30 degrees and snowing? Just another day on the AT!

As I type this I am huddled down IN my squishy purple sleeping bag, which happens to be a negative 5 degree bag...otherwise known as you will be sweating your buns off in this bag unless your name is Carlie and you are freakishly cold all the time...and there is an inch of snow outside the shelter and still coming down!

If you recall from my earlier blog in Hot Springs, it was about 85 degrees and we were getting tan and loving life. Luckily, because we're extremely adaptable and happened to not send our winter clothes home, we are STILL loving life even though the conditions are just about opposite. Yesterday, we hiked our 15 miles in cold temps and a wintry mix of snow and sleet. Needless to say by the time we arrived at Jerry Cabin Shelter, we quickly snagged the last two shelter spots and changed out of our wet, dirty clothes and into our warmish dry ones!

We went to bed early, seeing as how there is nothing else to do when it's about 20 degrees outside and tried to stay warm through the night. 12 hours (yes, 12! You try getting out of your warm sleeping bag when its snowing out!) and lots of loud snoring later, we managed to pry ourselves out our bags and our sleeping clothes and into our frozen dirty clothes from the day before. The snow had accumulated a little during the night and continued as we left for another 15 miler.

It was a colder day than before, although the wintry mix did let up enough throughout the day to at least allow us to thaw out periodically! However, for all the time spent today NOT snowing, it bombarded us for the last 2 miles of our journey. If we had been any farther from our shelter, we would have had to stop where we were, throw up our tent, and call it a night. Luckily we were close enough to make it in time to claim spots IN the shelter (if it's full when you arrive, you either have to tent or move on to the next shelter which is usually 8ish miles away.) and repeat the process from the night before...which brings me to now, huddled up IN my sleeping bag typing to you. I guess we can say one good thing about the past two days: at least it wasn't rain!