Date: 2008-03-01
From: Wayah Shelter NC

To: Wesser Bald Shelter NC
Miles today: 10.6
Weather: clear sky

Day 13 ¢ Saturday, March 1¢ Wesser Bald Shelter NC ¢ Miles Today: 10.6 Total Miles: 129.2Greetings from North Carolina still. We had a great morning at our Hilton, which was technically a shelter we had to ourselves where we erected the full tent and rain fly in. We did learn that pitching a tent in a shelter and not pulling out the vestibules adequately for ventilation results in a bit of condensation on the inside of the tent. So we'll have to keep that in mind in the future. The other drawback about setting up the tent in the shelter is that it's very dark. You miss the morning sun coming up on the tent or the evening light coming through. The tent has a yellow outside rain fly which really illuminates the sun or the moonlight. It's pretty cool. Because of our high miles yesterday, we had a leisure morning. We didn't leave until about 9:00. It was in the mid 30s and we had about 10 miles to go. The terrain today was a mixture of everything ¢ a little bit of clear trail with no snow; or slush; or an inch of snow up to 4" of snow. Most of the day had snow or slush. We also had times where there was a river of water on the trail. Due to the snow, slush and water on the trail, we did not have good traction for the majority of the day.We had another bright beautiful sunshiny day and another observation tower - Wesser Bald Tower. The section of the trail leading up to the tower had an 800' incline in a little over a mile. Luckily this section of the trail was totally clear. It was amazing to see how strong our legs have gotten. Wesser Bald presented no problem for us - we just zoomed up the hill at a pretty good speed. The fire tower was also an attraction to day hikers. Near the parking area for the tower, we visited with three older gentlemen, who were out geo-caching. They must have talked to us for about twenty minutes. At the base of the tower, we visited with three middle-aged ladies from Robbinsville NC who were doing a day hike.   We talked to them a little bit about the real estate market in that area. They explained that we needed to watch where we buy a home due to motorcycle noise. The cyclists like to ride the scenic mountain roads in nice weather. They pointed out that we¢d want a house in a cove in order to avoid the road noise. They also highly recommended a specific realty office for that area; apparently some of the other ones are not too straight (for example, selling lots that they know are not feasible to build homes on). Very nice ladies, who offered us several chocolate candy bars. Score!!At the top of the tower, we ran into six guys from North Carolina and Ohio who were gathered for an upcoming wedding. We swapped picture-taking duties so we have a picture of Brakeman and Grasshopper with the Smokies in the background. We can definitely see that they have snow on them. When we called the Hike Inn earlier today to confirm our reservation, we learned that the Smokies have one to two foot snowdrifts. Not quite sure how much snow they have on the trail, but today was a warm day and hopefully the next few days will also be sunny allowing for a lot of melting by the time we get there! Since we have been in North Carolina, we have had long, long, long stretches of green tunnels of rhododendrons or mountain laurels. They actually create an archway for our path. Really quite beautiful and I could imagine it would be even much more beautiful if they were in bloom. This is one of the reasons why the AT is called the Green Tunnel Trail. We also saw a bear print in the snow today. It was about the size of Grasshopper's hand! We followed the bear's tracks on the trail for about 50 yards before it took off into the woods. We never saw the bear but it was pretty neat to see the huge bear prints. Although we had howling winds last night, by the time we broke camp this morning they had settled down to a gentle breeze that we had all day. We talked to the day hikers and it appears that we are to have one more day of clear weather. We are really looking forward to that. We pulled into Wesser Bald Shelter a bit after 4:00. It took us about three hours to do the last couple miles because of all the day hikers we stopped to talk to. It's now 6:30, about 45 degrees in our tent and time for shuteye. We have a big day tomorrow to the NOC, where we pick up our food drop and continue hiking up pretty serious inclines. Goodnight from North Carolina.