Today will go down in history for a couple of firsts—our earliest start AND our longest mileage to date on the AT. We didn’t have much choice on the first because the only shuttle returning to the trail was leaving at 7 which we had to make (unless we wanted to hike an additional 2 miles to the trail, and we didn’t). There were 9 people on the van and who do you think was last to hit the trail? Even so, we were hiking by 7:20.
We had a 6.5 mile uphill stretch before we got to the top of Big Bald. You have to give ATweather.com credit—they are never even close to right. It was supposed to be in the mid 50s with a slight chance of rain. It started out looking like this might be a possibility, but by the time we got to Big Bald, we had 40mph winds, fog with close to zero visibility, and temperatures barely above freezing. We stopped to absorb what we heard were amazing views all the way back to the Smokies. What we got was a grey wall about 10’ from us.
In spite of the weather and uphill, we managed to maintain a 2mph pace all the way to Bald Mountain Shelter where we had lunch with Lady Bug and Stickers. This shelter was one of the dirtiest that we have come across so far. Normally, we might be inclined to eat inside to get out of the wind, but it was so dirty we chose to eat at the table outside and stay in the wind. Today was Stickers’ mom birthday as well as Bunny’s brother’s so let me take the time to with Mike and “Momma Stickers” a very happy birthday.
After lunch, we still made decent time, but not as good. The trail after the shelter was more like a highway with lots of great camping spots and downed trees. I could imagine this as a very happening spot in a few weeks when the March bubble makes it to here. Not Today and Zs had told us to expect a lot of downed trees along the trail. We were surprised to find the trail completely clear. As we rounded a corner, we could hear a couple of people talking. It was a couple of trail maintenance workers (a father and son team). The dad has been a volunteer for over 26 years and actually help build a lot of reroutes in the area in times past. There are over 20,000 volunteers who do maintenance on this trail each and every year. They cumulatively put in hundreds of thousands of hours in to make it possible for us to thru-hike this trail on “our own.” This is the best trail magic we run into—the invisible keepers of the trail.
Stickers and Lady Bug quickly caught up with us after lunch. We hiked together for several miles to day and took a break at Whistling Gap to grab some water. There were a couple of families there sitting around a campfire. They offered us some food but we did the most unusual thing—we turned it down since we were coming into a resupply and had plenty of food to last us. It was here that Lady Bug did the most amazing thing I have ever seen a person do.
Women do tend to do mesmerizing things in front of guys. They can take off their bras without removing their shirt, but this doesn’t hold a candle to Lady Bug. She unzipped her waist belt, and, pulled out an open bag of M&Ms that was almost full. She offered me the bag. I was dumbfounded. I cannot fathom opening a bag of M&Ms (any size) and not finishing the bag. I’ve always thought the resealable bag for M&Ms was the dumbest, most useless invention of our times.
We all took off and headed to Spivey Gap (including the two families). When we made it down to the road, Rambling Rose was there doing trail magic. We all grabbed a bite to give us energy (I chose some peanut butter cheese crackers and Bunny went for a protein bar). Traveler was also there. He had gone further than he planned but not as far as he had hoped. He decided to call it a day at a little over 13 miles. He was waiting on a shuttle to pick him up and take him to Uncle Johnny’s Hostel in Erwin so he could catch up with Joe Kool and Domatello. I’m glad that he is listening to his body.
We only had just under 5 miles to go to the shelter. Stickers said goodbye and was off like a shot. Of everyone we left with this morning, Lady Bug and Stickers were the only other ones close to us that we had seen all day. Everyone else was 15-30 minutes ahead of us by now. A few more speedsters from the March bubble had passed us today when we had taken a short trail up to some exposed rocks with great afternoon views. We tried to convince them to take the short side trip and soak in the beauty, but they were too focused on miles and speed.
It took us almost 3 hours to do the final 4.7 miles. We got into the shelter just before 7 but at least we made the miles in daylight. The shelter was full and 3 tents were already up beside it. We had walked past the water source almost 1/4 mile before the shelter so I had to go back before we could eat. We had a very pleasant evening talking with everyone as we set up camp and cooked supper. The day had warmed up as predicted and it looked like we were going to have a comfortable night for a change. I hung our bear bags by moonlight then went to bed.
EFG