Date: 2005-04-06
From: Tent, Brown Fork Gap Shelter

To: Shelter, Fontana Dam Shelter
Miles today: 12.7
Weather: overcast clouds

The absolute best part of the day was the trilliums. I had never seen those plants before and certainly not in bloom. I kept seeing these three leaved plants with a single bud stalk in the middle for the past 2 days. I thought they might be jack in the pulpets. Today I saw them in bloom. They are marvelous. At the base of the flower are three greenish petals that formed the outside of the bud. These greenish petals can have subtle coloring that seems to have bled out from the main flower color. There are three upright petals that hide the little yellowish stems inside. They seem to come in three basic shades - deep burgundy, yellow, and greenish. The flowers reminded me of water lilies. They reminded Troll of the killer plant from little shop of horrors. They were marvelous. I found out that some of the flowers I have seen are bloodroot and rue anemones. Lots of signs of spring to be seen today. This primarilarly seems to be a deciduous forest. So there are lots of dead leaves on the ground. There are some evergreens - the occasional coniferous tree, holly trees, mountain laurel, and rhododendrons. The undergrowth looks like it dies back in the winter. Now all of the undergrowth seems to be getting buds or leaflets. And there are little flowers all around. Today I saw white flowers, pink flowers, yellow flowers, violets (both yellow and violet), blue flowers and those wonderful trilliums. Today was also full of nature. I saw 2 of my magical violet butterflies. I saw 2 orange and 1 black monarch looking butterflies. I saw a black butterfly the size of a monarch that had the top wings tipped in yellow. I saw 2 white butterflies that were smaller than monarchs but larger than my magic violets. These white butterflies were very cool becouse their top wings were edged in a bright gold orange. I saw some tiny tomato red bugs. Troll and Oblivious saw some sort of weird bee. They said it looked like it had a horn and used that horn to dig in the dirt. I saw a black snake with margarita green stripes down the side. I also saw a snake that I thought was dead until I tried to flick it off the trail with my trekking pole. It was black with an orange ring around its neck and an orangish belly. Boy did it scamper away after I flicked it. Oblivious was very bummed to hear about my snake encounters, as he badly wanted to see a snake. He finally got his wish! In the last 1.1 miles to the shelter he saw one of those orange ring necked snakes. Even cooler for Oblivious was the black rat sake, which someone caught near the shelter. Oblivious got to touch it, hold it and see it bite his Dad. Probably one of the cooler things about today was coming into this shelter and seeing all of our trail friends. Rigortortise had a BBQ going with burgers, dogs, and chicken, Yum. The most uncool part of the day was spent cursing the trail designed for this section of the trail. Apparently someone looked at a topo map and said there are peaks of varying height between the NOC and Fontana Dam. And by gosh I think that AT hikers must cross each and every one of those peaks. In as the crow flies miles we probably only went 3 to 4 miles. We spent most of the day going straight up followed by straight down followed by a switch back that literally ran the entire length of the mountain just to run back in the other direction. It was so special to get to the big parking lot 1/4 of a mile from the dam only to find out we had 1.1 miles of multi peak mountain to cross. I definitely had a Roadrunner cartoon moment today. I had to navigate under some more of those blown down trees. This tree was small enough that I could wrap my arms around it and try to limbo myself underneath it. Ok, it looked like it was going to go just fine until I realized that there was only mud under the tree. So there I am, poles in hand, arms wrapped around the tree, pack hanging under me and my feet going a mile a minute trying to find some solid ground before my arms gave out and I crashed to the trail. I didn¢t crash but I must have been quite a sight to see. I was sure I was going to hear a beep beep during that episode of trail grace. I think I have proved to myself that even though I may smell like a goat, I have absolutely no mountain goat genes whatsoever. Take care and we will see you on the trail.