We woke up early because it’s a town day! Since the weather continues to be crap, we had to hike with headlamps for a bit even though technically the sun was “up”. We descended for a couple hours down into Nantahala Outdoors Center (NOC), with a brief view between two levels of clouds. When we hit NOC, it was a total zoo, as this weekend is their busiest of the year. Guest Appreciation Festival has a big swap meet, plus their outdoor store has a massive sale, PLUS all their rental gear for the year goes on sale (kayaks, bikes, etc, etc). There were also food vendors and live music. Thousands of people.

We got through it all and found the breakfast joint (and the Highwaymen) and ate a leisurely breakfast. Then laundry and very expensive/bad resupply. Then we walked across the whole NOC complex for a coin operated shower. We had another meal (and a beer) before finally making it out of the vortex by mid-afternoon.

We climbed straight back up into the mountains, and eventually, the clouds. We climbed a fire tower right below the cloud line, so had a good view from there. We passed what would have been some nice views that were socked in. We hit a shelter and for the first time in a long while, we are by ourselves. The Highwaymen have pushed on to start trying to catch Brown, so we will likely see them at the end of the trail.
DBB
High Wire Brewing:
Lazy Hiker Smoky Porter (Bearcat)
Lager (Monk)

Cowboy camping was, unfortunately, a complete disaster. We got nommed on by no-see-ums and some mosquitos, and Ryley asked if we could either try to set up the tent or go in the shelter. I said “no, we’re having an adventure!”. 10 minutes later it started to rain. So! We moved into the upper bunk of the Fontana Hilton shelter and had a dry sleep while it rained all night.

We were woken up to the sound of a rodent gnawing insistently on (I think) the shelter itself…kind of hard to sleep through. It was very wet out so we stayed in our warm sleeping bags for a bit and listened to the raindrops on the roof. We convinced ourselves to get on the trial by 8 but we didn’t make it very far – q mile down the trail was a marina and we decided to see if they might sells coffee (wishful thinking…). The guy running the store (Tim) said no, but he had a pot made and we were welcome to help ourselves. Hurray! We sat in the marina store chatting with Tim, drinking coffee, eating a warmed up plastic wrapped Danish (I’m not sure I ever would have thought I’d call one of those things “good”…but I am now) and watching it intermittently pour outside.

Great view from the top!

We moved on around 9 and had a big climb up from Fontana Lake, then lots of up and downs. It was a soggy day walking through the clouds and getting rained on off and on. We stopped at a shelter with the Highwaymen for a late lunch. We had another big climb to end our day up to Cheaua Bald – another spot we’d been told to camp on for a beautiful sunset and sunrise – but it was completely socked in and we’d gotten poured on again after lunch. So we carried on another mile to Sassafras shelter where we got into dry clothes, made a hot dinner, then crawled into bed 🙂 Another 5000ft or so climbing day, 23 miles.

Today we are officially in North Carolina. For the last week we’ve been riding the border between NC and TN, but now we’re fully into NC.

We got up pre-dawn and headed out as soon as we could see, around 7. We climbed up Rocky Top and although we missed the sunrise, it still had cool views. Then we started down, hitting a couple shelters, stopping at one for lunch.

After lunch, more down, and we stopped at an amazing fire tower. It was really tall and we could see back to Clingmans Dome, and the whole ridge we had followed since. We saw a couple bears after that, then finally down to Fontana Dam. We walked across the very large dam, then went into the visitors center to do a mini resupply to get us to NOC, our next real resupply. We hung out there for awhile before heading out again, a short hike to the Fontana Hilton, a very nice shelter with a view over the reservoir for the Dam. (mk: It also had real washrooms with a men’s and women’s side, each had a shower with hot water – swanky! I took advantage but Ryley decided to stay a stink-butt.)

We also got some phone service and sent Brown some texts. It seems he’s sped up as we’ve slowed down, so he’s now a full day ahead of us. Ah well, we will probably try to catch up with him right on the last day of our hike (which is now fast approaching!)

Mk: we got to see a nice sunset over the reservoir then decided to cowboy camp out – which I’ve never done before!

We stayed in the shelter long enough to confirm that we wouldn’t be seeing the sunrise. Clouds were all around so we hit the trail, 3 miles to New Found Land Gap, a busy parking lot for hikers in the Smokies. Next, we climbed up to Clingmans Dome, the highest point on the AT. The top has a crazy concrete spiral ramp up to an observation tower, and a ton of people everywhere. (mk: It should maybe be noted here that there’s a big observation tower because you can’t see anything from the top of the highest point in the Appalachian mountain range – it’s covered in trees. Also, no snow.)

We stopped for lunch and checked out the tower. The clouds were whipping through, so the views were clearing intermittently. After about 15 minutes we managed to see every direction. Pretty cool.

After lunch we hiked a bit then ran into another thru hiker, Twisted. He started way before us, and his hiking story was a bit confused. Also he was just pretty abrupt and loud, so none of us really wanted to tease the whole tale out of him. Instead we hiked on, speculating about where Brown is. Other hikers have been giving us updates on his location and it seems that he’s running away from us, now maybe 20 miles ahead.

We hit our shelter for the night at 4:30, sharing with 6 section hikers. We were given an MRE by one of them which we shared for dinner. It was weird but filling. Beef stew, chocolate milk drink, pound cake, cheese and crackers. I got cold early so off to bed. (mk: I got hungry in the night so note to self – a shared regulation ration of food for someone in the army is not enough for just dinner.

Also – we’d been told that the shelter is dubbed “chipmunk palace” and it was easy to see why – they’re everywhere and very unafraid. There’s also a buckeye (?) tree right next to the shelter which was dropping its huge fruit/nuts down – some for the chipmunks and some to land on the roof of the shelter to scare the crap out of us when we’re trying to sleep! But an interesting outcome of all of this was that the shelter was visited by some very big-sounding owls that were hooting right next to us while going to bed – very cool.)

Before starting today’s post we just wanted to thank everyone for reading, commenting, asking questions, and sending messages and well wishes our way!

What a view!

No luck on the sunrise view despite camping out in the open on a bald. Instead, we sat in clouds all night and almost all of our stuff inside and outside the tent was wet in the morning. Oh well.

We donned our wet clothes, socks and shoes – my favorite thing to do in the morning! – and hit the trail just before 8. Today was another big day of descents and climbing, a lot of it walking up in the clouds. We dropped from ~5500ft at Max Patch down to cross the I-40 at 1400ft, but on the way down the AT the in an extra 1200ft climb up to Snowbird Mt. We stopped for lunch on a bridge (shortly after the interstate) which was fairly dry and breezy, and managed to dry out some of our stuff. We saw some people river rafting below the bridge, too.

Next we had a big climb up into the Smokies – 5500ft. My knees are tired today. At least we’ve now eaten 4 meals so our food bags are getting lighter! We dropped our registration paperwork off at the park entrance – the Smokies are popular and require reservations to stay.  The first shelter we stopped to get water at had a post with 2 signs: 1)water (to the right) “boil all water”,  2) (to the left) “toilet area”.  Oh boy. Ryley went to use the “toilet area” and said it was terrifying, no idea where you’d dig up someone’s goodies… Yikes.

On our hike up to Cosby Knob shelter we ran into 2 naked men in their 60s? just hiking along. They did have a little bandana/loincloth to cover up but it was too late…

We arrived at the shelter to a full house! It’s allocated for 12, and they’re were 8 section hikers with reserved spots (we’re supposed to stay in shelters, not camp, in the Smokies), and the 3 Highwaymen. So, we got kicked out by default and get to camp, which is fine by us – even if our tent is a little wet…
Hanging our packs on the bear cables was our last adventure for the day, it didn’t go well. Ryley got really muddy then had to wash off in the freezing stream.