I woke up around 1 am to the sound of Rick Flair puking outside his tent. Prairie Dog was similarly afflicted and Cabooses’ first words this morning were “I shit my pants last night”. The 3 of us that are still healthy enough to hike decided to slack pack into Erwin, 27 miles up the trail. Cricket, Gunner, and I got the sick folks to the first gap, handed off our packs to them for safe keeping at Uncle Johnnie’s hostel in Erwin, and took off down the trail.
The point of slack packing is to offload most of the pack weight to be able to move faster. We weren’t really any faster without the weight but we did have better endurance. Didn’t take the time to stop and appreciate the views, we really wanted to make it to a real bathroom for the night. It was a long, long day. We’d left camp at 9 am and rolled into town around 8:30 pm.
Along the way we’d heard that the hostel was full of sick hikers so we cancelled our reservation and picked up a semi-private room at the Super 8. Unfortunately, our packs were at the hostel and it had closed at 8pm. Eventually found a random guy with keys, got our packs, and hitch hiked the few miles into Erwin.
We ordered some pizza, all had showers and tried to wind down. We’ve all got real beds (even though Gunner and I are sharing) and the close proximity to a bathroom is reassuring in case any of us gets ill next.
We’ll zero here, probably for a while. Everyone agreed that we want to keep on hiking together so we’ll wait for the sick folks to get better and they’ll go hike the sections they skipped to catch up.
Day 34 Mileage: 27.0 mi [Spring Mountain Shelter -> Erwin, TN]
Total Mileage: 352.4 mi