Date: 2004-06-08
From: Niday Shelter

To: Catawba Shelter
Miles today: 23.8

The morning of June 8th offered a good climb of about 800 feet in a mile up to an old logging road. That's not really so awful. It must have just been unexpected or may the previous day had just left me tired. Then again it has been a while since the trail has offered much steep stuff. Anyway, not far down the old overgrown logging road up on this ridge, the trail passes a memorial to Audie Murphy. He died near hear in an airplane crash on May 28, 1971. Hmm, I was in high school. It seems he was ¢America's most decorated veteran of World War II.¢ He served in the European theatre.The trail followed some pretty cool narrow ridges with stunted pine trees. It looked like the weather could get harsh up here. Of course it was actually anything but cool and it was pretty humid too.It was a fairly photogenic area in my opinion. There were lots of interesting rock formations. This was a great area but by now there was a real sense of impending doom in the air not to mention the sky. Then the distant booms started coming closer and then the lightning. It was time to get off this ridge.Dragon's Tooth was a short ways down a side trail. It was 1:30 or 2:30pm by now. With the eminently impending storm almost here, it took a bit of consideration to decide to take that side trail to Dragon's Tooth but it had to be done. Dragon's Tooth turned out to be this amazing tower of rock rising straight up out of the edge of this narrow ridge through the trees into the sky. It was definitely cool and the vista was well worth it. I didn't waste any time here though. That tooth was a lightning rod for sure. Take the picture and go.Back at the junction of the Dragon's tooth trail with the AT, the AT plunges down off the ridge. It's probably the steepest section of the trail so far and much of it is tricky cliff work. Finally it seems to bottom out just as the rain begins. That pleases me but I can't help thinking of Buick and others getting caught in a storm on this steep rock section. The trail continued to scramble up and down over boulders and cliffs for what seemed like an eternity. It is pretty obvious that there could have been easier routes but that the trail wants to be sure we don't miss any of the geologic wonders. That's understandable and I can appreciate a tough hunk of trail but in these conditions a thru-hiker just wants it to end. The tricky footing on the little cliffs was only compounded by the torrents of water gushing down the little sluice ways. It really required quite a sense of humor to keep my head and not just sit down and cry. Alas the sense of humor prevailed and shortly after getting past the tricky parts, the rain with its own perverse sense of humor, stopped.There were little showers on and off the rest of the day but nothing major. The trail crossed a road in a few miles. There was a little store four tenths of a mile to the left that called to me to make an unscheduled stop. The place was way to air conditioned for this wet-to-the-bone chilled hiker. That didn't keep me from making multiple forays into the freezer of the store to get a fair supply of goodies to rekindle the fires within. This included of course a pint of Ben & Jerrie's. There were some section hikers there too. We just hung out on the porch of the store and ate.It was only another eight miles to Catawba Mountain Shelter. That made for a 23.8 mile day. Not bad.