Week Three 2023
Sunday, 12 March - Well, not much hiking today. I am zeroing at the Hampton Inn in Franklin, NC today. It is raining and cold. Like yesterday, I am resting my foot again today. It seems better this morning and I am excited to start for The Nantahala Gorge tomorrow. The gorge is about 34 miles from Winding Stair Gap. My plans today are to get there sometime on Wednesday and overnight in the bunk room. The trail is seven miles down into the gorge and eight miles out. I want to go out with fresh legs. It is a steep and long climb, for sure.
Today would have been my Mother's birthday. She would have been 94. She and my Dad taught their three children love the Lord and respect their fellow man. I am proud to tell people who my parents were. Whenever I would leave the house with my friends or to go to work, she would tell me to "Remember who you are". It is an admonition that I think would be well suited to be heard more today than ever.
Monday, 13 March - My shuttle driver, Sherpa Al, left me at Winding Stair at 07:15 this morning. I had forgotten that the time had changed so I walked the first 20 minutes with my headlamp. After about three miles it began to snow. It was not snow like one thinks when one thinks snow. This was more like frozen fog. It looked like tiny ice crystals floating in the air. It was not that cold so anything that hit the ground melted. I kept walking and in about two more miles there was trail magic by the team from Tuscaloosa. If you read my entries from last year, you will remember this was the crew that had a virtual restaurant at Burning Town Gap. They did not disappoint again this year. Hot food, cake, coffee, can drinks, chips, hot dogs, and everything you could want was there. I ate my fill, thanked the crew, and moved on.
It began to get cold again and I kept hiking to keep warm. At about four thirty, I stopped at a small shelter named Cold Spring that had one space left. This shelter was made of logs sometime in the middle 1960's, judging from the dates carved into the logs. It literally sits beside the trail with a piped spring ten feet in front. Most shelters are some distance from the trail with water even farther. I am sitting under my quilt keeping warm. I walked 15.8 miles today. I am planning on reaching the Nantahala Outdoor Center tomorrow.
Tuesday, 14 March - It was 14 degrees this morning when I left the Cold Spring shelter at about 08:00. The previous night had been cold, but I had my down quilt and my sleeping bag liners and they kept me pretty warm. I also use toe warmers when it is very cold. I just stick them to the bottom of my socks and they keep my feet warm all night. This morning I left the warmers on my socks when I started walking just to add a little warmth when I started off. My water was frozen as well. I had stored my filter in my pocket to prevent it from being ruined if it froze. It did not freeze, but I had no water to filter because it was frozen. That was not a problem because one does not sweat much when it is that cold.
I must say that this part of the trail is probably one of the worst for me. The descent into the Nantahala Gorge is both very steep and very long. Like I described Unicoi gap earlier, Nantahala Gorge is also very deep and very steep. This makes the trail very long in order to reach the bottom. Before you can begin the descent, you have to walk along a knife ridge for a couple of miles. These mountains look like what you would have if you stood several books on their edges and tilted them. Each book becomes a separate ridge. The same thing must have happened when God made this part of the world. The rock plates have been stood on their ends and they all tilt the same way. That makes each plate a separate section of mountain. It makes for some interesting walking. To get into the gorge you first have to walk along the ridges. Most of these are about twelve to fifteen feet wide and about a thousand feet high on both sides. There is not too much room for error. Once you get across the ridges, you start down some very long switch backs for about five miles. When you get to the bottom, the Nantahala Outdoor Center complex is there to meet you with food, rest, showers and an outfitter. It is a well run operation. I am in a bunk room for tonight. Tomorrow I will reverse the process and walk up the other side of the Gorge for about eight miles and then another eight miles to Brown Fork shelter. This will set me up to get into Fontana Villiage on Thursday. I should have a box waiting on me there. Friday I plan to cross the dam and enter the Smokies.
I walked 11.7 miles today.
Wednesday, 15 March - I did not get out and moving as early as I had planned today. I was staying at the Nantahala Outdoor Center bunkhouse overnight. I got up at six and went to eat. When I came back to my room, my key card had stopped working and I was locked out. There were four other people in the bunk room this morning. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. They were all still asleep. I waited a while, and then decided to go back to the kitchen and let the sun come up. I saw several people I have met while hiking this year. The NOC is one of those trail places where most hikers pass through on the AT. I talked to everybody for a while until it began to get light. I went back to the room and knocked again. This time one of the guys opened the door. I quuickly packed my sack and was out for a beautiful morning hiking uphill for eight miles. It is not a gentle upward grade. There are times when the upward slope is greater than 45 degrees. Getting out of that gorge is a hard job. It takes about five hours to get to Cheoah Bald. Cheoah Bald is the top rim of the gorge and it is just barely under 5,000 feet high. From there a hiker begins to descend over several miles toward Robbinsville, NC. The AT does not go through town, it just wanders around it until the trail crosses the Fontana Dam. The dam was a TVA project and produces power for the region still today. I plan to go to Fontana Villiage tomorrow afternoon. I have to walk about 13 miles tomorrow to get to the shuttle stop. The villiage was built to house the workers that built the dam. When the dam was finished, the villiage was turned into a resort. I have been told that if you have a job at the villiage, you are provided a place to live. I think that is pretty cool. I was trying for Brown's Fork shelter today, but I ran out of daylight. I am stealth camping at mile 150.5 very near Stecoah Gap. I plan to start at first light tomorrow since no one will be here to lock me out.
I walked 13.6 miles today.
Thursday, 16 March - I broke camp and started hiking at about 07:45 this morning. I need thirteen miles to get to Fontana Villiage. I plan to stay there a couple of days to resupply and do laundry before I enter Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Once I am in the park, there is no resupply point or commercial venue of any kind until Newfound Gap in about four or five days. At Newfound, you can get a ride to Gatlinburg. Until then you are on your own.
I have put in some hard miles since Sherpa Al let me out at Winding Stair on Monday. To get from Winding Stair to Fontana Villiage, you have to hike 52.5 miles, go up 13,944 feet and go down 13,622 feet. As an example, this morning I climbed up a mountain called Jacob's Ladder. It is not terribly tall, but just like the story in Genesis where Jacob dreams of a ladder to Heaven, this mountain has a section of trail that is about 500 to 600 feet going straight up the side at an angle of between 60 and 75 degrees. It is about the same angle as if you put a ladder against your house to clean your gutters. It was not pleasant, but I had it to do and finally got it done. On the way up, I met an older man coming down. He looked to be nearing eighty. He had a tent on his back and a sleeping bag in his hand. Apparently he had spent the night on the top. Hikers are everywhere!
Today was my 56th birthday. I had actually forgotten about it until about lunchtime.
I walked 13.8 miles today.
Friday, 17 March - Today was a rest and recuperation day for me. Yesterday afternoon I checked into the Fontana Villiage Resort for some much needed rest and cleaning up. After a ten minute shuttle ride from the Fontana marina, I secured a room and promptly took a much needed shower. I had planned to wash my clothes as well, but after the shower, I went to sleep and did not wake up until about 8:30 p.m. I went back to sleep about nine and slept until this morning. I was the second person in the restaurant this morning at just after seven. I was glad to be off the trail for a couple of days. The weather is rainy and windy today.
About eleven a.m. I took my nasty clothes and washed all of them. It is amazing to me how dirty they get just being worn. The water in the washer was brown. I also went to the resupply store and got my food for next week's hike in the Smokies. The total trip through the Smokies is about 78 miles and takes about eight days. Normally a hiker packs four or five days worth of food so that he can make it to Newfound Gap. At Newfound Gap, a hiker can get a ride into Gatlinburg for a resupply for the second half of the trip through the Smokies. There is a cottage industry of people willing to haul you down the mountain for ten dollars. Once in town, you can walk to pretty much everything you need. Right now this is my plan as well. It is 4:30 p.m. and I think I am about to go and eat supper. I know it is early, but remember I am used to going to sleep at about seven p.m. or when it begins to get dark.
Saturday, 18 March - Today is another rest day for me. Unlike last year, I am listening more closely to what my now 56 year old body is telling me. When I came down the last three miles of the trail late Thursday, I apparently overworked my right knee to the point that it was sore when I woke up yesterday. I pretty much kept off of it yesterday during the rain. It feels much better today, but it is not 100% yet. Since it will be barely above freezing in the Smokies today and tomorrow, I am going to wait and go out first thing on Monday morning. By then my knee should be good enough to go without pain. Also, I will be going up most of the day to make the required altitude to hike north toward Newfound Gap later in the week.
On a different note, Fontana Villiage is a pretty cool place. It is its own small town. The villiage has a post office, general store, ice cream parlor, gas station, two restaurants, a performance space / dance hall, and a laundromat. Some forward thinkers were also smart enough to preserve the original landowner's cabin and it still stands today. There is a full hotel and about 100 cabins on the place. When the TVA built the dam in the 1940's, there was nowhere for the workers to live. The TVA built the villiage for the workers. When the dam was completed, the villiage was made into a kind of resort for the people who lived in the small towns scattered throughout the mountains. According to the memorabilia hanging on the walls, the villiage was a prime spot for square dancing in the late nineteen forties through the sixties. In 1970, the room rate was $14.00 per person. Today, a large source of income for the resort is car club weekends. Once spring comes, different car clubs and associations use Fontana Villiage as their base of operations for drivers who come to drive the infamous Tail of the Dragon. The Tail of the Dragon is a stretch of road between Robbinsville, NC and Knoxville that is eleven miles long and contains 318 curves. Basically there are no straight portions of road. It is also a public road so speeding is not legal. This, however does not preclude a driver (or several drivers at once) from trying their hand at going as fast as they can out and back. I have a picture on my wall at my house of my father and I on the Dragon in my convertible Mini. We had been up here looking at the dam and eventually made our way to the dragon. I asked him if he wanted to try it. He just looked at me and said "Let 'er go", and we did! I can remember when I was very small I could tell that when I rode with Daddy, we got where we were going much faster than when I was riding with someone else. I have heard from people who knew Daddy when he was young say that he did not go slow often. Late in life, Daddy told me he had actually outrun a Georgia State Patrol in a Dodge wrecker that he and his brother Glyndon used in their wrecker business. I would love to have that truck now.
