4\/26- 220 miles
\nI was out of the shelter early, a heavy mist had settled in in the night saturating the trees and causing them to constantly drip. I was hoping for a clear day. I would pass by Charlie’s Bunion, a unique rock formation, and climb several mountains over 6000 feet. What happened next gave me the scare of my life.<\/p>\n
In less than an hour the weather turned from mist to steady rain. The wind turned from a breeze to hurricane force, lightning crashed all around me, and it was getting cold. I hiked faster to try to stay warm and almost considered turning back for the shelter. The trail led higher into the mountains, sometimes crossing narrow gaps only a few feet wide, drop-offs of undetermined depths on both sides. The wind buffeted me with such force on the exposed ledges that I would crouch down and run to the other side. At one point, I paused behind a narrow ledge while lightning, high wind, and driving rain, turned the ledge into an obstacle I didn’t have nerve to cross. I must have waited 20 minutes before the fear of standing there and risking hypothermia outweighed the fear of crossing the ledge.<\/p>\n
Charlie’s Bunion was obscured in fog and there was only one time the weather cleared enough to see more than a couple hundred feet.<\/p>\n
I actually saw a tree blow over only a few feet away, and the trail was scattered with blow-downs for the rest of the day. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I was hit by golf ball size hail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
4\/26- 220 miles I was out of the shelter early, a heavy mist had settled in in the night saturating the trees and causing them to constantly drip. I was hoping for a clear day. I would pass by Charlie’s Bunion, a unique rock formation, and climb several mountains over 6000 feet. What happened next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appalachian-trail","category-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}