Day 18, 7-2-07

Short day, only 12 miles, but we saw a lot of neat stuff, so it certainly made up for the berevity of the hike. Not very far from the shelter was the incredible lookout called Charlie’s Bunion. I’m not sure why…we hiked down to look at that, and met the Professor there, who was also looking things over. I’ll talk about the Professor (as well as the RSC) a little later. The Bunion itself was awesome. It was a knob of rock that just plunged straight down to the valley a long way below. We took in the view for a while, and I had to clamber up the outcropping to get a picture on top of the thing. Definitely worth the easy climb up…I would have backed down pretty quickly if I hadn’t felt very confident that the climb was easy. So I scooted up, C got a rockstar picture of me, and then I hopped back down.
Because the Smokies are an impressive mountain range, and because the AT runs along the ridge of this impressive mountain range, a lot of the time the trail is shrouded in ‘fog’ that is really low-lying clouds. The entire day was spent walking in a misty gray curtain of dew and moisture. I couldn’t get Mirkwood out of my head, it felt like Caleb and I were striding along with some great mission behind us, driving us forward.
Caleb and I were running through food fairly quickly at this point, and I think we polished off the Granola and Bagels that we were carrying. So that was an interesting development. We still had some pitas with peanut butter (that we ate like it was going out of style), and some tuna to help flesh out that meal. There were also some powerbar type things we had lingering on for breakfast, so we weren’t in terrible shape re: food just yet.
Caleb and I managed to beat all the RSC people, So-Close, and the Professor to the shelter, and that made us feel suitably beastly. There were already 4 people there, a dad, friend, and two sons. The dad had bitten off a little too much, and gotten a knee tweaked, so they were going to get extracted the next day. They had a little fire going in the shelter’s fireplace…who knows where they found the wood. Caleb and I picked out shelter spots, and then took off our wet socks and things and spread them out by the fire. Everyone trickled in, to the dismay of the 4 people who thought they were going to have the shelter to themselves. We also unconsciously appropriated their fire…there was a ring of wet socks, shoes, and boots around the fire, with us rotating through who got to warm their feet.
L of the RSC and I talked for a while about Raleigh/Durham and all the good spots there are to try out. I’m going to try Ashtanga Yoga because she taught it, and had great things to say about that particular style. And the Gugelhupf Bakery, which she recommended, is incredible!We dove into our sleeping bags (it was COLD at that shelter), and called it a night.

The inside of Icewater Spring. The feet are, from L to R: T, M, C, The Prof!, and L












They've left, and I've yet to move...it was warm in my sleeping bag...












The view from the Bunion













The view from the Bunion













The view from the Bunion













C, and the view from the Bunion













Me, on the rock.













The view from the Bunion...its a long and steep way down...


















C again.


















A neat and rare flower that grows near the Bunion.












The path. This doesn't really do the ridge justice, but the whole top of the ridge is only...maybe 5-6 feet across. It starts dropping off on either side. We stayed firmly in the middle.










Woods and fog...













It was a very foggy day, and the camera couldn't decide if it wanted to flash or not.

















More fog, the trail, and the drop.













The smokies.













C and this really odd rock stuff...













Everything was wet because we were in a big cloud. These were esp. shiny.













C's ringwraith picture.


















That's what we're on. That's where we're going.