Date: 2005-04-17
From: NOC at Wesser, NC

To: Brown Fork Gap Shelter
Miles today: 16.0
Weather: overcast clouds

I Woke up this morning, packed the gear and moved on up the trail early. This was To prove to be one of the harder days as of yet, there were many more but this one was unique. Another one of those inclines filled with false hill after false hill. Once again a disadvantage of being able to see so far ahead of your self, a regular "tour de coronary". I later wrote in my log when I thought I was on the top, "It took 3 hours and 45 minutes to make it to the top of Cheoah Bald". The next entry went, "Oops that was not the Bald, the Bald was a couple of miles further. Talk about your false hills (two hours later)". What I needed to do was develop a way of determining my walking speed based on time versus distance, and that was what I started to do. It eventually got to the point where you could predict just how long it will take you to get someplace. A good thing to be able to do, especially if you needed to keep your eyes open for an unmarked spring or a poorly marked point of interest.    When I got to the top there were a number of hikers there. It seems the top of things is where everyone hung out, to eat lunch perhaps, to take a break or whatever. This was a good place to take a few photos and figure on what to do next. This was also when I met the four girls from New York. We bounced into each other one at a time before however, this is where they linked up for their lunch so it was indeed "picture time". There were three sisters and one friend in their little foursome. Their feet were getting ripped up by their boots and eventually they walked bare foot (hence the group name). The youngest was just 16 and they were hiking a section of the trail from Springer Mountain, GA to Damascus, VA (for Trail Days). A 459 mile section according to my new hand book, an impressive goal. I met them there and after trail days I was told that they headed off to Mount Katahdin to do the summit. They kept in contact with Tal and Dandylion, two hikers they befriended along the way, so I kept up on their post hike lives.    Today, April 17th, was my 12th wedding Anniversary to my wife Brenda, my support cell back home as well as my best friend. Without her this hike would have never been able to happen. As I wrote in a picture description of me at the Sassafras Shelter, I stopped in there to record the day. Remember this, a good support cell back home can make or break the trip. Mailing packages, bills being paid, getting the boy off to school and so on. My 17 year old Joshua (his age at the time), was in the eleventh grade and the two of them made things happen for me. I would call for certain items needed, he would gather them and she would mail it off. Normally I would asked for specific gear because food was available as needed (unfortunately I learned that lesson the hard way at Fontana Dam, I will talk of that in the next entry). If I sent home gear I would try to clean it first. Sometimes that was not possible so the boy would do that for me. Remember this, "Oxy Clean gets the funk out" and hiker smell is a bad smell indeed.    I ended up that evening at the Brown Fork Gap shelter. Blue Angel (who Rick and I gave the trail name to) and her new hiking partner Cloth Monkey, was at the shelter. Pig Bear and OC1 (Open Canoe) were settled in for the night as well. Tal came in a little after dark, he doing a little night hiking. Night hiking is OK and it does have its good points (as well as it's bad). A good headlamp means a better night hike for sure. I did a few night hikes that will be talked about later in the journal.   Peace WB