The American Heritage Dictionary:
Vacation
(vā-kā'shən) n. A period of time devoted
to rest or relaxation, as from work or study.
So maybe we should have considered this definition BEFORE we
planned our vacation, er, trip! Having
successfully conquered Mt. Washington,
the highest peak in the Northeast and somewhat less successfully (sans Mark)
attempted connecting Loy Canyon and Secret Mountain Canyon trails, we felt we
were ready for the challenge of the Appalachian trail section though Great
Smoky Mountain National Park. We, of
course, refers to our intrepid group of adventurers: Rick, Bruce, Tom, Mark and me. (For further discourse on the individual
adventurers, please see my previous account of our Arizona
Our plan was to converge at Davenport Gap, drop Bruce’s Grand
Cherokee there and drive mine, loaded with everyone and their gear, to the
other end of the park at Fontana Dam. We
would then spend the next 7 days hiking the 73 miles to return to Bruce’s
vehicle. For those of us traveling from Central Illinois , it meant leaving my place at 5:00
am. Ah, what better way of starting a vacation
than getting up after half a night’s sleep to drive over 11 hours, of which the
first two are in the dark? The half
night’s sleep turned out to be somewhat optimistic as Mark, coming from Elgin
After Tom arrived around 4:45, we loaded our stuff and set off for the Smokies at 5:10 am on Saturday, October 10th. The road trip was rather uneventful, at least after I almost missed the turnoff from I-74 to I-55 South. Fortunately the median was not too muddy and traffic was light. After all, what’s the use of having a Jeep if you don’t go off-road once in a while? Since we are guys and don’t feel the need to communicate any more than necessary (other than Rick), I had stocked my 10 disc CD changer with plenty of music. As I did so, I realized my taste in music is of rather limited range. You can never have too much Southern Gospel, right? I also included a couple of bluegrass CD’s in honor of our destination. You can’t spell
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| Fontana Hilton Shelter |
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| Fontana Dam |
Fontana Dam is a large hydroelectric dam build in the 40’s
as part of the TVA. After we filled our
water bottles and partook of a cold breakfast of granola bars, we walked across
the dam to officially begin our trip.
Our goal was the shelter at Mollie’s Ridge, which had been experiencing
significant bear activity in recent days.
This was almost 12 miles from the Fontana Hilton. The problem with this hike was the starting
point. When you start at the dam, you
are, by definition, at the lowest point.
I won’t say we went up all day, but we gained over 3,000 feet in
elevation.
We had a few miscues that morning. Evidently the lead hikers stirred up a bees’
nest. Bruce bore the brunt of their
wrath, being stung three times, including on his hand. I believe it was the same hand that he had
put into a cactus in Arizona
As we hiked in, we met two thru hikers coming out. These guys started in Maine
back in the spring and were now in the home stretch as the trail ends in Georgia
We also met a lone hiker who was part of the Dartmouth
Hiking Club. The day before, the club
had hiked the entire AT by positioning their members thoughout the trail. If they had 100 people, they had to do over
20 miles each. The previous day during
his section hike, this hiker had the unfortunate experience of getting between
a sow and her cub. Normally, the black
bears in the park are not aggressive.
Since bears have a tremendous sense of smell, allegedly 7 times as good
as dogs, they generally know you are coming and try to avoid human
contact. So unless you surprise them,
they are relatively harmless, unless you happen to get between a mother and her
cub. Fortunately he was able to get out
of the way and didn’t get attacked.
We at lunch on top of Shuckstack Mountain
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| Shuckstack Fire Tower |
The rest of the day served as a reminder to me that I wasn’t
physically prepared for the trip. We
finally arrived at the shelter, which we had to ourselves. Thus far, the trip had gone very well. Plus I was carrying the first night’s dinner,
so my pack got a little lighter, although I’m not sure the 2 pounds I took off
was noticeable compared with the 35 pounds of other stuff. The shelter was typical, but no privy.
Monday was another long day approaching 12 miles. It rained all day, which made the trail wet
and muddy, causing an unfortunate accident where Mark snapped one of his trek
poles. I have to tip my hat to the
marketing person who named these mountains.
“
Tuesday was a beautiful day with sun and temperatures
probably in the upper 60’s. As we
started off, we met another group of thru hikers. There were 3 young guys, followed at some
length by another guy followed by his wife.
They were moving. They had
started in Maine
While we were airing everything out and just relaxing in the
sun, we had some visitors. First we heard
the bells. In order to avoid startling
bears, some paranoid hikers (definitely dayhikers, at least in spirit) wear
bells to warn of their arrival. We, of
course, didn’t need bells to announce our presence. Bears, with their sensitive noses, could tell
we were coming far sooner than they could have heard us. After some less than subtle and somewhat
unkind comments, I decided it was time to change to my second set of
clothes. I hasten to inform you, gentle
reader, that if your olfactory sensitivities are such that you are offended by
others, then you probably shouldn’t go backpacking. After all, more changes of clothes means more
weight, the ultimate anathema to the serious hiker. I will also add that I was not alone in this
situation. Some, in fact, had an even
more limited wardrobe. If you can’t go
at least four days with the same garments, you should seriously consider the
dayhiker route where you only carry the clothes on your back and spend every
night in your nice soft bed after a long hot shower, in a temperature
controlled environment with chocolates on your pillow each night. Yeah, doesn’t that sound nice. No, wait… I mean… doesn’t that sound
disgusting. Yeah, DISGUSTING. That’s it.
This, after all, is an adventure!
This is exciting! This is getting
away from it all! This is getting back
to nature! Anyway, back to my
story. We had another couple stop by
while Tom and Bruce were getting water.
They were a friendly older couple out for a couple of days. During our conversation, Rick noticed that
the man had a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew.
For those not familiar with our entire group, you will not know the
significance of this. Bruce lives on
Diet Mountain Dew. Literally. At this point in the trip, he was going
through serious withdrawal. Having
mentioned this to our new friends, the man revealed that he actually had TWO
bottles and would very much like to give Bruce one. About that time, Tom and Bruce returned from
the spring and the presentation was made.
Bruce was beside himself with joy.
It also turned out the man’s middle name was Bruce, and his first name
Michael, like the angel.
Coincidence? We think not. We referred to them as our angel
friends. Seriously, what are the chances
that we meet a couple in the middle of the wilderness with EXTRA Diet Mountain
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| Best Diet Mountain Dew Ever chilling in the stream |
Back to our group, we had been discussing building a
campfire during the whole trip. The
first two nights we were too tired to give it serious consideration. However, since we had a short day, Tom was
determined to get one started. It took a
long time…a really long time.
Personally, unless it is cold or you need to cook over one, I’m fine
without a fire. Most of the wood was wet
and not of very good quality. Mark had a
lighter that was supposed to work even in hurricanes. Unfortunately, we weren’t in a hurricane and
it wasn’t working. After a very long
time with a great deal of assistance, we finally got it going. I have to admit that it was enjoyable as the
nights were chilly. We had a very long
day planned for the next day, including summiting Clingmans Dome, the highest
peak on the AT and the second or third highest point east of the Rockies at over 6,600 feet. We planned to get up early and be on the
trail before 9:00, which was our normal starting time.
I woke up around 3:00 to the sound of a steady rain on the
sheet metal roof 3 feet above my head.
Actually, it was kind of soothing.
Also, it did drown out the sound of the mice. Most of the cabins have a serious rodent
problem. As soon as we had turned off
all the lights the previous night, we could hear the mice start running across
the weather tarp. Every night I unzipped
everything on my backpack as I hung it in the shelter so the mice could explore
it without having to chew their way in.
One night Bruce neglected to take some cashews out of his pack. He awoke to a chewing noise and the next
morning the cashews were gone and he had a nice little hole to remind him next
time to take EVERYTHING out. Even though
all the food was put into the bear bags and hoisted 20 feet in the air, we even
had mice climb the 20 feet up the tree, across the cable and down the pulley to
chew into that one. I am sure they also
ran across our sleeping bags at night, but I tried not to think about that. As long as they stayed on the outside of the
bag and I was on the inside, everything was fine.
At 6:00, the rain was continuing, causing the adventurers to
cancel their yoga class, although I had doubts that it was going to happen
anyway. Around 7:00 Tom got up and I
followed him a short time later. It was
pretty miserable. It had been raining
steadily for a number of hours and it was dark and cold. But, we had over 14 miles to go and the trail
wasn’t getting hiked with us staying in our sleeping bags. There was some grumbling and others who
thought we should just wait out the rain.
But, as Tom said, “You can’t make a good decision while still in your
sleeping bag.” So after a vigorous
breakfast of granola bars, we put our rain gear on and trouped off into the
rain as the sky turned lighter. We
aren’t sure what ever happened to the adventurer’s club. The last we saw them, they were debating
about cooking some pasta for breakfast.
My guess is they finished off the last of the Jim Beam to give them just
enough body warmth to make it to their next shelter before hypothermia set in.
Unfortunately, the morning did not get any better. The rain continued and the trail as we
climbed to Clingmans Dome was a ridge run, meaning
there were less and less sheltered areas.
It would have been a beautiful view down each side of the mountain if it
had been clear. As it was, we couldn’t see much. With the openness, we were exposed to the
cold, rain and wind. The trail was quite
wet leading to a lot of mud and standing water.
Most of us had waterproof shoes, but mine were not 100%. Also, Mark did not have rain pants. We reached the summit after 2 or 3
miles. While not anywhere near as
commercial as Mt.
Washington Wyoming
Riding in the open back of a pickup is not the greatest
thing when you are already cold and wet.
However, realizing that we were moving several times faster than we
could walk and that we were getting closer to escaping far outweighed the
inconvenience. Once we got to Newfound
Gap, we sought shelter in the bathrooms to make some phone calls to get us back
to civilization. By that point, my hands
were so cold that I couldn’t even use my phone.
Once again we were rescued from this by a Good Samaritan. One of the park employees had seen a shuttle
in the parking lot and flagged them down for us. Perhaps his motives were not purely
altruistic. I am sure there are a lot of
hikers who end up having to be rescued, so if he could get five of us off the
mountain without much effort, all the better!
During our trip planning phase, one of the group came across the fact
that more people suffer from hypothermia in the Smokies than in the White Mountains where we hiked last year. This is significant as Mt.
Washington is the deadliest mountain
in the US
The shuttle was a minibus similar to shuttles you might take
from a hotel to an airport. There were
12-15 older people on board enjoying a nice warm, dry ride when this group of
five bedraggled ragtag with backpacks gratefully scrambled aboard. The driver seemed almost sorry that she had
to charge us $5 each to ride to Cherokee, NC.
Little did she know that at that point some of us probably would have
sold one of our companions into slavery to get back to civilization. The group on the shuttle were bikers
(motorcycle) who were stranded because of the rain. One semi-obnoxious older gentleman kept
asking what kind of hikers we were to have given up because of weather, as if
he was very clever to have thought about this.
Since we were still just thankful to be on the shuttle, we didn’t reply
by asking why such brave bikers weren’t riding their motorcycles instead of
being hauled around in a bus. Several of
the others seemed more concerned as we moved to the back of the bus that we
were going to do a wet dog imitation and shower them with water. Even though I had to sit on the floor for the
ride, I couldn’t have been happier. After
all, it was warm. The driver dropped us
off at a small pink roadside motel in Cherokee.
We figured the driver must get a cut for delivering desperate hikers to
that business. We quickly decided to
abandon that for the Comfort Suites across the road.
While not the best shower I have ever taken, it was
definitely Top 10. Even after that, some
of our group were still of the opinion that after a night in civilization we
should go back up the mountain and continue our trip the next day. Personally, I thought Tom and Bruce needed to
find new backpacking partners who were either more hardy or less intelligent. Fortunately, the Warm, Dry, Wimpy Backpacker
coalition prevailed and we decided not to pursue that ridiculous idea. Instead Bruce called for a shuttle service to
Fontana Dam where we would pick up my Jeep, drive to the other end, pick up
Bruce’s Jeep and then drive back to Cherokee.
Shuttle service along the AT is very common. In New
Hampshire Nancy
The next day started out rainy (surprise, surprise). The area we were staying was an Indian
reservation. We went to the Cherokee
museum in the morning. It was an interesting
place and seemed to deal with the whole Indian situation fairly
even-handedly. We headed to Asheville Asheville
Toward evening we returned to our motel en route to see some
waterfalls at the edge of the park.
GSMNP is known for waterfalls.
Based on our experience this is probably because it rains all the
time. As we prepared to leave, Bruce had
some transmission problems with his Jeep, so we took mine. As it turns out this was a good thing.
Thursday night at the hotel was another near miss. There was a group of schoolchildren with
their teachers as well as what seemed far too few chaperones. My idea of a properly chaperoned group would
be 2 chaperones per student, at least.
They had a significantly less favorable ratio. Due to a mix-up at the front desk, some of
them had mistakenly been given our rooms.
The teachers discovered the error rather quickly upon opening the doors
to our rooms. They claimed they realized
the problem when they saw our gear spread out in the rooms. A more likely scenario was that they were
pushed back by the pungent smell of wet backpacker that had permeated the
area. Fortunately their new rooms were
on a lower floor so we were not entertained with the endless pitter patter of
feet up and down the hallways.
Friday brought another beautiful Smoky Mountain
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| Awaiting the tow truck |
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| Bull Elk |
On the way up, we passed an open field where a small herd of elk were grazing. We were able to get within a couple hundred feet and get some good pictures. They were very impressive, especially the bull who had a huge rack. Elk are native to the area, but were wiped out years ago. The current herd has been reintroduced.
Our plan for the day was for two of us to be dropped off at
Newfound Gap and hike up to Clingmans Dome while the other two drove to Clingmans Dome and hiked down to Newfound Gap. The first group would then drive the Jeep
from Clingmans Dome down to Newfound Gap and
pick up the second group. Mark and I
volunteered to hike up. Mark’s knee and
my ankle were giving up problems the whole trip, and hiking uphill is actually
easier on the joints as you don’t have the pounding from landing with all your
weight on each step as you go down. This
was also a good team for other reasons.
Throughout the hiking portion of the trip, we tended to spread out on
the trail based on age with Tom and Rick, the young guys, leading and the more
mature ones of the group bringing up the rear.
Mark and I were about the same speed.
Based on the plan, all four of us should have met somewhere
around the middle of the hike. When Mark
and I reached a point about 2/3 of the way up and hadn’t seen them yet, I
figured they had detoured to a shelter about a half mile off the trail that had
a reputation of being a bear area. Mark
and I reached the shelter without having seen Tom and Rick or any bears. We headed back to the trail and continued on
to the top. Of course while we were on
our detour, Tom and Rick came down the trail and went past us without knowing
where we were. Since they never saw us,
they erroneously assumed we had turned back.
Instead, the plan worked well and Mark and I reached the Jeep and drove
to Newfound Gap, arriving there shortly after Tom and Rick.
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| Mark in front of root wad of overturned tree |
In case you haven’t figured it out, I have been describing a
day hike. It pains me more than you can
imagine to confess what we did. While we
were on the trail that day, we encountered several section hikers. Ordinarily, we would stop and chat with other
section hikers, but on that particular day, carry fanny packs, I purposely
averted my eyes to avoid the scorning looks.
It just wasn’t the same. After
all, we had spent the night in comfort and had a hot breakfast that was
prepared for us. They had spent the
night in a rodent-infested shelter, probably with others who hadn’t bathed for
days and snored. At best they would have
had oatmeal and hot chocolate for breakfast.
I felt so pampered and spoiled. And
yet (deep breath), I also have to confess that in some small, insignificant
way, I kind of…. Well, I mean I kind of
felt…. OK. (Gulp) I kind of liked it. There, I’ve said it! I don’t mean the whole day hiking
experience. And it was probably only
because we had such lousy weather. Or
maybe because my ankle was bothering me the whole trip. Of course.
That was it. It was just a moment
of weakness. The next time will be
different. I’ll be more prepared! I’ll be in better shape! I’ll gladly carry a 50 pound pack! There will be no turning back! No Quitting!
No hitchhiking down the mountain in the back of a pickup! HUNDRED MILE WILDERNESS, HERE WE COME!!!
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