Away from the edge of the woods, the wind picked up. My right cheek, still tender from the frostnip on Chestnut Knob, burned from the force of the wind-driven snow. My pack caught in the stronger gusts like a sail. Several times, the knee-deep snow was the only thing that prevented me from being blown off course. Ahead of me, I could see Mary's huge pack swaying as she struggled to stay upright, and just ahead of her Hope and joy strained against the wind and the snowdrifts, which came nearly to their waists.
The trail turned and the wind was at our backs, but still it was a relentless force ripping at us, whipping our hair into our eyes and eddying snow around us until it was almost impossible to see the posts that marked the trail. Mary dropped back to the end of the line, her thin face pale with exhaustion, and Isis stayed with her. In between gusts, I saw joy floundering in a snowbank. I ran up to help her. Her shoulders shook with rage and frustration.
"This stupid, dumb, piece-a-junk wind and snow! I hate it!" she roared over the sound of the wind. She was up to her waist in the snowbank, blown off the path. I remembered how she had run up to the front of the line with her father in fall, when the ground was clear. She was one of the strongest hikers in the Family, but not in this weather. I helped her up, back onto the path that Paul and her brothers had packed down.
"C'mon. If I walk just upwind of you, you won't get blown around as much. That way, when we get to the shelter, you'll still have all the energy you need to throw snowballs at Heald."
Slowly the anger left her frame, and she smiled, a wide fierce grin. "I'm gonna get 'im with lotsa snowballs this time!"
We walked for what seemed like hours. It was impossible to tell how far we had come, or where we were, in the blinding horizontal blizzard. Several tines I had to grab the strap on top of Joy's grubby pink pack to hold her upright when a strong gust of wind came. Frost cling to my eyelashes. I could tell I was getting too cold. I wanted to put more clothes on, but I knew I couldn't stop until we found shelter. If I opened my pack in this maelstrom, I might lose all my warns clothes to the wind.
Finally we saw woods again, scattered glimpses through the driven snow. Under the branches, shielded a little from the wind, we stopped for a rest and a snack beside a large boulder. I put on my Capilene long underwear and wool shirt. I had no scarf, so I tied a cotton bandana across my face to keep the cold wind off my cheeks. It would be better than nothing.
Mary leaned against the rock, breathing heavily. The veins in her temples pounded under her pale skin. "That's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life," she said. "Thank God its over." Hope and joy moved silently to her side, putting their arms around her waist. The wisps of hair that had escaped from their hoods were blown sideways and coated in thick solid ice rime. Faith was buried so deeply inside the down sleeping bag in Mary's pack that her face didn't show.
We ate our frozen granola bars in silence, reflecting and conserving our strength. (I chewed carefully-I had never been laissez-faire about frozen granola bars since illy experience above Catawba.) Isis tried to locate us on the niap, but there was no marker for the edge of the woods. The only landmark was the end of a Forest Service road, which we hadn't seen in the snow, and the word "Scales:" 1U, hale been u'ei;~hed by the Scales, I thought, and fund uvant- in,Q in collimon seise.
Toward midday the clouds lifted and the sun came out briefly. The glare on the snow made it difficult to see. We stopped for lunch at Wise Shelter, a small plywood and cinderblock building, with the opening facing directly into the wind. Snow had drifted two feet deep in the back of it. Paul and the boys had arrived just ahead of us, and Lash and Netta caught up soon afterward.
Netta was wrapped in all her layers of clothing, her face barely visible between cap and scarf. "I have not ever seen weather like this"
"Dude, this is insane." Lash turned to Joel. "What's that thermometer say now, bro:"
Joel picked up the little plastic rectangle, frowned, shook it, frowned again. "It says zero."
"Crazy, man ... Whoa, look out!"John had picked up one of Mary's hiking poles and was charging toward Lash with the pole held like a fencing foil, grinning gleefully. Lash slung his pack of in one smooth motion, lifting his own pole to counter John's attack. Joel soon joined the fray, and poles were forgotten as it became a wrestling free-for-all.
I took out my food bag and Isis made tortilla wraps out of cream cheese and dates and honey (the latter so thick she had to open the container and spread it with her knife). I scanned the register. It was mostly weekend outing groups in the last month-almost all the southbounders we knew had already reached Georgia.
iter source frozen ... have fun ineltilw snow, ... lree.: in ~ my nuts of lust f r the hell obit. Doesn't sound promising" While I read the highlights of the register to Isis, I kept one eye on the boys wrestling outside. I loved watching Lash. He had a certain fluid grace and economy of movement that made me miss the Tae Kwon loo classes I'd taken for years. I thought of the dream I'd had at Big Meadows, with Lash as an evil ninja, and I smiled.
"Alright, guys, I gotta eat lunch." Lash said, shaking the boys off him and climbing to his feet with feigned weariness.
Isis handed me a sandwich and a few extra dates. "Go ask Lash if he wants one," she said, her eyes sparkling.
I put on a sweet, seductive tone. "Lashy-Lash, do you want a date?"
"Lashy-Lash!" he rolled his eyes and then glared at Netta. She shrugged with an impish grin. "But yes, I would like a date" He took the sticky fruit in his gloved hand and smiled at me, and in spite of myself I felt my cheeks grow warm behind the cotton bandana I wore as a scarf.
After lunch the clouds closed in again, the sky resuming its steel-gray opacity. Lash and Joel ran ahead to search for the A.T. The shelter was set in an open space with thickets of rhododendron, and the trail seemed to have vanished somewhere at the edge of it. Pony trails wound in and out among the bushes. If there were any blazes, they must have been painted on rocks under the knee-deep snow. It was a full twenty minutes before Paul spotted the first blaze, on a stunted tree across the clearing, and a few more minutes before we all assembled on the trail. I thought-I imagine we all thought-that the worst was over, and I began to relax, enjoying the rhythm of walking, getting warm at last under the shelter of the trees. And then the trees ended.
As we headed out into the open again, I realized that the Scales had been nothing compared to the bald we were about to face. The trail turned and the wind had shifted slightly, so that now we were walking directly into its onslaught. The snowdrifts were higher here, too. The blazes on the Scales had been on posts, mostly visible above the snow, but here they were painted on rocks. Except where the wind had blown the snow from the taller rocks, we could only find the trail from where it passed through the occasional rhododendron thicket. The wind picked up as the afternoon wore on, and the snow returned, thickening the air with white.
Ice rime stood out four inches deep on the twigs of small hushes and stunted trees. The wisps of snow whipping past on the wind had an eerie beauty, tracing out half-seen figures against the gunmetal sky, vanishing in a heartbeat. Snow formed a rainbow halo around the dim and distant sun. In one place, Paul and I carved a path through drifts that were as high as my chest, passing the younger children hand over hand to Netta and Isis and Lash. In places where the snow had blown clear, I held onto joy's pack again, and Isis took charge of Hope, to make sure they didn't blow off the trail. I had no concept of time and distance-there was only the screaming wind, the cold, the bare necessity of moving forward.
As dusk drew on, I was breaking trail. I found myself following an unsteady line of footsteps, half drifted-in with new snow. I hadn't seen a blaze for a long time. I wondered if this path would lead to shelter-or to someones frozen corpse. I was acutely aware of the fragile lives behind nee: Lash, Netta, the Family, lily sister. I thought of the children and forced the doubt from my mind. My strength was failing in the deep drifts. It was so tempting just to sit for a moment, just to rest ... but
I willed myself forward, mentally forcing my cold, exhausted muscles to keep up the fight.
The line of ragged footsteps vanished in a high drift. I was ready to fall down and cry-hut I looked up, and there was a fence. A gap in the fence. A rough wooden building: Thomas Knob Shelter. I staggered toward it, too exhausted to even feel relief.
A party of camouflage-clad men, out for the weekend, had already set up their sleeping bags in the loft, and Heald had arrived several hours before us, having taken the horse trail. "I was about ready to come lookin' for ya," he said. Worry was etched in his face. "Where are those kids?"
Lash and Netta stumbled out of the snowdrifts with Hope a moment later, and then Isis emerged from the blizzard, carrying joy. Paul and Mary stumbled into the clearing a few minutes later with the boys. The other campers seemed shocked to see so many people, and especially the children, but they were kind and made space for us in the loft. The wind around the eaves made an unearthly moaning sound, and snow drifted in through holes in the corners of the roof.
I was nearing the end of my strength, but I still felt energized by a sort of manic thrill. Isis went in search of water, while I struggled out into the wind again looking for Zip stove wood. Generally I was glad we didn't have to carry our fuel, but tonight I would have given anything for a canister stove. I managed to fight my way over to the evergreen woods in front of the shelter. I found a half dead tree and tore the lower limbs off, apologizing to the spirit of the tree. I had never taken wood from a living tree before, but this was an emergency. The roiling gray sky was darkening visibly; cold was setting into my hones. I could feel my muscles cramping and my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth as dehydration sapped my strength; I'd had one liter of water all day.
"There's no water," Isis reported, back at the shelter. "The spring's waistdeep in snow."
"We'll melt snow, then. We can take turns" The adrenaline in my veins still gave me the illusion of energy.
"Okay," she said, taking out the pot and the stove. She handed me a book of matches and a few scraps of paper to start the fire. I squatted in a corner of the shelter's ground floor to cook. Isis clambered up the ladder to the loft, where I could hear her helping the children unpack in the tiny crowded room. "Why don't you put your foam pad here, joy? There's space on this end, Joel ..
I scooped up a potful of snow and tried to pack it down, but the powdery flakes didn't compress. The pot was still filthy from the night before, with a thin frozen scum of pasta bits and tomato sauce. Soup (nr the first course, I thought. I took my water bottle out from beneath my shirt and added the last sip of liquid water so the snow would melt and not sublimate.
With my numb and fumbling hands, it took four matches to get the fire going. I don't know how long I sat there, knocking ice rime from the broken spruce branches, breaking up the twigs, and feeding them into the smoking belly of the stove. It seemed to be generating no heat; the snow in the pot was not even steaming.
Isis came down to check on dinner. She found me sitting in the corner, rocking back and forth, my hat and gloves off.
"Jackrabbit, your lips are blue! Get in your sleeping bag! Now!"
I was too numb to protest. My hands refused to hold onto the ladder up to the loft; I had to pull myself up by hooking my bent elbows over the rungs. I stumbled across the small room, slow and uncoordinated. The floor was littered with packs, sleeping bags, gear, and hikers, covered in wisps of snow, details that barely registered in my cold brain. I crawled into my sleeping bag, still wearing all my clothes, and faced the wall. Silent tears stung my cheeks. I had failed in even the most superficial task of heating water. I was weak, I was a burden, once again incapable and slow. My shoulders shook with the effort of holding in my sobs. I didn't want the children to see my strength fail. Mary was right next to me, though, and she could feel me shaking.
"What's wrong, jackrabbit?"
"I'm no good-I've failed-I can't do this any more-"
"Shhh ..." she put an arm over my shoulders. "You found the shelter. You led us here. We're safe now. We're okay."
Her calm voice led me back out of the abyss. I lay still, and in twenty minutes I was warns enough to start shivering.
Isis came up the ladder after nearly an hour had passed. She carried a pot of lukewarm snowmelt the color of dishwater, flavored with wood smoke and the diluted remnants of the tomatoey pasta dish we had eaten the night before. "The stove just doesn't work in this weather. I had to empty out the ashes and rebuild the fire before the snow even started melting."
I drank my share in small sips, trying not to retch. I knew I needed the water badly, but I felt sick and my throat rebelled each time I tried to swallow. I was able to fierce down perhaps half a liter of the acrid soup before I turned out Illy headlamp and tried to sleep.
Sleep was impossible, though. The wind moaned and rattled around the root eaves, forcing snow through the cracks. Wrapped in my sleeping bag and all my warm clothes, I no longer felt the hone-chilling, soul-sapping cold that had threatened to consume nee, but I never got warm. The painful pins-andneedles sensation of blood returning to my hands and feet never came. I kept shivering. So I stayed alert and wakeful, knowing that if I drifted off I might never come back.
After an eternity of darkness, a stark blue light crept into the little room. The air was still bitter cold, hitting the hack of my throat like a strong drink when I undid the hood of my mummy bag and looked around. A knot of fear settled in my chest. How would we face another day out in this weather? None of us had come prepared for something like this. I didn't know if there were any more balds, or how long they might be, or how they would be blazed. I didn't know if we would be able to find water, and I wouldn't be able to keep my strength up much longer without it.
I remembered a nobo's description of winter in the South, long ago. "It'll snow one night, four inches maybe, and it's absolutely gorgeous. Generally it'll melt by noon:' At the time, we'd considered the possibility of finishing the Trail barefoot. Uut the nobos had been describing the mountains of Georgia in early March, and we were caught instead in the Virginia highlands in I )ecember.
The weekenders began stirring, throwing off their thick down bags. By the dark circles under their eyes, it was evident they hadn't slept either. One of them, a heavyset blond nian probably in his fifties, turned to Paul. "I been coming here seventeen years, and I never seen weather like this. I can't believe y'all cane through that with all those younguns. Y'all have got to get outta here. Listen, I got a phone in my car down at Elk Garden, 'bout tour miles down. I got friends in town who'd be more'n happy to pick y'all up:'
I could see the independent, rebellious spirit flashing in Paul's eyes, but before he could respond, Mary said, "You are an angel!"
So we arranged it; we would stay at the shelter for another three hours, giving the men time to get to the road and arrange the rescue.
"May God bless you and keep you," Mary said softly as they left.
When we emerged from the dark womb of the attic, it took a long time for our eyes to adjust to the brilliance of the refracted sun. All of the branches were sheathed in crystalline white rime six inches thick, and the snow everywhere threw back tiny rainbow-colored specks of light. It was one of the most beautiful landscapes I had ever seen. Beautiful, I thought, in the same u'ay as a great white shark:gorgeous and deadly, with the tuai attributes so intertwined as to be indivisible.
We reached the road after four hours of pushing through the waist-deep snow. The clouds closed in again as we hiked, turning the sky a pearly gray. Twice we lost the trail and had to backtrack. When I saw the fence, the plowed road, and the parking lot, at first I thought it was a mirage. Between the wisps of blowing snow, I thought I could see trucks and the figures of people, but I had seen many things in the snow that morning, phantoms brought on by dehydration and sleeplessness. ,Joy, walking downwind of me as she had the day before, gave a great shout and started running so fast I couldn't keep up, and that was when I understoo
d the trucks must be real.
A group of men, bundled up in thick winter gear, met us at the road. They had brought enough vehicles to carry us all to town, and they offered us coffee and hot chocolate. They gave their names, but my sluggish brain could not remember them. As we drove down the mountain, my stomach lurching at the sharp turns, a strange feeling of unreality overtook me. The warm interior of the truck, and the kind, quiet voice of the man behind the wheel, seemed to belong to another universe. Part of me was sitting there, watching the snowy trees flash by outside the window and listening to my rescuer talk about the landmarks we passed. Part of me was safe. The rest of me was still out there, struggling against the wind and the chest-high drifts, the life-sucking cold. Distantly, I felt pins and needles finally creep into my hands and feet as the blood flowed back into the tissue, but a different kind of cold took up residence inside my ribcage. The realization settled like a hard seed of ice: 1,44' could have died out there. Easily we could have died.
Isis
n the steep, winding drive down the mountain, I held a paper cup while Hope, carsick, threw up all the hot chocolate she'd just drunk. Once we got to town, I called around and found out what lodgings were available. One bed-and-breakfast, the Lazy Fox Inn, was open this time of year, and there was also a half built hostel we were welcome to stay in, but it had no heat. I called the owner of the Lazy Fox, a woman named Gunny who spoke in a lovely Southern drawl. She found a way to get all of us into the I3&13 (except Heald, who wanted to stay in the hostel so that Annie could sleep next to him, as she was accustomed to doing).
After our reservations were made, we all hung around Mount Rogers Outfitters. I)amascus I )ave, the owner of the store, had been part of the team that came to rescue us at Elk Garden. He was a soft-spoken, white-bearded man with many years of experience in the mountains. Though it was a holiday, he kept the store open for its.
Barefoot Sisters: Southbound Page 42