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Day 4 - Icewater to Double Spring Gap
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Day 4 was awesome. We hiked 13.8 miles and the crisp, clear mountain air gave way to beautiful view after beautiful view.
We started off the day hiking 3 miles down to Newfound Gap where the only road through the Smokies passes through. The park was getting busier as the weekend approached and as we got closer to the Gap. We passed plenty of people on the way down and received positive responses to our questions about how the Red Sox were doing in the world series. It was at this point that we decided that if the Red Sox kept winning games we would have to hike the park faster than we had planned so that we could at least see 1 game of the World Series.
Newfound Gap is a pretty major tourist area, with big buses carrying people in and out all day long, and we were happy to thouroughy use the bathroom facilities that our tax dollars had help put there. Becky felt a little odd in the ladies bathroom when a whole busload of older women relieved themselves and refused to make eye contact with her as if she were about to ask them for money. We spent about 45 minutes there cleaning ourselves up as best we could without showers and then pushed on. All of the car and foot traffic was a little overwhelming after having been in the woods for 3 days straight. People were very interested in the details of our hiking, and although we couldn't claim to be hiking all 2,100 miles of the trail, hiking from one end of the 70 mile park to the other wasn't too shabby either.
We had initially planned on staying at Mount Collins shelter that evening, however we were concerned about the potential university students keeping us up all night that we had been warned about a few days previously. We decided that if we felt up to it we could put on some extra miles that day and have a shorter day later on. Doug performed some duct tape surgury on his blistered toe and we pushed on. Incidentally, later on we passed three university students heading to Mount Collins shelter for the evening...
We soon summitted Clingman's Dome. At 6,643 feet, it is the highest peak on the Appalachian Trail and the third highest peak east of the Mississippi. We did not climb the observation tower at the top - it was crowded and there were PLENTY of beautiful views that we were seeing along the trail.
Another 2 miles put us at Double Spring Gap shelter. This was an older shelter that hadn't been redone yet in the new style (the new style being without the chain link bear fence accross the front that makes you feel more scared than safe). We had been hearing that this particular shelter was supposed to be very crowded that night, however we were the only people there.
There was a crazy squirrell that lived around the there and kept popping in and checking us out - completely unafraid of us. We must have seen him at least 10 times, although I never did get a picture. That squirrell was sort of a mascot for the shelter, and was mentioned in the log book a number of times. There were more trees around that shelter to break the wind and we slept well that night at 5,505 feet.
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