Day 13

Winding Stair Gap to FS road 69 - 8 mi
Woke up excited to get out of town. Mike's hands feel better, he says, although they still look pretty rough... but we're both feeling like it's time to leave. The weather seems to have broken - today it was super cloudy as we got up and the fore ast was for thunderstorms all day. Before we left town we walked to the grocery store again and as we were inside the skies opened up. Lots of rain. Stopped next door at the Dollar General to get our last few items and the really heavy rain seemed past as we walked back to the hotel. We rushed to get all of our stuff together in time and we *just* caught the 11am shuttle back to the trailhead. Talked to some nice hikers in the van on the way up into the mountains and got pumped up to hike. The higher we got the rainier it got - but we were prepared wearing our raingear! The shuttle dropped us all off at the pass, and after some confusion about where the trail picked up again, we started hiking. The rain was coming down in sheets and it just kept coming. The miles started to pass and our enthusiasm started to wane as we realized we were getting slightly wet despite our tried and tested west coast raingear. After 4 miles we considered stopping in at a shelter to get out of the rain for a little bit, but we reconsidered when we found the shelter to be way off trail and downhill. Onward we trudged, eventually stopping 4 miles later, not even having found a good water source, and tried not to get our tent too soaked as we set up. As we peeled off our soaked raingear we began to realize just how wet our clothes had gotten... completely wet. We put on our only other bottoms - our thin, silk long underwear - and dry tops and prepared to hunker down for the rest of the day. 
It was still really early (about 3:30) so we wrote some log entries and made some phone calls since we had service. A few hours later the rain had stopped it's downpour and we had the opportunity to push on if we'd wanted, but the idea of putting on those soaking wet clothes again was totally unappealing. We called it an early night.