Day 34, 7-18-07

We took it very easy today, since we knew that we were going to be battling the 40 mile challenge starting at midnight (the beginning of 7-19), and rolling until we hit Damascus, VA. We all wandered to the PO, where C and I got a ton of stuff from the family, as well as a great surprise from some good friends of the family, the G’s. They made us some granola bars from…granola they had made, actually. Super tasty. We had to try them immediately. Then we wandered over to the internet café and paid to get online. It was fairly inexpensive, so worth it to drop a few emails and say hi to everyone, as well as to place my internet payment for the student loans I’ve got going on. Then we went back to the Hostel and selected all the food we wanted to take. There was a lot that we were going to mail ahead, because there was no way I wanted to carry all that was sent us along the challenge. I decided to hang onto my sleeping equipment though. You never know, and 40 miles is a long way. Brown gave us a ride to the trail in the back of is truck. He was…such an odd character. If/when I hike this again, I’ll stop by the Kincora hostel, (on the other side of the mountain), rather than that one. I’ve heard nothing but glowing praise for Kincora, and Brown’s….eh. So we hiked the 3 miles to the shelter were the challenge started, set up, and tried to sleep. It was like trying to sleep before a race…it was so hard to do. I think I might have gotten….I don’t know…maybe an hour? Two? It may have been that the time was so short as to seem shorter, I don’t know. Anyway, alarms go off at 11:45, and we are up and packing.

Me lounging on a papasan in the Hostel.













The sitting room for the hikers.















Bathroom, and the tub of 1000 leaks.
















A really awesome butterfly bush.













C and So-Close outside of the hostel, ready to roll

...coming soon

I had typed up a lot of these on a several hour marathon session over Christmas break, which is why they've been fairly regular in showing up. However, yesterday's post was the last of those, and there are still 11 days left in the trip. So they will be forthcoming, but I've got to return to the journal, etc, to unearth/remember what we did and where/with whom we did it with. In the meantime, I would suggest picking up a book. I would highly recommend a few, at the moment I'm savoring 'the Ball and the Cross', by GK Chesterton. It's about an Athiest/agnostic and a Roman Catholic that are trying to kill each other. However, they can't seem to find a quiet place to have a duel. It's quite awesome. Hilarious, and then there's serious issues discussed throughout. The Role of Nature and Philosophy in conflict, the nature of friendship, and obviously, Athism vs Christianity. Also on your list should be a charming little book called: 'Wendal, His Cat, and The Progress of Man.' It's very short, but it's very good. Everyone should read it. 'The Prophet', by Kahlil Gibran also makes the 'Everyone Should Read' list. So now that you've got something to do, I'll get to what I need to do, and the normal posts will resume shortly.
Thanks for your time!

Day 33, 7-17-07

It was a great hike today. We made Hampton, but with great sights and events along the way. We got a little bit of a late start, So-Close had wandered out of camp a long time before we got going. C and I took our time and it was super easy terrain, so even though we weren’t pushing super hard, we had a good time. We went ahead and took the trail to Laurel Falls, another awesome waterfall with a nice little swimming hole under it. When we show up, it was starting to sprinkle. Caleb and I ate, and then we jump into the water and swim to the falls. Get our picture taken and all that. The water was super cold. It was freezing. It was really awesome. There were a lot of people there since it’s a pretty awesome spot, so we got looks for our packs, our hair (I was pretty hairy at this point, and C had an awesome racing stripe going on…), and the fact that we actually got into this freezing cold water for a refreshing swim. We emerge and dry off as a guy comes over to us and starts talking to us. It unfolded that he had thru-hiked a while ago, and wanted to know where we were going, when we were going, etc. During the course of the conversation, it came to light that we were approaching one of the top 25 climbs of the AT. We kinda nodded in a grim sorta way. Bring it on! It was a bit gray and rainy. I was leading, and my glasses kept fogging because I kept breathing, and my exhalations hit my cold glasses and made them fog up. Drat. But the climb itself, now that our mental gears were in the right place, wasn’t a problem. We gutted through it, and So-Close caught us as we descended towards the road. We found the road, and stuck our thumbs out for a ride into Hampton. A funny old guy picked us up, gave us a little bit of joking, and dropped us off at subway. We had heard rumor of a hostel, so we started asking around for that, and noone had heard of the place. So we keep asking, and eventually find this place…this place is ridiculous. It used to house workers for the logging industry, and now the guy that owns the food store in town owns the house and has turned it into a hostel. There’s a picture of him with Katahdin in the background, so I assume he’s thru-hiked. He was super scatterbrained, kept leaping amongst topics like they were going out of style. It was very distracting. We ate a lot of food at a BBQ joint in Hampton (great food, great portions! I was full!), then hit up the grocery for Ben and Jerry’s. Chunky Monkey and Peanut Butter Cup. The Chunky Monkey won the battle for tastiest flavor, hands down. I called the guy that was sub-letting my apt at the time and we talked a little about that, since my brother, whom I had thought was moving in, had changed his mind. So we arranged that, and then C called his wonderful girlfriend.

Mountains! I never get tired of them.













Cool flowers! I don't get tired of them, either.













A ramshackle cabin thing. It was much more dilapidated than the picture makes it out to be.












I think that's me, on the way to the waterfall, with rock outcroppings on either side.












C on a cool bridge.


















The awesome waterfall! The person in the water there is So Close.

Day 32, 7-16-07

We woke up totally fine. I guess four wheeler guy wasn’t a marauding redneck in his spare time, for which we were all grateful. However, there was residual muscle fatigue from the day before haunting us. We only did about 16 miles, but it was a brutal 16 miles. Caleb and I started off the day right, with this neat Maple Bulgar dehydrated Enertia Foods thing. 500 calories! It was a beautiful thing. Then we started, and it felt totally brutal. We swung by a recently constructed shelter for lunch (it was great! Triple story, wonderful water source down the way, still smelled of new wood!), and got some water. Then we found the waterfall. There was a waterfall a little way off the trail, and we had to go investigate. So we did. You can to take a little side trail up to where you could get under the actual fall, and C and I did. Naturally. You can’t pass up that kind of opportunity. So we did. And it was cold. Very cold. Take your breath cold. Felt good coming out of it though, and it was totally awesome to get a little bit of a shower. Even if it was just water only. So-Close wandered by, and I went back up to get a picture, because C and I forgot the camera on our first trip. Still cold. Who would have thought? Hampton, TN is coming up, and I’m looking forward to some Ben and Jerry’s and prepping for the 40 Mile Challenge. Also called the Damascus Challenge. These last two days certainly entered doubts into my mind though, because they were brutal, and combined, they were still short a few miles of what we’d have to do to knock out the challenge. However, the terrain on both of those days was harder than we’d face on the day itself. I was already feeling tired about this thing.

The waterfall.













The part closer to the side-trail.


















Me, under the water, precarious, and cold. But hey, it was sorta a shower!












Water arcing off the top.


















A neat little meadow.













A little path rolling along the side, me at the end.













A nice little shot.

Day 31, 7-15-07

Long hard day. We didn’t even hit 20 miles. I, when looking at the profile, didn’t think that it was going to be too hard. It was. We did maybe 19 miles, and it was brutal. I had thought we were going to be climbing about 1500 feet, instead, we did about 4000. That’s a substantial difference. We started off the day with finishing off the Roan Mountain climb. There was supposed to be an incredible view from there, but when we finally made it to the top, we found that it was, in fact, in the middle of a cloud. So we kept rolling. The hike down the hill was very nice, more of the open pine forest that we had earlier encountered. After Roan, there was a series of three different bald mountains to climb, and they were all awesome. It was odd being out in the sun so much, and the first time that I really regretted sending my sunglasses back home. Those had left early, since I had discovered that hiking in the forest entails a lot of shade. So sunglasses were superfluous. Except on this series of balds. There was this guy ahead of us on the first one that didn’t have shoes on. I was perplexed by this, because it was kinda rocky and gravely, and bare feet would be a little (ok, a lot) uncomfortable. But he strolled along. We were able to talk with him a bit, and it turns out he had biked there, and was biking back, but wanted the view from the top, so his special bike shoes had to come off. Ouch.

The trail along the third bald cut through a pasture, and as we’re walking, C looks to his left and says, ‘Hey, a horse!’ So we went over to say hi. They were ok with that. So we hung out with them for a while, and it was cool. They were quite indifferent to us, and I wonder how many people come by and do exactly what we just did. We crossed 19E, the road into the town of Roan Mountain, TN. We had been warned many times, by people and by notes in the log books, of this road. Apparently some of the AT had been acquired from people, and they had never forgotten or forgiven the AT from taking that land. So even though it was…probably about 80 years ago, there is still bad blood in the town for hikers. Hikers, we just don’t care. But we do if you’re going to mess up our stuff. The shelter was in sad shape, and the spring there had been contaminated, so we just kept going. Silly people. There wasn’t really a good spot to camp, but near the end we finally just picked a spot. A terrible spot for a tent camper, it was slanted and not at all level, noone had ever camped there before so there wasn’t any cleared space…but C and I were in hammocks, and we were tired. It was a long long day. The climbs had taken it out of us, and we had pushed decently the day before, so we were done. We ate some tasty black beans, rice, and tuna. During our food preparation process, which involves dumping boiling water into a little pouch, we heard a four wheeler approaching. This was a little nerve wracking for us, with all the bad vibes about Roan Mountain floating around, and this guy didn’t make us feel any better. He drove by, and he looked at us, and we waved and said hi. He waved and kept going, but we were all nervous. However, we were too tired to continue moving on. Figuring we were safe in the middle of nowhere we turned in. I was asleep so fast it wasn’t even funny, because it was such a long day. So long.

So Close and Caleb on the top of Roan Mountain. So much for the view.












Another real life Christmas Tree.


















Roan Mountain, from the bottom.













The next Bald we climbed.













Was it gonna rain?


















The red barn shelter. There was water near here.












Caleb's victory stance after beating down a hard climb.


















the Hard Climb Caleb Beat Down.


















C and I, happy to be out.













This is the guy that upset all the Roan Mountain people.












A neat little view.


















C under a cool rock formation thing.


















A majestic cloud.

Day 30, 7-14-07

Another late start, but no worries, because the terrain was totally in our favor today. No huge obstacles until Roan Mountain at the end of the day. I had another day of awe at the forest, it kept striking me as a beautiful living entity of its own, an interconnected web of life, death, decomposition, and rebirth. Every tree seemed to be marvelously alive, and as I looked at them, it seemed as if they looked back at me, acknowledging my existence as I acknowledged their own. It was a moment of communion with the forest that lasted all day. Wonderful. We reached the road that signaled the beginning of the ascent up Roan Mountain. I looked at this mountain, and it looked back at me, and I thought, ‘oh yeah? You wanna piece of me?’ It just looked back. I took that for a yes. So I decided to crush the remaining mile and a half up this thing. Caleb and I started out, and I started flying. I got down into my trek poles, and I rolled. I practically ran up that mountain. C saw this and just rolled his eyes and kept moving. I reached the campsite, dropped my pack and went to find the water, which wasn’t very good. Sigh. Then went back up to find a spot. Found a good spot, and in the middle of setting up C rambles in. We bum about a little more and talk about our tomorrow. C presented this thought: we had yet to accomplish a 20 miler day, but we were considering doing 40 in one day. So we should probably get a 20 in at some point before the big push. That sounded good, so we decided to push for about 20 the next day. C and I had a tasty dinner. Those dehydrated meals? Awesome! (although I had a not-so-awesome one a few days later…) There was an odd terrible screeching noise that we threw rocks at, and it eventually wandered off. Not sure what that was, but something. I had a moment, between yesterday and today, of consideration. It started with the conversation Mom and I had yesterday at the bald patch. She asked if I was sorry I wasn’t thru-hiking. I had to answer yes. I really yearn for the thru-hike, and being out there and doing some of it…well, it wants to be done. It wants to be finished. I already was thinking of ways to swing it. There was Harper’s Ferry, I could flip up to Katahdin and then head south from there…it was very tempting. I looked hard at that possibility. There were a few obstacles but…they could be surmounted.

A neat window to a mountain.













A cool feather. No idea what kind of bird it belongs to.


















Me on a boulder. The climber in me keeps shunting me up these things.

















A wonderful view. I miss the mountains.

Day 29, 7-13-07

It was an early morning today, which was very odd, since dinner, buying groceries, and the movie afterwards had me up late. But I got up early, and then I soaked in a shower. It was glorious. I felt like a real human, showering twice in as many days…crazy. Then to Huddle House for breakfast. That’s basically the same thing as Waffle House, except its called Huddle House. Huge breakfast, and it was wonderful. In spite of the…ridiculous amount of calories we had eaten last night, I woke up hungry. We ran a few more errands, then back to the place. Loaded up on a few dehydrated meals, water, and checked out. We were on our way again! We started a little worried about the rain, but it cleared up/didn’t happen, and that was happy times. It was a great day for hiking, and we made it to a wonderful Bald clear spot called ‘Beauty Spot’ (it was pretty awesome) and got cell reception. Caleb called his girlfriend, I called Mom, and we wandered on. We passed a spot that we could have camped at, but we kept rolling. There was a mountain in front of the shelter we were heading to that we had to climb, and it was really awesome. At the top, it was fully treed in with pines, but the lower branches had long since fallen off. The canopy was very full, so even though the pines didn’t have lower branches, the tops kept out any sunlight which would let anything else grow. So it was super open, with just trunks of trees, moss, and springy pine needles underfoot. It felt like a forest from another world…I’m used to undergrowth and bushes, or at the very least, grass lining the trail. It was quite the enjoyable hike, being able to see around fairly well. Made it to the shelter about 16 miles from Uncle Johnny’s, and set up. It was impressively dark at that point, so we ate and dove into our hammocks pretty quickly. At about 9 (in the pitch dark of night in the mountains under trees), we heard crashing noises, and both of us got a little tense. Then heard So-Close. She called her parents at the same spot we had, but perhaps an hour later, and then had a long conversation, so by the time she started again, it was getting dark. Since she’s a determined hiker, she got her headlamp on and kept trucking.

Caleb, rolling out.


















A neat food bridge.


















We were to climb that shortly.













Powerline cuts aren't wonderful, but they give decent views.













The marker, C, and a nice little field.













Me in the field.













Picture from Beauty Spot














The neat open woods.

Day 28, 7-12-07

Another crazy day! We made it in to Erwin, TN. The AT goes practically through the town. There are a few hostels in the area, Uncle Johnny’s and Ms Janet’s. We had heard wonderful things about the latter of the two, so we wanted to go there. Unfortunately, it was in town. Uncle Johnny’s is actually on the trail itself. We had 13 miles to go from where we camped to the town itself, so we covered those really quickly. In time for lunch quickly. It was crazy how quickly that distance fell. It was a bit of a mental battle though…we were switchbacking our way down this cliff towards the town. We’d go for a while, switchback, switchback again, and the river would still be a long way away. I don’t know how that worked, but I wasn’t happy. Anyway, we make it out and cross the bridge, then stick out our thumbs to get a ride into Ms. Janet’s. A few cars passed us, and then one stops. So-Close is with C and I, and a group this large…I was worried about us getting a ride. But this lady stops. So we ask her if she knows about Ms Janet’s and she says yes. So we get in, and as soon as my butt hit the seat, I knew I needed to get out of this car. It was a very clear message from my gut to my everything else. I shouldn’t have been in that car. But she was already driving…so I had my nerves on edge the entire time. I didn’t know what exactly the deal was, but she had a bandage on her cheek, and said a Brown Recluse had bitten her and she’d had surgery on her face. There are people who think that spiders are either Brown Recluses or Black Widows. She’s probably one of those, because a Brown Recluse bite on her face would probably kill her. That doesn’t change the fact that she was on something. Either super huge painkillers or something illegal. The ride was only 3 miles, but I was on pins and needles the entire time. She pulls in, and we bail. Then she won’t leave. We all want her to, because by now we’ve all seen the ‘Ms Janet’s is closed for the year’ sign, and want to get back to Uncle Johnny’s. But by any other means than her. Because she’s sketchball. So she finally leaves, and we decide to get a burrito before we do anything else. Because thinking on a full stomach is much more pleasant. So we walk to this burrito place, and it is pretty awesome. Huge burrito. Super tasty. We call Uncle Johnny’s, and a person working for him came out to pick us up. Then we settle into our encampment, shower, wash our clothes, and then get a happy surprise. We had left Krebopple and Mcgyver a while back, and were sad about that. But then they showed up! Super awesome! So we hung out with them, and met this other guy (Tea-time) that we had hiked with for a while way back when. He was getting off the trail…it wasn’t for him. As we talked with him, it came out that he had started quite a while ago, but for some reason, just didn’t get any sort of distance done. I think perhaps that’s why he had such a hard time…you’ve got to keep moving and keep checking off distances, or it would get frustrating pretty quickly. Anyway, dinnertime. The Uncle Johnny of Uncle Johnny’s shuttles us to town, where we have a choice. C, So-Close, and I head towards the Pizza Hut buffet, while they go to the Mexican food place. We acquitted ourselves well in Pizza Hut. By that, I mean we ate an embarrassing amount of food. Cleared the buffet twice, for a grand total of 21 plates. 7 each. I could barely move. It was glorious. Then we had to go buy some food. So we waddled to the grocery and did that. Back to the place, and watched a ridiculous movie called Formula 51, with Samuel L Jackson and some other people. Ridiculous movie.

A neat cliff that I would have tried to climb had I my climbing shoes with me.












The Nolichucky River.













And again, the Nolichucky.

Day 27, 7-11-07

Awesome day. Cold day. Misty day. It was cloudy all day, so we didn’t get to see colors until 10, which meant that we didn’t get up till then, found out the time, and then tried to get moving quickly. My test for getting up was always looking for colors. If it was gray, it’s too early. Colors = time to get up. So we got up late and then cooked along pretty well. There was a large mountain (aptly named Big Bald) that we had to get over. It was raining in the cloud that we were in, and it was windy. We had long since placed our rain jackets on, and kept trudging forward. Got to the top of Big Bald, looked around and realized we couldn’t see anything, and kept right on moving. It was cold, and if we stood around for any length of time, we’d get chilled. The wind was worse than I had thought we would run into. I could feel it tugging at my pack and pack cover, toying with the idea of perhaps giving a concentrated shove, but lacking the concentration and determination to do so. It was an odd feeling day. Because of the cloud we were in, the sun was quite hidden from us, we couldn’t even see a brighter spot in the cloud to get an idea of where we were. We knew we were moving through space as we hiked, but the time of the day itself…that had ceased to move completely. Someone hit pause on the passage of time, and we moved up and over our mountain marveling at the grim sort of blustery day we encountered. As we began to descend off of Big Bald, we began to encounter clusters of bushes scattered along the knee high grass. It felt as if, at any time, Orcs would come streaming out towards us, and we would run to meet them with our trek poles changed to swords. Eventually we hit a shelter, and decided to take a break there for a moment. It was cold, and we ate something. Mcgyver wandered in, and So-Close about 15 minutes later. She was cold. Her rain jacket had been a casualty of an earlier weight-cutting binge early on in her trip, and she hadn’t really needed it until now. Consecutive days of rain are pretty grim. One day isn’t a big deal, if the next is sunny and dries you out. Two days of wet and in spite of any rain protection, you’re going to be soaked. This is where cotton will hurt you a lot. It never dries out. It gets wet, and it never, ever dries out. If you ever go for a serious multi-day trip, make sure you have wicking clothing. That’s a lesson C and I learned on one of our very first trips, and we hold to that rule. We also learned of the 40 mile challenge today. There’s a town (Hampton, TN) 40 miles from the first town in VA (Damascus). The challenge: cover that 40 miles in a day. Now that the thought has been presented, it seems like it may have to be done…

C in the mist, his racing stripe/beard semi-visible


















The misty woods...













The cloud that we were in/are going to.













The hillside...I think we found some berries near here...












Lunch! Bagel and PB! Gobs of PB. C and I went through a 16 oz can in 4 days between the two of us.

















A tree growing out of a rock, that had taken on the rock's hue.

















One of us, not sure which, on the mountain, being cold and wet.













The survey marker at the top...since there wasn't a view, we took this instead