Mt. Mitchell Experience: Day 2

We were able to get enough phone signal to find out that Day 2 was a weather forecast for lightning, thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. Personally, I felt like it couldn't get any worse than the night we just experienced. But when lightning and tornadoes are a possibility and you're standing on top of mountains with no where to go, the best decision was to go back where we came from. This was not an easy decision for me and if I was making the decision, I would have continued on because I was going there to personally hike this trail to Mt. Mitchell. But with 6 of us to make the decision, the ball did not fall in my court, so we hiked back to where we came from. We found out later that NC had its largest amount of tornadoes since the 80's this weekend. We slept in that storm! We waited the morning and weather out and began hiking around noon on the trail we came in on. The weather cleared, the wind calmed and it was a gorgeous day! We hiked twice as fast our way back to get out before dusk.

We made it out in just over 5 hours, 2 hours shorter than the first time. We actually had a chance to see all the views because it was so overcast the day before. I was in so much pain coming down the mountain. Imagine pounding downhill for 5 hours. I thought my knees and ankles were going to shatter. When we had about 2 miles left with a more gradual downgrade, I took a big spill over a little branch and tumbled and rolled very awkwardly. At that time my body was turning into rubber and I felt like I had very little control! What an experience! We decided to celebrate with pizza just a 45min drive to Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co. Delicious!
Pops and Jared decided to head home that night. We walked around Asheville and were trying to figure out where we'd stay. With the possibility of more storms, we got a cheap hotel in Asheville and planned to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mt. Mitchell in the morning. We weren't going home without making it to the peak! We were only 4.7 miles from it at our campsite in Deep Gap.