Date: 2014-04-11
From: Erwin, TN

To: Cherry Gap Shelter
Miles today: 17.5
Weather: broken clouds

Day 30- April 11 Cherry Gap Shelter, 17.5 milesWe both had a restless night in our little cabin. The walls were thin so we heard the conversations and general noise from the 2 adjoining cabin rooms. But we were warm and dry so we are not complaining about Uncle Johnny's. We were back on the trail at 7:25 AM and had a long, gentle climb out of the Nolichucky River valley. Somewhere in the first 5 miles I lost my sunglasses which were perched on the visor of my hat. They must have fallen off when I took off my ear warmer and neither Squirrel or I noticed it. We are doing a resupply in the small town of Roan Mountain, TN on Sunday afternoon or Monday morning so I will have to pick up another pair at the Dollar General. We did 17.5 miles with lots of uphill today. Our biggest challenge was to get up and over Unaka Mountain. On our way up we met 2 trail crew members who were working to relocate a section of the trail to prevent erosion. It is always interesting to have conversations with these folks and learn about their work. A unique feature of Unaka Mountain is that it wears a toupee of dense spruce trees. From a distance we could see the dark green cap on the mountain and we knew we were getting close to the summit when we started walking through those beautiful trees. The trail was a carpet of the small needles off the trees and the thick cover overhead made it cool walking. I think the couple of miles we did through the spruce forest was my favorite part of today's hike. We enjoyed the sunny and warm weather today-no rain pants needed for us!We arrived at this Cherry Gap Shelter in the mid-afternoon and found four other hikers here. They stayed only long enough to snack, rest, get more water and sign the shelter log. I imagine some of the folks that we were with at Uncle Johnny's will be rolling in here as the afternoon progresses. My friend, Sally, asked if we were alone more now since I had not mentioned any other hikers recently. Good question. We are definitely not alone but are flowing in and out of a new group of hikers since Hot Springs. We took a zero day there, some hikers took two zeros and still others blew right through town, which mixed us up a bit. Lately we've been with Lynx (whose name I may have misspelled earlier), Cupcake and Oops. Some hikers have left the trail because they had only planned to hike so far or they have family obligations and will be off-trail for a few days. We also have been enjoying the company of some section hikers who are out doing 100-200 miles in this area. So we are not alone! A note from last night: we experienced a different form of trail magic. Uncle Johnny's shuttled 15 of us hungry hikers into town where we spread out among the few restaurants (we did Mexican). We were given 2 hours to eat and mosey around before the shuttle picked us up. Well, we made dinner last just over an hour and then wandered through the Dollar General. We were hanging around by the pick up point when a guy asked if we wanted a ride back to Uncle Johnny's-20 minutes earlier than the shuttle! His name was Ron and he was also staying at Uncle Johnny's but he wasn't a hiker. He was a paid employee who worked on AT trail maintenance. He was working on a reroute on part of the trail we covered a day or two ago. So we had a good conversation with him us got back to our cabin earlier than we had hoped. Tomorrow we climb Roan Mountain, another peak at over 6000 feet. We're hoping for another sunny day as we enjoyed the long-range views we got today and we might be able to see forever from the top of Roan. All is well.