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.
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