Date: 2003-07-14
From: Cove Mountain Shelter

To: Cornelius Creek Shelter
Miles today: 11.9
Weather: light rain

Erin says:It looked like it was going to rain when we woke up this morning. We wound our way down, down, down to 951' at Jennings Creek. Here we stopped to get our water supply for the day because Cove Mountain Shelter had no water. We grabbed water and decided to make coffee and hang out for a while. Craig also made us breakfast. We'd collected blueberries along the trail this morning and added them to a Mountain House Chocolate Raspberry Crumble dish. I guess it is technically a dessert, but we ate it as a hot breakfast. It was such a treat. Thank you to the Bibeaus for sending it to us! We would have gone swimming in Jennings Creek, but it was actually not too hot out, and we still had much climbing to do for the day. We climbed over Fork Mountain and arrived at Bryant Ridge Shelter. We debated whether or not to stay there for the night because it is such a gorgeous shelter! It has three levels and looks very contemporary with little windows on the sides and a natural wood finish. A great resting spot. It was weird because while we were hanging out there, we ran into a gaggle of teens tramping through the woods. We couldn't figure out how they'd gotten here without packs or water because we were in a pretty remote spot. But they were walking along the trail in their little tanktops and shorts and didn't seem to be too sweaty or dirty. They passed by us and kept on without engaging us in conversation.Craig and I decided to hike on because there was a huge climb ahead up Floyd Mountain. We decided it would be better to get the climb over with in the late afternoon instead of in prime heat tomorrow mid-day. Plus we were being assaulted by many bugs and bees at the shelter. So we filtered more water from the creek nearby and kept on. The climb up Floyd was a killer. Over 4 miles of steep climbing with multiple false summits. At one point as we were climbing, we heard muffled shouts out in the distance, probably from the group of teens that had gone by earlier. We wondered if they were lost or something had happened? But we were pretty far away from them at this point, and voices echoing off the mountains can be deceiving as to the direction they are coming from. We hoped everything was okay, at least they were in a large group. We climbed over 2200' to get to the summit of Floyd Mtn. which turned out to not have any views or anything remarkable about it. We were pretty tired and hungry when we finally descended to Cornelius Creek Shelter. This shelter is near the Blue Ridge Parkway and you could tell -- there were empty beer bottles strewn about the shelter grounds. We quickly made a dinner of loaded mashed potatoes with black beans and rice. Very good. Bats kept swooping in and out of the shelter as it continued to get darker. It was weird as we approached the shelter -- we were so surrounded by a thick haze that I thought maybe there was a forest fire somewhere, the sky looked almost a yellow-orange as if muted by smoke. I guess it was just haze. We are tenting in the shelter again tonight even though the shelter floor is sort of hard on the back. It might rain and we can stay dry without having to sleep with the rainfly on the tent. The tent protects us from the incessant bugs, but we still get a breeze through the mesh windows. It is pretty nice having the shelters to ourselves.