quickly set up camp. It was nice to be in camp at 5:30. Usually we would hike until 7:30. This was a luxury. I set my hammock up and laid on it after I chugged a liter and a half of water. We made a fire and played cards for the rest of the night. Ready to start fresh and early.