Groaning Through the Roans
We're in the northern section of North Carolina/Tennessee now. The trail goes through an area known as the Roan Highlands. It has the largest naturally growing area of Rhododendrons in the world. A hiker I passed showed me pictures of what they look like when they bloom around June. Unfortunately I'll miss it.
3/31 Indian Grave Gap to Iron Mountain Gap - 11.4 miles (ish)
Why the ish? Read to the end.
We woke up to heavy rain and thunderstorms during breakfast at the campsite. The weather forecast showed less rain after 9:00, so we headed for the trailhead for 9:00. There was still steady light rain starting out, but since I was slackpacking again today I was going to just walk through whatever the weather decided to drop on me.
A couple of miles or so of climbing I came to a bald known as Beauty Spot. The balds are nice to walk through and would normally offer nice views, but today was heavy overcast and it was still raining as I crossed the bald.
After crossing Beauty Spot, the rain started to taper off and the sun peaked out for a bit. The views are pretty nice here even on a cloudy day.
From here there is a climb up Unaka Mountain. I passed two soggy through hikers along the way. They have full packs which are even heavier than normal now since they're totally saturated.
The top of Unaka Mountain is covered by an evergreen forest. It's very dense with soft footing of pine needles and moss. This is the largest stand of evergreens I can remember seeing on the trail so far.
Coming down the mountain the sun breaks out a bit more, so I stop for lunch and take my shell jacket off to dry in the sun. I have just enough time to finish my lunch when the sky starts to darken and I can feel the rain starting up again. Time to move on.
A little further down the trail and I enter another area of hurricane damage. This one has seriously damaged the trail and although the blowdowns have been cleared, the trail surface is now super slick mud with big holes where tree root balls have been torn up. The mud is as slippery as ice and I take a fall along the way...thankfully no real damage done.
The next surprise, I come to a sign that informs me the trail has been redirected away from the damaged area while work crews remove the fallen timber with heavy equipment. The trail has been reworked to take me down to a road which I follow for miles and eventually come to Route 107 which is where I'm supposed to meet Angelika to pick me up. The problem is it's 2.5 miles down the road from where we're supposed to meet and there's no cell service to let her know.
I am studying the map trying to figure out what to do when a car pulls over. The driver asks if I need directions and I explain the problem to him. He's got four passengers in his car already, but he offers to drive up to the other parking area to look for Angelika and let her know where I am. All the people I've met on this trip have been really generous. While I'm waiting, here comes Angelika up the road from the other direction. Crisis averted. I wait for our Good Samaritans to return and they give us thumbs up as they drive by when they see my ride is there.
I don't know how far I really went today with the trail detour, but I'll just stick with the book mileage for tracking purposes. This detour was just put in place 3/20, so it's relatively new. I have to do a better job tracking trail conditions on the day I set out.
I'm soaked, but a hot shower at the campground and Angelika's homemade soup for dinner puts me in a good frame of mind. I'm ready to return to the trail tomorrow.
4/1 Iron Mountain Gap to Carver Gap - 15.4 miles
The morning is cold at the campground and colder at the trailhead. After a few days starting out just in a shirt, I have my shell and warm gloves on today. Angelika drops me off at the official AT trailhead rather than the detour. The guys who helped us yesterday advised that we should just use the regular trail rather than the detour. They seemed to know what they were talking about, so who am I to disagree? There is an excavator and some guys in a construction truck at the trailhead parking lot, but they don't stay long and nothing else seems to be happening, so I head off down the trail.
For the first three quarters of a mile or so, I can see that equipment has been driving down this way. There are still a lot of trees down along the way, so they have a lot left to do yet. It isn't long before I see where the detour joins back into the original trail and I'm now in a good place.
It's hard to overstate how much damage the hurricane has done along this section. Acres of trees have been uprooted, huge trees snapped off and splintered, huge holes where root balls have been pulled out of the ground. The amount of destruction here is truly epic.
Most of the morning, I'm walking in clouds. There's occasional misty rain, but not too wet, just cold. As I get to a high point at Little Rock Knob, the sun starts to peek through the clouds and it's getting warmer. Ice starts falling from the trees frozen there from yesterday. My new hat is handy for deflecting ice chunks away from my head. By lunch time the sky is blue and the sun is fully out, but it's still cold. My jacket is off, but I still need the gloves to keep my hands warm. I stop for lunch just after Hughes Gap to get ready for the big climb up Roan Mountain.
At Ash Gap I can see the balds we'll be hiking over tomorrow. This is one of the most hiked sections of the AT with exposed ridge for miles that have spectacular views.
I pass Shade on the way up Roan Mountain. She hikes with an umbrella for keeping the sun and rain off her. Seems like it would be an impediment walking through the woods with an open umbrella, but she swears by it. To each his own.
There's not much of a view at the top of Roan Mountain. The trail maintainer has been cutting back branches, but she says they need more big guns to really clean things up here. I find that the trail is quite passable as it is, but it could certainly be improved. I'm trying to imagine what this area will look like in ten years as it recovers from the storm damage.
Angelika meets me about three quarters of the way up the mountain as I'm coming down. Somehow we miss a turn that would take us back to the parking area where she started so we end up going down a road a bit to get back to the car. I guess we were just enjoying each other's company rather than paying attention to the blazes.
My friend Steve is back at the campground waiting for us. This will be his second round of hiking a week a month with me. He's picked a good point to rejoin the hiking since we're going over the balds tomorrow.
4/2 Carver Gap to Rt 19E Roan Mountain, TN - 14.8 miles
I overslept a bit, but we managed to get organized and back to the trailhead. The weather called for overcast with a chance of rain, but we're slackpacking again today so it's OK if we get a little wet. It's just overcast on the way up to the trailhead, but by the time we gain elevation and pull into the parking lot everything is socked in. That's a bummer because this section has miles of bald ridgeline which would offer fantastic hiking and views. We'll make the best of it.
About halfway through our hike we climb onto an exposed part of the ridge and the wind becomes horrendous. We're still in clouds, but the gusts are so strong we're having a hard time walking straight or even staying upright. All I keep thinking is we have to get off this exposed ridge before we get blown off it. At the high point the wind is crazy strong and it takes everything we have to keep going and get down into the trees where there's some break from the wind. When we get to a sheltered spot Steve needs to get into some new clothes because the wind literally tore his jacket open and he's stuck inside it with the zipper unzipped from the bottom up. It isn't raining, but we're soaked anyhow because the wind has been driving the clouds into us from the side. We're both totally soaked top to bottom on the right side. The ground is dry, but we're soaked.
We recover now and as we descend the wind is slowing down and the walking is getting a lot easier. The sun breaks through and its starting to warm up. This is all a big improvement. We meet a couple of southbound hikers and warn them not to venture onto the ridge. It's starting to clear a bit, but you can still hear the wind howling up at elevation. I hope they listened. They had big packs on so getting across there would be even harder than what we experienced with daypacks.
At are area called Doll Flats we reach a sign that tells us we're leaving North Carolina for Tennessee for the last time. We've been hiking along the North Carolina/Tennessee border since the Smokies, but the northern part of this section of the trail is entirely in Tennessee until we reach Virginia around the time Steve finishes his week of hiking with me. We say farewell to North Carolina.
The rest of the descent was uneventful. When we got to the trailhead there was a father and daughter who had set up for some trail magic. A very welcome end to a difficult hike. We enjoyed some hot wings and cold drinks and chatted with them for about half an hour. Angelika met us and told us she had a similar experience trying to get back to the trailhead after she turned around. There was nothing in the weather forecast yesterday about wind, but when I checked again when we got back to the campsite there was a wind advisory...now you tell us.
We stopped for pizza on the way home and met Bellhop at the pizza parlor. We got back to camp and packed our big packs to set out tomorrow on a three day section. There's a slight chance of rain all three days, so we'll aim on staying in shelters to attempt to stay as dry as possible. At least its supposed to stay warm, so even if we get wet it shouldn't be too uncomfortable.
Steve got a real baptism by fire today on his first day back on the trail. He took it all in stride and he's eager to get out again tomorrow. I got to give him credit for being a trooper. Angelika is doing her part shuttling us around and making sure I have everything I need for the day. This would be so much harder without her.
4/3 19E Roan Mountain, TN to Mountaineer Shelter - 8.8 miles
We're back to carrying a full pack, so we're having a short day today while Steve gets comfortable with his new pack and carrying a heavier load.
A little bit later we passed the 400 mile mark. The days are still going by quick and the miles are getting ticked off faster than I think.
Down the trail a little further is Jones Falls. This makes for a good picturesque place to stop and enjoy our lunch. While we ate lunch we ran into Firetower here and again later when he stopped to try some fishing in the river further down the trail.
As we hiked along the bank of the Elk River it's remarkable to see how high the debris has collected up on the trees along the bank. The water was at least 20 feet higher here during the storm. The amount of damage the storm did in this area continues to amaze me.
4/4 Mountaineer Shelter to White Rock Mountain Campsite - 11.7 miles
Today is overcast and very humid, but we still enjoy some nice views off the trail.
There's trail magic on offer on Bitter End Road. The lady hosting does this every day. We enjoy a cold drink, some snacks, and some of her trail poetry. While we're there we meet through hiker Lightfoot who worked at the AMC huts in NH. She carried pack boards up to the huts which is always impressive to me. She started 3/15, so she's moving along at twice my pace. No way I can keep up with that.
This section has a few waterfalls along the way.
Our original goal was to stop at the shelter, but we decide to forge ahead and stop at a campsite a couple miles further on. It's a nice spot with a water source and a big open field that the forest service maintains to provide browse for the deer.
We're joined by a south bound through hiker who introduces himself as a lasher. This is a new bit of trail lingo for me, short for Long Ass Section Hiker. He's hiking from Damascus to Springer Mountain for this section.
4/5 White Rock Mountain Campsite to US 321 - 12.8 miles
At 4 AM the wind picked up and started blowing the tarp over my hammock around making a bit of a racket. That was pretty much the end of sleeping for me. I sort of dozed in and out of sleep until 6:00 when Steve got up and got the food down from the bear hang for breakfast.
The wind was blowing pretty good, so we gave up on the idea of heating water for coffee and just ate a cold breakfast, packed up, and got on the trail.
We had one big climb to do today at the end of the day, about 1700 feet over 4 miles. Temperatures were supposed to get into the low 80s today and the humidity was high, so we wanted to get that climb done before the hottest part of the day came.
The first interesting thing to happen today was our meeting with a snake on the trail. I've seen snakes before on this trip, but they tend to just slither away when they hear or maybe feel you coming. This one just coiled up and stood his ground. When we tried to shoo him away with a hiking pole he struck at it. Was this a poisonous snake? We didn't want to take any chances, so we picked him up with the pole and moved him off to the side of the trail.
Our family snake expert says it was just a garter snake puffing himself up to look more menacing. Well it worked. It would have been easier for everybody if he just slithered away like his cousins.
The highlight today was reaching Laurel Falls. This was a very impressive waterfall and a cool place to take a rest on a hot day. There were a few day hikers there and another through hiker came by who started March 15. These days we tend to see people who are hiking faster and passing us, a few southbound hikers, or people hiking around the same pace who we leap frog with day to day. This guy has been hiking half as long as me and already caught up. He's moving right along.
The trail is nice and flat following along the river and then turns to start our big climb. Steve sets a slower pace than me, so we agree to separate on this section and meet at the top for lunch. There's an area at the top called Pond Flats that used to have camping spaces, but it's totally destroyed now from the hurricane. I find a shady spot under some mountain laurel and wait for Steve to show up. He isn't far behind.
The trail down is nice and smooth so we make good time the last few miles. Angelika is waiting for us at a parking lot near the trailhead. It's been a long hot day, so we stop for some cold drinks on the way back to the campground.
We have some bad weather coming the next couple of days, so we need to plan how we want to make the most progress working around the weather.
4/6 Low Gap to Damacus, VA - 16.1 miles
We got up early this morning to move the cars to a new campsite and get ourselves up to the trailhead. During breakfast, we had a heavy rainstorm that lasted about 15 minutes which didn't bode well for the weather today. The forecast called for rain pretty much all day and heavy thunder showers after 3:00. We weren't sure we wanted to venture out today, but when we got to the new campsite the sky didn't look too bad, and we had use of a dryer here if we got soaked. We decided to do a slackpack day hike to Damacus today and then backtrack to Hampton and do that two day section with hopefully better weather.
Our guardian angel was looking out for us again, because although the forecast was pretty much telling us we were going to get soaked, we didn't get a drop of rain over the entire hike. The trail on this section was gentle and smooth so we made excellent time (16 miles in less than 6 hours).
The big event today was crossing into Virginia just a few miles before we reached Damascus.
The landscape is starting to change now. From the ridge we can see large open areas with lots of green grass. There's farmland and dairy cows where up to this point we've been seeing mostly forested landscape.
Damascus caters to hikers and mountain bikers who come to ride the Creeper Trail. We found this gate just as we got off the trail into town.
Angelika met us at the end of town and we had burgers and a beer at Wilson's Cafe. It was a short drive back to the new campsite which has spectacular views of the nearby mountains.
4/7 US 231 to Iron Mountain Shelter - 15.7 miles
We skipped ahead a section yesterday, so today we had to backtrack to the section we skipped over to fill the gap. We're planning on staying out one night, so we have our big packs ready to head out. The weather is looking pretty grim as we get to Hampton. It's raining pretty hard which will soak us to the skin in no time. The weather radar shows it clearing in around 30 minutes, so we head over to Walmart to do some shopping and then head back over to the trailhead. The rain has slowed down to just a mist, so we decide the time is right to head out and hope for the best.
The trail follows the shore of Lake Watauga until we cross over the dam and then start what will be a relentless climb for the remainder of our hike. As we're making our way up the trail the rain starts again and the temperature starts to drop. In a few minutes I'm pretty soaked and feeling a bit chilled.
At Wilbur Dam Road Elizabeth and Josh's daughter has set up some trail magic. Getting out of the rain under their tarp to have a drink, a pinwheel sandwich, and some cookies is very welcome. Her and her husband are nice young people. They serve in the Coast Guard and seem to know where they're headed in life. It's nice to chat with them.
Of course, the trail isn't going to hike itself, so we have to venture back out into the weather. The rain has tapered off, but just as my clothes are going from wet to just damp the rain starts up again. It's a bit discouraging. There's no point in putting on rain gear because with all this climbing I'll just get soaked from the inside out. We just have to continue to slog through it.
We stop for lunch at Vandeventer Shelter and meet up with another couple of through hikers. I didn't get their names, but one guy told us he and his girlfriend have 15 kids. He was on the phone and said he just got some bad news from home. I told Steve it must have been number 16 was on the way.
Rain continued off and on all day. When we got to Iron Mountain Shelter we were both still pretty wet, but my pack stayed nice and dry so I was able to get into warm dry clothes, get some hot food, and climb into the sleeping bag. The rain is still fallig and landing loudly on the tin roof of the shelter. Temperatures are forecast to go below freezing tonight. Not the best news after a long day.
4/8 Iron Mountain Shelter to Low Gap - 11.1 miles
My alarm didn't go off, so we woke up a little late. Temperatures dropped significantly overnight, but the rain has stopped. I have put on every piece of dry clothing I have with me and am just managing to stay comfortable. We make breakfast and get packed to head out. The last thing to do is to pull on my cold wet boots which are soaked through from yesterday. Even with dry socks on, it's still pretty unpleasant. It doesn't take long for my feet to heat back up once I'm walking though.
Today we have lots of up and down hiking to do, but mostly down to get back to Low Gap where Angelika will pick us up. We start out hiking through clouds, but it slowly clears and pretty soon we're getting some nice views off the ridge again.
Along the way we meet a group of hikers heading south. They started at one of the hostels at Lake Watagua and got shuttled north to slackpack back to the hostel. One of the hikers is the Swedish guy named Moose who I haven't seen since Georgia. We're a couple of days ahead of him on the trail, but it was good to see him again and know he was still forging ahead.
At Cross Mountain Road a section of the trail is designed for disabled people to use. It goes up gently through a meadow for about a mile or so. There's a guy walking his dog here and I tell him his dog looks like the one on The Little Rascals . He says most people aren't old enough to remember that show...sigh.
Along the way there's a nice bench to rest on at the end of a bit of a climb. I took off my puffy jacket and warm hat, but I still have warm shirt, shell jacket, and gloves on. It's hard to believe that a few days ago with was in the 80s and uncomfortably humid. The weather changes have been crazy.
We find Angelika on the trail about 2 miles from the trailhead as she is making her way up to meet us. At the trailhead is another offering of trail magic with cold drinks and snacks. These are always welcome surprises. The guy who set it up tells us all about the solar power system he installed at his house himself. It sounds very impressive. It's getting colder so we say our thanks and head back to the campground in Shady Valley.
Today is Steve's last day on the trail this month, so we head to dinner at a restaurant in Abington that offers some German food on the menu. Steve and Angelika have wienerschnitzel and I have kassler rippchen which is smoked pork chops. They are both delicious.
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