Date: 2015-03-30
From: USFS 193

To: 19E 
Miles today: 13.6

Today's weather started chilly and wet, and ended cool, windy and sunny. But for me, the real starting point was Mary's Mountain Harbour breakfast. For us, it's one of the highlights of the trail. At some point I suppose I need to make a list of our 'AT highlights' both on and off the trail. Clearly Mountain Harbour will make the list. We splurge and stay in the big room in the house and to us it's worth it. The breakfast really is terrific, a hiker's dream. I could rave about breakfast for a while, but the next step in the day was a 15 min drive to the AT trailhead on US Forest Service Road 193. The road is a little obscure, but our driver, Dave, knew just how to find it. Our plan for the day was a SoBo slack-pack hike from USFS 193 to 19E (which is a short walk from Mountain Harbour). Waiting on Mary's breakfast put us a little behind our customary sunrise start, so we didn't hit the trail until about 9:40. But we were slack-packing, and the terrain today was relatively easy.The first half of the trip was mostly flat with a gradual downhill run. There was a light drizzle when we started, but it dissipated after several hours and the sun started sneaking through. My Zpack poncho and some light waterproof gloves kept me comfortable. The trail was in good shape almost all the way through. The overnight rain dampened things, but it drained well. A lot of the initial terrain was scenic rhododendron groves winding along streams and hill contours. Sometimes I talk about rhodo-tunnels, where the trail cuts through large stands of rhododendron bushes. The plants grow up on both sides, bend over, and completely cover the trail. Periodically, trail maintainers come through with shears and clip them back on the sides and overhead to keep the path clear. Both since I'm taller than most maintainers (6'4"), I have to watch for low-hanging branches. Rain or snow on the leaves make them droop even further, and if I bump them I'll get a personal shower. But there really is a "tunnel" effect and it can be 50 or even 100 yards long. I've never gone through these southern states when the rhodos are blooming, it must be fantastic. Eventually we came to the Elk River and passed alongside it for a while. The trail opened up and there were some attractive campsites. We came across Saint and 3 companions that stayed at Mountain Harbour last night and were headed north. One hiker in their group was getting a shuttle ride to the next hostel and we had suggested that they send their packs with him and slack-pack the day's hike. They decided to do that and were moving along quite nicely with their lighter loads. After the river, we started climbing and the terrain changed. We passed a church, a cemetery, the crest of a ridge, meadows, an extremely dense pine forest, and several more streams before reaching our end point for the day. The pine forest was unusually dark, it seemed that someone had planted a christmas tree farm with the trees very close together, then never harvested it and all the trees matured. They were evenly spaced in perfect rows - just unnaturally close together. Midway through the hike we passed the 400 mile point on the AT. There was no marker, so Princess made a sign out of rhodo leaves. And a little later Princess spotted a deer on the trail just ahead of us. Last year Ranger taught us that deer are very curious, and if you start whistling it piques their curiosity and they won't bolt. It worked. The deer stood on the trail for while, then slowly moved off trail and actually moved alongside us until the trail curved away. I've included a pic. Hikers we passed today included Felix and Selfie, who we've seen a couple of times before. Selfie is from France. And another hiker with red hair and a red beard that we've seen often, and we can't seem to remember his name - he told us today that's it's a character from the Lion King and it still didn't stick. Stretch was hiking alone today - later we saw Imp, Fern and Chow back at the B&B and they were headed out to catch up. This evening we had dinner with Dude (formerly Bruny) and Bow, Maverick, and Pa Bert and we had a good time trading trail stories. Bow's father has been tracking her progress and sent me a nice note after I mentioned that we met them. They seem to be really enjoying the trail.