Halloween

DONE!!!

in costume

Day 137

Today I had a nice easy hike planned followed by a nap then a full moonlight night hike to fontana. Last night was the actual full moon but the sky was cloudy when I went to bed. It cleared up in the middle of the night so I'm sure Trashcan had a great full moon hike when he left at 4:30. The hiking today was amazing. Perfectly blue skies with not a cloud in sight. When I got to thunderhead mountain I saw this:

as I settled down fire lunch I heard some people singing on the next mountain top. It seems that is rocky top which is a fight song for the university of tennessee. So some tenn fans were up there celebrating their win. Which worked out for me since they hooked me up with food. Here are a few more pics from rocky top:



When I got to the shelter where I planned my nap there were already people there. I should have just gone and set my tent up but tried and failed to nap. So I didn't get to sleep till 8 which meant I didn't go night hiking at 9:30.

Day 141

Got up late this morning cause of how cold it was. That was fine since I had a really short day planned into franklin. On my way there I ran into a trail maintainer that offered me a ride into town. He also showed me a neat little cave that was an old mica mine. I should have hiked on but there was a very slim chance if snow so I decided to stay in town.

Day 140

I got another late start as seems to be the norm these days. I was only doing an easy 17 today so that was no big deal. What was an issue was the weather. I don't think it got above 40 all day and there was a 10+ mph wind. It was very chilly. The initial climb out if the valley was back to the easy switchbacks and I made good time. At the top there was a lookout tower with great 360° views. From there it was a simple ridge walk to Mike's shelter. I decided I had to spend the night at the shelter that ended mike's hike.

Day 139

Got up fairly early so I would have more time at the NOC. Trooper and #2 were already up and finishing breakfast. The hike was fairly uneventful but there was actually a steep hill. For the first time since nh my calves were burning. At the top was a nice open field with a great view of the nantahala river valley. When I got to the NOC it was packed. It seems there is a train that brings in tourists and almost none of them were staying. I ended up having a entire bunkhouse to myself.

Day 138

My full moon hike worked sorta. I ended up staying at the shelter until 4 am instead of hiking on at 10 pm. The folks in the shelter I was trying to nap at tried to let me sleep but with 6 of them there and the sun still up it wasn't going to happen. When I got going it was really nice. The moon was bright enough for me to follow the trail but not bright enough to avoid the obstacles so I had to use my headlamp. When I made it to fontana the local resort offers a shuttle to their store and restaurants. It took them an hour and a half to get me. I was freezing the whole time. There was a breeze coming off the lake which made it really cold. Once got up to the resort I did my resupply and had a nice lunch. It was only 1 so I got a ride back to the trail and hiked on. I eventually reached a camp spot where there were other sobos! I had met trooper and#2 up in the shenandoahs when they were slack packing. We hung out talked story, it was nice having company.

50 miles left

In georgia with 50 miles left. I'll try to fill out the rest of the days shortly. I should have more time since I have 4 days to do the 50 miles in.

Day 136

After getting sporadic amounts of sleep due to the very loud snoring I got up at 5 am and started hiking. It was very much still night and even though it was a full moon there was too much cloud cover for it to do more than show the outline of the trail. Which was a good thing cause about a half hour before first light my headlamp ran out of batteries. I was up on a very narrow knifes edge ridge with 1000 ft drops on each side with no light except a little moon glow through the clouds. I think that was the most dangerous thing I've done on this trip. It was still very pretty and I had wanted to do a full moon hike during the trip but I am going to try it again sunday when there are no clouds and I have a headlamp. The main reason I kept hiking is so I could make it to gatlingburg where I had a box waiting with my rain jacket. I made it to newfound gap which was where I could get a hitch to town by 9:50 but had no luck getting a hitch. There were literally hundreds of people up there and not a single one gave me a ride. The post office closed at 11 so I just told them to mail my jacket back and hiked on. I was done with the smokies. I just didn't want to deal with all the people. Still it was a fairly nice overcast day and I had a great 360° view from clingmans dome along with a constant stream of tourists. I hiked the nice graded paved half mile 300 ft. approach path the tourists had to hike to get to the visitors center thinking it might have hot food. It didn't. I did get some replacement batteries there so it wasn't a total waste of my time. It was also amusing breezeing past the tourists on the way back up without really trying while they were panting and stopping due to how hard it was for them to be walking and not driving. Yes I'm still a but mad a not getting a ride down to town from people like this. I eventually get to a shelter feeling like a badass southbounder having dusted everyone I saw and did 24+ over the tallest mountain on the trail. Then Trashcan walks in. He had just done 38. Ego = crushed. Just goes to show that there is always someone out there bigger, badder, faster than you.

Day 135

After getting up early to say bye to Grommet who had to catch an 8 am shuttle I hiked up into the smokies. I was a very unhappy man. The day was starting out just like the whites. Nothing but cold and clouds. I very angrily hiked the 2500 feet and 4.5 miles up into the smokies in and hour and fifteen min. Entirely to my surprise when I got to the top it was the opposite of the whites. Instead of hiking into the clouds I had hiked above them. There was a fire tower at the top of the mountain where I got some great 360° views of the tips of the smokies jutting out of the clouds like islands in a sea of white. The rest of the day was a nice easy ridge walk in the sun. Very much not what I was expecting.

Day 134

Woke up to a beautiful misty day. Not wet enough to get my tent wet but enough to keep me from having a view on max patch. It was supposed to have great views of the smokies. I lazed around in my tent for a bit and heard someone walk by around 8. Figuring it was one of the folks from the packed shelter from the night before I pretended I was still asleep. Turns out it was an '09 hiker, Grommet, that was out for a few days to start getting her trail legs back in preparation for a pct hike next spring. When I caught up to her we hiked and chatted the rest of the day. It was really nice having company again. Turns out the government had just reopened and I could legally hike though the smokies. So all the weeks of worry were of no point. I wasn't really worried since I had heard from other sobos that the rangers were ignoring through hikers and only kicking out cars and weekenders. But it was still nice to have my 20$ pointless scrap of paper.

Day 133

Head a great day heading out of hot springs. I had planned on doing a fairly short 14 mile day but when I got to the shelter it was only 4 so I decided to hike the 5 miles to the next one. The shelter was a big 10 person style with lots of tent sites and it was full. When I got there I just didn't feel like dealing with that many people. So I hiked another mile to the base of max patch mountain. Definitely the right call I had a beautiful sunset.

Day 130

Was a chilly and wet morning. Which was unfortunate since I was going over big bald mtn. It was supposed to have some nice views. There were some bird watchers up there catching and tagging birds. Not much happened the trail was fairly crowded I guess a lot of people wanted to go help with the bird tagging.

Day 129

Got dropped off at Erwin and saw hatterfox again. Didn't think I'd see him again but it seems he yellow blazed to erwin. Can't blame him after his 4000+ miles this year. The day was rather nice. I was just doing an easy hike today. Saw the section hikers that hooked me up with beer one last time.

Day 128

What a small world we live in. That or I'm being stalked. Rob offered to slack me down to erwin and let me stay another night but he was having one of his old 2009 hikers come stay with him for the weekend. The hike was an easy 20 miles without a pack. With some nice views on the way. I ran into the beer magic section hikers again and they said they'd have more beer stashed for me tomorrow. When we got back to Rob's place his old hiker were there. Turns out I had met the guy before. When I did my zero up at the 501 shelter a guy showed up who was driving to college. Now 3 months later the same guy shows up! Was a very cool coincidence.

Day 131

Today made up for the poor views of the last few days. I got some great views on big butt mountain. The highlight though was walking along firescale ridge. The ridge was a half scramble made interesting by the damp from last nights rain. It was fairly easy since there were stairs on all the parts that might have been difficult. Right after the ridge there was supposed to be a firetower but I didn't see the side trail. The rest of the hike was fairly uneventful except for all the hunters and their dogs running around looking for bears. I did receive some trail magic again when I ran into some trail maintainers that had hiked firescale and gave me some chips and took my trash.

Day 132

I just had to do an easy 11 miles into hot springs with most of that being downhill. The day started out foggy so I didn't get to see the view from the firetower, but it cleared up for my approach to hot springs so I got some nice views of the local river. The place I was staying in town was known for its gourmet cooked vegetarian meals. Unfortunately since I was the only one staying the weren't cooking dinner tonight. They did say they would do breakfast tomorrow though. I picked a bad day to goto the hot springs Tuesdays they give a 50% discount to the locals so it was booked by the time I tried to go there.

Day 127

I got up late, well I got up at 7 but didn't leave my sleeping bag till 930. That was fine since I was only planning on hiking 17 miles. I didn't even do that much. Unlike yesterday there was no views today, it was foggy and overcast all day. When I was 2 miles from the shelter I was going to stay at I ran into a guy doing trail magic. Surprisingly it was a guy I had met back up in dalton ma. He had told me to keep an eye out for his van down here in tn and there it was. It seems he used to run a hiker hostel in dalton before moving down here, one I had heard of along with him before, and was now giving trail magic out and offering a place to stay for hikers. I took him up on his offer and am glad I did. The guys name is rob bird and is just a super nice guy, chain smokes but I can put up with that for a free warm bed, hot shower and clean clothes.

Day 126

What a great day. It was a bit chilly sleeping in the hostel by myself but the breakfast was amazing. I got a ride down to roan and picked up my 15° bag from the post office and mailed my other one home. I also got some gloves but that was it for winter/fall gear that I wasn't already carrying. After resupply I finally got on the trail at 11. No big deal I only had to do 14 to get to the roan mtn shelter, the highest one on the trail. The hike up to the ridge leading to roan was long but well switchbacked. So I got to the top if the first mountain, humpback, which happened to be a bald so I was treated to 360° views with perfect blue skies as far as the eye could see. This scene repeated itself 5 more times that day. It was fantastic. Along the way I stopped off at the only privy for 150 miles south of damascus just because it was there. Roan mtn shelter is the highest shelter on the trail wiry two stories and four walls. It was rather nice and stayed warm even though it was in the 30s. Earlier in the day I had passed the section hikers from the hostel and they told me they had stashed a beer for me at a parking lot right before the shelter.

Day 125

The weather was perfect. Taking the zero was the right choice. To make up for it I decided to do a 25 into Roan. I had some great views on the way. When I got to Roan I stayed at another hostel. I had heard this one has the best breakfast on the trail. I was the only one in the hostel but there was a pair of section hikers that I had passed on the trail staying on the BandB. When I got to the hostel they handed me a beer, very nice people.

Day 124

While not a hurricane the weather was cold and wet. I just couldn't get motivated to go hike in it when I could hang out and listen to stories told by bob peoples all day. So I took a zero.