We hadn’t worn deodorant in 4 days on account of the bears.
Sitting at the bar of the Thirsty Monk in Asheville over a pint of bacon, I
began to wonder if the downstairs tap room was just slow this evening, or if
there might be a more olfactory reason why the seats to either side of Kevin
and me were open. My feet were bound up in two types of bandages. My left
sandal was sticking to the bottom of my foot and dropping an odd drip of
whatever foul liquid fills blisters. Both Kevin and I had hobbled to the bar
like old men on calves stretched tight as drums. But like I said, we were over
a pint of bacon, and that’ll turn a frown upside down right quick. The previous
Monday, July 6th, at around 8:45 in the morning, we tossed two
carefully arranged packs in the Corolla, and left Decatur for the Great Smoky
Mountains.
The drive to Fontana Dam was an easy one, some 3.5 hours
away. The town sits just on the edge of The Dragons’ Tail, which is a road
famous for having something like 318 mountainside turns in the stretch of a
mile, and only one radio station.
The cell service cut out before we reached “city” limits, so
sorry Mom for not calling before we set out (and for moving across the world
and getting tattoos and almost burning down the neighborhood that one time).
The town is a map-dot resort, but Lake Fontana is gorgeous. Hidden in what used
to be an evergreen valley, the dam has piled the blue water up around the
mountains’ knees and the result is a medium sized lake fed by the mountain
springs. There are a few green islands
poking up in the middle of the lake that want to be swam to. The fishing must
be good as I saw a good many boats patrolling the coast when we drove over the
poorly paved dam. We took a couple pictures of the lake on our way out, but you
know how those things go – seldom ever able to capture a place of any
magnitude.
Backpacking in the Smokies involves a surprising amount of
paperwork. Rather than having open wilderness areas like some national parks,
you have to reserve spots at specific campsites for everyday that you’re in the
park, planning your route in a connect-the-dots manner such that the ranger’s
know where you’ll be and when – and for the most part you have to stick to the
plan.
I’m sure they do this for reasons involving words like
“safety,” “conservation,” and “money,” but the level of micro-management that’s
exercised (for good reason, I know) in our national parks has made me favor the
park service’s hands-off approach to stewarding our national forests – where
it’s pretty much the wild west in terms of camping, fires, backpacking, and
chilling. Pisgah National forest wasn’t far away (and it’s beautiful), and
Nantahala was literally next door, but we decided on the Smokies. Bureaucracy
be damned, there’s a reason the powers-that-be stencil the lines they do and
call it a national park – the Smokies are incredible.
We parked the car at the Fontana Dam Trailhead, and hiked in
about 5.5 miles to the first campsite. The first route Kevin and I chose left
out of Bryson City, but was vetoed by the park service because of bear
activity. Setting out from the trailhead, we saw several traps (and a few inexplicable cars), though we also
heard the rangers were hunting a boar that they wanted to retag, so it’s
possible they were hog traps—though none of the sort that I’ve ever seen. The
route wasn’t long. The idea behind the trip was more a laid back fishing hike
than a hardcore backpacking trip. The total millage was around 65 miles over 7
days (a daily average for a fit backpacker is around 10 miles), with the
hardest day being about 10-12 miles and several days being in the 5-7 range.
The first day’s hike was flat for a long while and wove through a
lakeshore-valley area, and then cut up sharply to climb around 500 ft (to an
average elevation of 2000) in the last quarter of it.
The site was at the mouth of a spring stream coming down
from the climbs and had great views of the lake. There were a few other groups
camping there, and the rangers stopped in to check our permits and to tell us
that a couple weeks of frequent rainfall had swollen the Eagle River from a
chipper mountain stream to something of an obstacle. A ranger wearing a
tacticool black nylon hip holster for his sidearm, chest kevlar and somewhere
between 3-30 knives informed Kevin and me that he had performed two swift water
rescues in as many weeks since the rains had started. Excited by the prospect
of a little more adventure than we had planned on in our quiet fishing hike and
secure in Kevin’s training in river fording, we thanked him for the advice and sent
him on.
We weren’t too worried about the river crossings (though the
ranger said our route would cross the Eagle some 13-16 times), but the wet
month did make getting a fire going a real challenge. Any fallen deadwood, bark
or other fuel was drenched, as was the soil. At a lot of parks, especially
those out West in dryer climates, open fires aren’t allowed in the backcountry.
In anticipation of cooking all of our food on a little pocket-rocket gas stove,
I left my ziplock of dryer lent at Kevin’s (dumb). By battening a few thicker
sticks, we were able to come up with some good, dry kindling, but at the end of
all our witling, battening, blowing and cursing we were only able to sustain a
small flame that required our total attention. Water hissed and boiled out of
the soggy sticks. The fire, feeble and exhausted, was just trying to go out and
be done with it. Pretty frustrating, but we didn’t really need the fire and
went to bed when night fell tired, but excited for the week ahead.
When we woke up our campsite had been overrun by bees! I
know that sounds dramatic, but really, tons of bees. I hung a line for our
sweaty clothes to dry out on the night before, and found that in addition to
still being wet they were slowly being turned into stinking hives. There were
probably 20 bees on and in each of my socks (Kevin’s were left largely alone,
as were my other clothes – don’t know what’s up with that).
It turned out that
they were honey bees and didn’t sting, though they did bite. After a quick
breakfast we hit the trail again for our next site, and our first of the river
crossings.
It turned out that
they were honey bees and didn’t sting, though they did bite. After a quick
breakfast we hit the trail again for our next site, and our first of the river
crossings.
The rangers weren’t kidding about the river. I didn’t really
have much of a reference point, but the Eagle seemed swollen and quick. The
water at our first three crossings came up to my waist. We picked up some
walking sticks, to help with the crossings. I’ve never been one to use a trail
staff, but they really helped in the crossings, where you lean on them against
the oncoming river and shuffle sideways to the exit point. Kevin says this is
called the tripod method. It was pretty fun, and the river was beautiful with
clear water and dark green, lichen covered rocks and limbs. A lot of thick
birch and tall oaks, with young ferns springing up along the banks. All green
and blue.
The second night’s site was on an island in the middle of
the Eagle, and was gorgeous. The 4ish mile hike from the first site only took
us around 2 hours and we spent the day walking around the island fishing. The
temperature was probably somewhere around 80-85 degrees in the mountains and
the swift river was cold and refreshing on my feet. Kevin say’s he saw a fish.
I saw a few water spiders, and found a sharp stick to stab my foot on. I was
told by the ranger station what the Eagle was good for fishing. I’m not sure if
the rains had swollen the river and flushed the fish to the lake, or what, but
suffice it to say that we ate freeze dried Black Bart Chili that night, which
was good. After we practiced casting for a while, we occupied the rest of the
afternoon finding new walking sticks and carving them up. Kevin spent a few
hours scraping a piece of oak clean of bark and cutting a swirling design in
it, and I fashioned a crude dragon head out of a stout piece of some sort of
magnolia looking tree.
We also had some company by way of a solo hiker, a guy named
Henry who was about our age. Said he was a recent grad of Stanford and about to
start a fellowship in Germany. I can’t remember in what field. The ground was
still pretty wet, but after a little voodoo we were able to get a decent fire
going, and shared it with Henry. We talked mostly of Lord of the Rings, travel
and how damnably wet the wood was. That night the river was so close and loud
that you could hear it clearly all night. Sounded a bit like the ocean in the
dark.
The morning of our third day in the mountains we said
goodbye to Henry and started on what would be (if the topo map was to be
believed) our hardest day on the trail. It was only 5ish miles to the next
site, but the elevation climbed from 2250 to 4550 ft, with the last mile or so
bearing the bulk of the rise and being pretty much straight up. The elevation
we could see on our map and prepare for, but some obstacles are not so clearly
marked. Perhaps 45 minutes in to the hike we passed over one of the many quagmires
of limbs and trunks from stormblown trees that lay on the trail, and it was
just about the time that Kevin had one of the dead trees straddled and was
pulling himself over that we found that it was slap full of hornets. Kevin was stung
twice on the legs and I got a good one just below the knee. It wasn’t 20
minutes later that both of us were feeling woozy, but a little Benadryl fixed
us up. We were a little concerned that Henry would be not long behind us, and
might be allergic. We resolved to wait for him at the next site (we knew he was
passing that way).
The path still lead along the Eagle, and we crossed it
probably 6 more times that day, though the river was not near as intense this
high up, and we were mostly walking through spring fed tributaries. When I
hiked in the Wind River Range in Wyoming, you could see the trout in the river
as you hiked across. The fishing had been easy, and coming from that I was a
little let down with the clear, barren river, but it was a constant companion
in the first part of our trip and wonderful to hike next to, even if it was
empty of fish. It’s possible that I’m just unlucky or unskilled, but then, it’s
also possible that the Bengals will win the superbowl this year. 
The site we had reserved for the third night of the trip was
a shelter just off of the Appalachian Trail, and there were allegedly to be 12
hikers staying the night in the big log lean-to (complete with a fireplace and
pre-stacked kindling that appeared to be dry as a bone). Kevin and I got there
around noon, and had the place to ourselves (Henry showed up soon after us. He
had dodged the hornets. A lucky thing too, as he hiked shirtless). It took
about 15 minutes for us to eat lunch, hang our clothes line, and figure out
we’d made a mistake.
Our hiking segments were way too short. Getting on the trail
around 9 and hiking the 3-8 miles left us with the entire afternoon to sit at
camp and stare at each other. This was done somewhat intentionally with a good
deal more fishing in mind. Don’t get me wrong, our time in the sites was
peaceful. We both brought good books, though I had chosen The Old Man and the
Sea and finished the 125 page novella the second night of the trip. Coming from
the super saturated, instant gratification world most people live in nowadays,
it’s nice to be able to unplug – get off the grid. It wasn’t that Kevin and I
were bored with our route as much as stir crazy.
We’d finish our day’s hike in a snap, and because of the
strict reservation policy of the park, find ourselves trapped – sitting at camp
with a full tank of gas and wanting to tear off onto the trail, but having to
wait until the next day to hike our little portion of trail and start the
waiting again. If we just kept going we could potentially find ourselves in
trouble with rangers for sleeping in a site we didn’t reserve (and no one wants
to pay the park service an extra $100 to sleep in a lean-to). All the same, we
were going stir crazy. The trip, while relaxing, wasn’t looking like quite the
adventure we wanted. So we changed it.
Looking at the trail map, we saw that Spence Field, or
current site, was just a few miles from a large run of the AT that would link
up to the Fontana Dam trailhead, which by this route was some 16ish miles away.
I hadn’t hiked really any of the AT, and Kevin had only hiked a bit, so the
prospect of slinging on the iconic run was pretty exciting. What’s more,
because we would be diverging from the plan we gave the park service, we
wouldn’t have any campsite reservations on the new route and would have to keep
moving. We would have to hike through the night, which neither of us had done
in a major way before. That would bring our millage from that day up to 20ish
(nothing to sneeze at carrying gear and with elevation change considered), but
all of this appealed to our sense of recklessness and we were eager to start.
We left Spence around 4 and came to Molly’s Ridge (the site
where we were set to stay the next night) at 7. That was around 5 miles of up
and down, and not a particularly easy jaunt after the hike up the Eagle, but
still, we were flying. The shelter was still empty at 8ish after we had eaten
dinner (some kind of spicy pork situation), and that’s really too late for most
backpackers to come in on a site, so we figured it would be deserted for the
night. That was good as we were pretty spent, and still had around 10 or so
miles of AT ahead of us. We decided to nap, and leave in the middle of the
night. This was partly because we were tired, and partly because the pace we
were setting would put us back at the Corolla around 1-2 AM, which, in addition
to being an inconvenient time to do much of anything, didn’t really line up
with the all-night hike we had planned.
We slept until around 12:30 AM, and set out from Molly’s
into the dark, wanting to go by star and moonlight at first, but finding the
trails too heavily wooded to see by extraterrestrial sources – our headlamps
served us well. The night hiking was everything we wanted it to be. Exciting in
its newness. Cool in the dark. A little bit freaky and edgy, which was fun. We
saw a couple freshish piles of bear scat along the way, and a guy we met at
Spence said he and his son had jumped a black bear that day, so it was enough
to get the blood up when you heard a heavier noise off in the black of the
wood.
Most people recommend listening to music or carrying a bear
bell when you night hike in bear country to spook anything unsavory that might
be in your path, or at least let them know you’re coming. We didn’t have any of
those things, but we did have an audiobook copy of The Fellowship of the Ring
on my phone, so we cranked that to 11 and rolled with it – shouting into the
woods at odd intervals or when we heard something crunching about. We may have
run into something bear sized once, but it was more than likely a group of
deer, or a toad, or nothing. The dark does weird things when it’s late and
you’re tired. Still, it was a lot of fun to trek through a high wooded trail to
the Tolkien. We happened to be at the part where the hobbits are making their
way through “the dark forest,” and encountering Barrow Wights, which lined up
nicely and made the miles melt.  |
| Luckily, we didn't run in to this guy |
Somewhere around 4 AM we came to Shuckstack, which is a high
point on the mountain where the rangers have set up an enormous firetower. It
may interest some of you to know that as we were humping it up to the tower on
the hill, Strider was making his was up to Weathertop with Frodo and the gang.
I have to tell you, after hiking 16 miles of trail, the best of it through inky
night, rolling up on a giant metal tower creaking in the wind on a high hill
was pretty dramatic – exactly what we were looking for. Pretty beat, and
getting a little delirious from sleep loss, we elected to climb the tower and
pass a few hours there until the sun rose.
I didn’t realize Kevin was afraid of heights until we had
reached the top of the 100 ft. tower, but when I started stomping around the
7x7 particle board observation box at the top and pushing open the rusty
windows, he made his feelings pretty clear. It was chilly in the night and the
wind, and I wasn’t able to get much sleep, but the experience of passing part
of the night in the tower was one that I won’t soon forget. It felt very
post-apocalyptic. Like we were the only ones on this whole range, and this was
some relic left for us to find. Truthfully, it was a little worse for the wear
and the initials and scribblings that are ever present on totems like this from
hikers long past went back as far as 1985.
The last few miles went quietly in the early dawn. There’s a
special kind of joy that comes to a hiker when they reach the trailhead again
and catch that first glimpse of their car – partly out of fatigue, but mostly
because abandoning your car in a sort-of marked off trailhead for a few days is
a little precarious. Coming back to find a car or two in the lot with busted
out windows isn’t unheard of.
Even though our trip through mountains finished a good 3.5
days ahead of schedule, we didn’t feel like we skimped. The unexpected journey
through the night had been the adventure we were looking for – now we just
wanted a serious portion of breakfast. It took us another hour to find a place
open in Fontana Dam (the town), and after breakfast we decided to go to
Asheville for a day or so. There’re hostels there where you can stay in a bunk
for $30 or so, which my far-flung friends tell me is enough to travel in Asia
for a week on, but for Asheville is pretty good.
The road to Asheville was sunny, and I found a guy selling
bags of boiled peanuts for $5, so we were content. My feet were ruined and
Kev’s legs were shot, but it was a satisfying kind of hurt, one earned.
16 days until I move to Korea, and the adventures roll on!
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