My Trails

4/29 – 270 miles
I hiked 17 miles to Deer Park Mountain Shelter, 3 miles from Hot Springs, NC. It was a long day. Much of the trail ran through beautiful mature woods, filled with tall poplar and massive oaks, laced now and then with streams and tunnels of rhododendron, on all fairly level walking. Sometimes it’s nice to walk through woods like this. The trail wouldn’t have to go to the top of every mountain.

After a rather challenging climb over Bluff Mountain, the trail descended 2300 feet to the shelter. Once again, several of my trail friends were already there cooking dinner. They said that someone had seen a copperhead snake in the shelter so everyone was tenting. It was a beautiful night and my tent was first choice for me anyway.

After dinner I brought out a treat for everyone – a bag of marshmallows I had been carrying since Gatlinburg. We roasted marshmallows around the campfire and talked until dark. I went to bed with a full stomach and slept the best I have in days.

I forgot to mention that I weighed myself at the hostel two nights before and found that I’ve lost 22 lbs. already. I need to start eating more because my body is devouring itself.

4/28 – 254 miles
Now that we are past the Smokys the weather has been good. I left Standing Bear Hostel early and faced a long, steady climb of 3000 feet to the top of Snowbird Mountain. There is a VOR navigational aid on top of the mountain and views for many miles. A lot of the mountain tops were cleared years ago for farmers to graze livestock and the Forest Service still maintains them. One of the highest and coolest places is called Max Patch, a grassy bald with panoramic views, and I was determined to stay on top and experience the sunset and sunrise. It is one of those places I had heard about and didn’t want to miss.

We were fortunate to find trail magic at Brown Gap, three miles before Max Patch. Two former thruhikers and there friends had hamburgers for lunch, steak for dinner, and full course breakfast the next morning. A lot of guys pitched there tent and ate all day, but a few of us ate lunch and went on up the mountain.

Max Patch was neat. You could walk barefoot all over the mountain top. We felt like we were on top of the world. Brooke said she felt like Maria in Sound Of Music. Several more hikers joined us and we watched a beautiful sunset.

4/27-238 miles
I was hit a couple of times by grape size hail. I tried to stay under the pine trees for protection but even then it hurt. Some of the guys that got hit had bruises.

The next day, many of us were so sick of the Smokys that we hiked 18 miles to a place called Standing Bear Hostel, three miles past the Park. I got a bed in the bunkhouse for $15, which included a shower and laundry. The laundry was a washboard in a tub and an electric dryer that smelled really bad. They have a small selection of food and I resupplied for the next section.

I’ve met a lot of interesting people on the trail. I hiked most of the Smokys with a 73 year old German lady. We had about the same speed and would leap-frog each other every now and then. We stayed in the same shelter each night and I learned some of her history. She came to Quebec when she was 18. She has hiked both the AT and the PCT in sections, and also the Camino (??) in Spain two times. She loves to hike and her husband likes to stay home; it works out good.

I also ran into Brooke, the girl I met way back in Georgia. She is 24, fresh out of college, hiking solo on the AT. She is a fast hiker and will probably go ahead of me soon. I seem to meet up with the same crowd every few days. It’s funny how it works.

4/26- 220 miles
I was out of the shelter early, a heavy mist had settled in in the night saturating the trees and causing them to constantly drip. I was hoping for a clear day. I would pass by Charlie’s Bunion, a unique rock formation, and climb several mountains over 6000 feet. What happened next gave me the scare of my life.

In less than an hour the weather turned from mist to steady rain. The wind turned from a breeze to hurricane force, lightning crashed all around me, and it was getting cold. I hiked faster to try to stay warm and almost considered turning back for the shelter. The trail led higher into the mountains, sometimes crossing narrow gaps only a few feet wide, drop-offs of undetermined depths on both sides. The wind buffeted me with such force on the exposed ledges that I would crouch down and run to the other side. At one point, I paused behind a narrow ledge while lightning, high wind, and driving rain, turned the ledge into an obstacle I didn’t have nerve to cross. I must have waited 20 minutes before the fear of standing there and risking hypothermia outweighed the fear of crossing the ledge.

Charlie’s Bunion was obscured in fog and there was only one time the weather cleared enough to see more than a couple hundred feet.

I actually saw a tree blow over only a few feet away, and the trail was scattered with blow-downs for the rest of the day. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I was hit by golf ball size hail.