Benton MacKaye Trail, finishing the section Thunder Rock Campground, mile mark 94

We were up at a decent hour and on trail just after 8 am for the last leg of this wet 4-day hike. The first half of our 1.5 mile ascent back up Big Frog Mountain was straight up as we knew it would be, stopping every few hundred feet to catch our breath. We’d gone less than a quarter mile before the rain started to pour again and the trail slowly became more muddy and slippery, slowing us down considerably.

An hour and a half later, we finally made the summit. There was an iffy phone signal, but huddled under Karen’s rainhat to keep my phone dry, we finally connected with our friend Bailey to arrange our pick-up at Thunder Rock for 4 pm, giving us plenty of time. The rest of the day was just a steady hiking down the mountain, 8 miles across ridges, along mountain slopes and over foothills back to the Ocoee River and the Thunder Rock Campground. The rain came and went all day and the clouds teased us with bits of sun every once in awhile. Because of the rain, we never stopped for lunch, eating energy bars while we hiked instead. 

We finally ended up at the campground, where we’d started, a little after 3pm. Nine and a half miles in 7 hours was a long, slow, and not much fun day in the rain. The rain was easing up again, so we staked out a wet picnic table to eat some of our delayed lunch and waited for Bailey. He arrived right on time at 4 pm with his back seat covered in a blanket ready to ferry two wet and beleaguered hikers home.  

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We’d planned to take a one-day rest and continue our hike north 100 miles toward Fontana Dam, but the weather forecast for the next week looked for continued rain. We will hike in the rain, but it’s not to most fun thing to do. So after lots of discussion, we decided to put it off for another dryer time.