Date: 2008-06-01
From: Roan High Knob Shelter

To: Apple House Shelter
Miles today: 14.7

It was still pretty cold and windy when we got up. Looks dark like it might rain outside. It rained most of the night, and then hailed for about 30 seconds this morning. Way too cold to cook breakfast, so I just ate some granola bars. It was a pretty easy downhill off of Roan High Knob to Carver Gap. From there, we had a really good view of the balds that we would be climbing up and down over the next few miles. Both of the balds offered gorgeous views of the surrounding landscape and towns. Hiking on this bald terrain is always much more enjoyable to me than hiking in the dense undergrowth in the lower elevation forests. I guess the undergrowth just reminds me of hiking in MS and AL, which I've done plenty of in the past few years. After the two balds, we made it to the first shelter. This shelter had a reputation for having trail magic left inside, but we had no such luck with this. So Triforce, Mule, and I decided to sit down and eat lunch here. I had the usual PB&J and Honey on tortilla bread. From the register, a large group of boy scouts stayed here last night and is moving on to the next shelter today. If there is trail magic at the next shelter and they eat it all...... It's only 2 miles to the next shelter so we moved on in hopes that it might have some trail magic. The shelter is a beautiful old red barn that has been converted into a shelter. The view from the shelter was one of the prettiest I have seen so far. It looked straight down into a enormous, grassy valley punctuated with groves of trees. I really wished we could have timed it to stay in this shelter. That's just one of the things that the guidebooks leave out - which shelters you should make a point to stay in. One more uphill section today, and then the last 5 miles are downhill to the shelter. The first uphill was to the top of Little Hump, another beautiful bald. It is always cool to be able to look to the next bald and see the trail heading up the side of it. I don't mind climbs like that. Its the climbs in the forest that last forever with no views that get on my nerves. It was a good climb up Hump Mountain (the bigger of the two balds). It always makes it nice when you can stop in a climb and turn around to a great view. I made it to the summit before everyone else, so I hunkered down behind some rocks to block the wind and ate a candy bar. Triforce and Mule arrived about 15 minutes later, and since it was so windy we decided to break out the MSR Hubba Tent Rainfly and try to fly it like a kite again. Apparently it was not windy enough because we were not able to get the kite to stay up. Beautiful views all around, and Socrates passed around a flask of scotch for everyone to have a victory sip. The path down the opposite side of the bald was just as beautiful. There were two really pretty horses grazing right in the middle of the AT that we had to walk around, and they didn't even seem to notice us. The rest of the 5 miles down dropped below the treeline and felt like forever to get to the shelter. Luckily we were able to finish off the rest of my pound of chocolate after dinner. Planet of the Apes had also found some Hen of the Forest Mushrooms which we cooked. They are one of the few mushrooms that are safe to eat and have no look a likes. And suprisingly they actually did taste like chicken. We can see some mice running around in the shelter but only looks like there are 1 or 2 of them. We sat around the fire and then went to sleep.