From Uncle's Tom Journal:

http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=174628

4/14/07 Team Maine bails Smokies. Tonight is our second night in Gatlinburg, TN and we have to get out of here. I can't take this full service tourist mecca, with the hammer of overwhelming commercialism/ traffic that exceeds Freeport, ME's specter of spending.

We had to bail due to freezing rain approaching and descending Clingman's Dome, highest point on the AT at 6643'. We had a harrowing, slow and careful, step by step, dodging ice covered rock and roots hike down the mountain.

Then we heard that a bad rain day, with 1-2" of rain, was predicted, with drop to below freezing temps, and a shift to up to 4 inches of snow was coming next. Everyone we met was bailing, getting off the AT at Newfound Gap, and begging, hitching, and hoping for a ride to Gatlinburg, 15 miles down in the valley. Strider , LT, me and the three Texas Tornados each paid a Cherokee woman $7 to take us away.

But town is a mixed blessing, and enough is enough and LT went home for a day and tomorrow his sister and he will be shuttling us back up to the AT in the morning, no matter what rain and snow might hit . We are done with Dollywood and Gatlinburg, and especially done with the horror show of the Gatlinburg trolley system. AAuuugh!

4/15/07We Should of, Could of, But Didn't.. ...Stay in Gatlinburg another night. Here I sit, thankful to Jesus and any other God that I know about that I have a spot up here on the top tier of the Peck's Corner shelter. We did 11 miles, started at 9:40 am, after getting shuttled up to Newfound Gap. Had a great breakfast at 7 at the Pancake House of bacon, eggs, blueberry pancakes, and coffee. The local report we got from the Weather Channel was dead wrong. What we got instead was gale force winds ( all day long), rain to start, then freezing rain, then sleet, and finally what appears to be 4" of snow so far and more to come. It was really a push to make it here today. There were times when we were way up over 5000 feet, and walking for an hour and a half of straight cliffside uphill walking, with a combo platter of freezing pellets of ice, or softer face blows of snow horizontally pummeling the left side of our partially sheltered heads, splintery sounds of bad (ed.?).... And the shelter! Everyone is here.

4/16/07 Hikers survive even worse snowstorm! Not a pretty morning, with over a dozen people trying to get going on the trail. Bottle of water froze in the shelter. People littered the floor, making it hard to move around, as they were not the ones to get up.

I was up and ready to go before Strider, who didn't sleep well. I was cold in starting out, with lots more snow out than even before. Hiking in the snow is hard, you slip back every uphill step you take. There were drifts sometimes up to our knees, the wind was still howling sideways at us. Bad.

There were over a dozen major blowdowns that came down in the storm yesterday. It was sometimes major work to get around them, and push through brush to get back on the trail. The day got better after noon, when the sun came out, and it got a bit warmer. The trail was really getting melted in the afternoon and we were essentially walking in a stream of rocks, mud, and slush. My shoes were soaked through.

We ran into a "trail runner" who was trying to help distribute the hikers in the upcoming shelters better so that the circus that was last night in the shelter didn't happen again. He told Strider and I that we were hikers #6 and #7, and that we should bypass the shelter that was 5 miles out, and head for the shelter that was 13 miles out, which is what we did.

We went over some more high spots today: Mt Sequoyah (6360),Mt. Chapman (6250), Balsam mtn (6070), Deer Creek Gap (6020), and Cosby Knob (5145).

After the last two days of cold, slush, howling wind, Calcutta living conditions in the shelter, and cold hands, I will make it to Katahdin, even in I have to crawl.