Date: 2003-03-12
From: US 64 - winding stair gap (franklin, nc)

To: campsite about 2 miles north of siler bald shelter
Miles today: 7.0
Weather: clear sky

day 11the angel that came to pick me up at the motel in franklin was right on time. i forgot the gentelman's name, which shouldn't be allowed, so please forgive me. the guy was really nice and we shot it for a bit before we took off.all night i had been thinking about dean and brendan and how it would've been nice to have had there company that night. we could've gone out to a bar or something. i decided that i would wait for them at winding stair gap. when i told the angel my plans, he told me that he was a trail maintaner and was actually headed to rock gap shelter to check on the privy. (rock gap is the shelter that's a few miles south of US 64). he said that if i'd like to join him it would give me an oppurtunity to check out the register. i agreed. we parked at a lot about .5 miles from the shelter via a side trail.i checked out the register, but found no entry by my friends. i then checked out the privy with the angel and learned a little about how they work, how they're built and other general facts about them and the shelters. as it turned out my angel happened to have been the president of the nantahala hiking club that manages the 58.5 miles between bly gap, nc and the nantahala river for the past 10 years, and had just retired the previous season.after taking care of business, we began walking out. the angel asked me if i had checked out the wasilik poplar. i answered in the negative and asked him if he'd like to check it out now. he did, so we headed down. the side trail basically descends to the spot where the poplar is and which is surrounded by a wooden fence. the thing's big. the companion quotes it at 26' in circumfrence, 8.4' in diameter, and 135' in height. it's gorgeous. i'd never seen a tree that big with my own eyes.we were heading back up the trail when i saw the 3 weekend warriors that i'd met just a couple days ago at carter gap shelter. they said that my friends, dean and brendan, had arrived a couple of hours after i'd left and that they had been pissed, but proud as well. i inquired of there whereabouts and they told me that there was a good chance that they would've already made it to the road by now. i thanked them and moved on with the angel.we made it back to the car and he dropped me off at the stairs where i began my wait. i tried to place the fellas and figured that either they woulld've arrived in franklin late last night or would be coming down the stairs anytime soon. i settled on giving them a couple hours, or until i couldn't wait any longer. i had my self some lunch and soon enough some familiar faces started coming down. they included 5 alive who we'd camped out with at bly gap a couple of days ago, but they didn't know anything. they were headed to franklin and soon they had there ride. a pick-up naturally. after some time i started walking the parking area in my boredom and found a camera that i figured belonged to one of the 5 alive. they must've dropped it while jumping into the pick-up. i packed it up and resumed my various waiting positions.about an hour and a half into my wait a big white pick-up pulled up to the trailhead on the other side of the road. the truck had come from franklin and it was honking at me. i figured it was probably just the people that i had been at the motel with saying hi. it was, but with a couple of other additions. crossing the street i soon heard dean yelling, "alex, you dick head!" i'm like oh, sh#t, look at this fool. we met half way, and started catching up. as it turned out the fellas had made it into town the night before but had stayed on the other side of town. close to everything i might add. anyways, brendan was across the street, and between dean and him, they had packed out a case of beer, some pizza and some arby's roast beef sandwichs. i'm cracking up . these guys seem to be full of surprises.i got my pack and we headed out. we got to catching up and drinking some of the beer to lighten the load. pretty soon we made it to siler bald shelter and saw some old faces there. we shot it with them for a bit, lightened the load some more and kept going. we had decided to move on a little further. we were gonna have a good time that night so we might as well work for it. siler bald was a great spot though.a few miles down the trail we came across a pretty good spot to camp out. we settled down, had some pizza and arby's sandwiches, and some beer. dean helped me hang up his and my food bag, which were considerably heavy, especially mine. i couldn't lift the things up off the ground. he had to raise them up and that was the only way we got them up. we hung around the campfire and shot it till late night, then finally called it quits on another great day.