Date: 2012-05-05
From: Erwin, TN at Uncle Johnny's Hostel

To: Cherry Gap Shelter 
Miles today: 17.6
Weather: light rain

I got up at 8:00am to be ready and packed for the 9:00am breakfast shuttle.  I had read the sign that said they go all over town, including the Huddle House, and was looking forward to some thick waffles and perhaps a little fried chicken.  It was a grey, cool morning, had rained all night, and was still raining buckets outside.  Fifteen hikers lined up outside and we all crammed into the 11-person van.  It seems that people-on-the-floor is standard protocol around here.  We did not go all over town nor did we go to the Huddle House.  We went to J&D Market and Deli.  Fifteen hikers roll in and order multiple breakfast entrees each.  This does not faze the woman who took all of the orders AND cooked all the food AND served it to us.  I imagine this must happen every day for a few months.  I ordered the biscuits and gravy plate, a bacon, egg, cheese, and tomato on a croissant, and the breakfast sandwich on toast.  She did a double take on my third item but I was sincere in my request and she happily obliged me.  I was order number eight.  When I saw the size of the food plates, I was a little worried.  All of the plates were oval 15"x12" and they were covered in giant mounds of steaming food.  The shuttle operates on the principle that you must be on time or else you will be left behind and your gear will be sold at a discount through the store. However, there are normally two people working at the deli and things usually run a bit faster.  10am rolls around and the shuttle arrives but only five orders have received food.  Grim, who seems to operate Uncle Johnny's Hostel, decides to split the group into folks needing to buy beer and tobacco, and everybody else.  The beer and tobacco run happens and all of those hikers got dropped off back at the hostel while the rest of the breakfast crew waited and/or ate at the deli.  We changed all of our orders for to-go so when the shuttle came back for us we could be on our way.  I ate the rest of my food in the back of the van and noticed a large hole in the floor.  You could see the leaf springs, the axle, the inside of the wheel, and water from the tire was being flung up into the van.  It didn't even faze me.  It was Cinco de Mayo and everybody was drinking beers outside.  The weather had turned sunny and it looked like a zero for almost everyone.  The newspaper I had read at breakfast predicted thunderstorms all week and I knew that there were some tallish mountains in my immediate future.  With good weather, I decided to get hiking.  I struggle in my preferences to sit around and relax in good weather and hike in poor weather or vice versa.  Today though, I decided to hike based on exposure to lightning and long shelter spacing.  If its going to rain, i'd like to sleep in a shelter.  I crossed the river at 11:30am and started my hike.  Four miles in, I came across a group of hikers talking about median home prices in the area (not thru hikers - it's a Saturday) and another group moving on and wanting to night hike in the full moonlight.  I had planned to do something special for the full moon and couldn't decided between a zero and a celebratory Full Moon Forty.  The idea there was to wait until the moon rose and hike forty kilometers through the night and morning.  My feet have started to cause me a little concern (sharp, intermittent, internal pain where the heel meets the arch) and I felt it was a little ambitious at the moment.  Besides, the weather was starting to look bad again and I still had a ways to go just to get in a normal day.  5:30pm arrives and so does the base of Mt. Unaka.  I have been watching a storm brewing off in the distance and moving toward me.  I was hoping to be over the summit and on my way down when it hit but I couldn't out hike this one.  It started to sprinkle.  There were a few campsites around but I knew that the shelter was just on the other side of this huge, looming hill.  It was 1200' up and 1300' down, plus another 300' up and from the summit, only 3.3 miles.  I was also racing the dark.  My good headlamp was stuffed in my hammock at the bottom of my pack (a real pain) and my backup headlamp was tucked away under my Packa (an annoyance) so I decided to roll the dice and go for it.  I reckon it's an hour up and an hour down which puts me on the edge of darkness.  I can do this as long as there isn't any lightning to slow me down.  The foggy clouds roll in as I hike and the mountain becomes fully engulfed in a mist.  Vision is pretty fuzzy and everything softens as I hike.  Up and up.  I calibrated my altimeter so I would know how close I was to the summit and could make better decisions if things got bad.  The wind started howling and the rain was sideways but I tramped on.  There wasn't any thunder but I was definitely listening for it.  As I neared the summit, I walked into a beautiful cedar forest.  The ground was soft with the damp fallen needles, the wind stopped completely and everything was quiet.  It was spooky.  The fog was so thick and the trail became hard to distinguish. The tall dark vertical lines of the trunks faded off quickly into the distance of the white mist.  No birds.  No noise.  My trekking poles didn't even click.  It was as if the forest was moving past me and I was the stationary figure.  I passed an amazing campsite at the summit.  It would have been like being on another planet.  My feet stopped hurting and soon I was headed downhill.  I was in so much of a trance that I turned around and headed back to the summit.  I must have stood there for ten minutes in awe, just soaking up this environment, hoping to be able to remember forever.  It brings a tear to my eye writing about it now.  Whatever it was, it was special.  I then high-tailed down the hill, even running at times when it was flat and smooth.  I didn't really want to hike in the dark and being fast was the answer.  The rain got harder as I descended and then stopped completely after I put my rain skirt on.  As I was worrying about the fading light, a visual clarity came to the forest and everything brightened up for a few minutes.  It was again, a beautiful moment.  It faded out too and I got to the shelter just as it was getting difficult to see.  I expected a bright fire, laughter, and colorful sleeping bags.  Instead, it was a dark, cold hole.  Nobody was here.  I had the place to myself!  This has never happened before.  I set up, cooked dinner, made some tea, and snuggled down for the night while the wind gusted and blew the water off of the trees.  I heard the mice running around but was too tired to care.  My full moon celebration was simply a humble appreciation for how things are.  Sometimes it takes a little extra moonlight to see what's there.