Clingman's and beastly burgers!!

The weather hasn't been the greatest for us the past few days. Friday we woke up and thought it was raining really hard but it was really just the wind howling outside. It was so cold and the wind was blowing so hard that we had a hard to hiking. There were some passes we hiked through that we had difficulty staying on the trail because of the wind. After about 5 miles the 6 of us stopped for lunch in one of the shelters. All the shelters are stone and have a fireplace with tarps covering the open wall in the smokies. So we built a little fire in the fireplace to keep warm and decided to only go the next 1.7 miles to the next shelter and call it a day. All the guys went out a collected a ton of wood at the next shelter and we were able to keep the fire going all night when the rain came in. There ended up being 18 people in the shelter with 3 in tents outside that night. Some guy had a radio and it said 75 mph winds and rain all night.
Next day we waited around while everyone ekes got up and left in the rain. By the time we left it was still windy but the sun came out and it was beautiful!! We all agreed that was our prettiest hike yet. The smokies are just amazing. We also peeked the highest point on the trail, clingmans dome. The picture is of all of us on top of the tower (left to right- almost there, gravity, jana, phlegm, me, and austin) we heard the rain was coming again tonight and the shelter we were planning on staying at was going to be full, and we were running low on food and we were all starving (the main though hiker problem, can never carry enough food) so we got a ride into town when we made it into the pass and got a cheap room, more groceries, and the biggest burgers in the world! (See photos, one is austin the other is gravity)
But the rain came through lastnight and now we are figuring out how to get back out there this morning! More adventures to come :)

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