Date: 2005-04-06
From: Overmountain Shelter

To: stealth camp 0.9 miles south of Laurel Fork
Miles today: 20.2

start: Overmountain Shelterfinish: stealth camp 0.9 miles south of Laurel Forkmiles: 20.2day: 30It's great to be back in the tarp again.  It's been a long time - since the day before we got to Erwin.  The forest floor is so much softer than shelter boards.The day began a bit later than usual, as there was only a little dawn light coming in through the gaps in the barn boards.  This is really a neat place: an old red barn with wooded mountains rising up behind and partly open fields sloping away in front, down into a beautiful valley ringed with mountains.  Like Shangri-la.  There are three springs from which to get good drinking water, and an open privy that sits like a throne looking out over the fields below.  What a nice way to start the day.Our hike started with a climb up over the Hump Mountains.  These are balds, forming an undulating ridge with Grassy Ridge, Jane Bald, and Round Bald, terminating with the very imposing wooded summit of Roan to the south.The balds are, like Max Patch, the best part of the southern AT so far.  They are fantastic, and we had such nice clear and windy weather too.  (Sorry Stumpy, I don't have the Hump curse, I guess).Jane Bald, and Grassy RidgeAs far as I can tell, Roan and Mt. Washington in New Hampshire are the only 6000+ foot mountains on the AT outside the Smokys.  Also, now that the balds are behind us, we have one more high, open experience at Grayson Highlands, and then the next time we get good stuff like that is Mt. Moosilauke in New Hampshire.  That's sure a lot of miles from here!We hiked 9 miles to rt. 19E and hitched to Bob's Dairyland restaurant in the town of Roan Mountain 3.5 miles off trail.  All four of us (including Running Moon and Jukebox) got a ride.  We walked in and saw Dennis from that morning in the barn.  He had hiked back to Carver's Gap, and to his car,  while Team Dumber had hiked on.  He talked with us and kindly offered to wait for us to eat before giving us a ride back to the trail.  We ate real good .  I had a BBQ special and a big cheeseburger, and iced tea and a peanut butter milkshake.  Fantastic.On the ride in we saw Alex, Max, and Traction walking back from town to the trail.  I thought they'd have been much further along...  Guess they wanted food, too.We're all anticipating dropping some weight when we switch out some winter gear in Damascus.  We've been warned to keep cold weather stuff until a few days north of there, but some of the stuff is overkill at this point.  We'll go to 30 degree bags and lighter long johns, but keep the hat and gloves, etc.  For now.We took a short side trail today to Jones Falls, a very high multiple stage waterfall sheeting down over huge rock slabs.  The other guys did some climbing to the upper falls and Goldilocks got completely submerged.  Keep in mind that it was a warm 68 degrees today, and the water was probably around 45.  I stayed at the bottom and stripped down and rinsed my shorts and shirt in the frothing water to get the salt out.  Putting the wrung out wet clothes back on was kinda chilly, but it sure helped with the extremely nasty odor.I anticipated that thru-hikers smell a lot.  I've been there before myself.  But I didn't anticipate that I'd smell SO bad that I'd bother myself.  And there's not squat I can do about it.  I wash whenever possible - body and clothes.  Hiking just generates so much heat and sweat.We heard yesterday that our friend Pace has unexpectedly gotten off the trail, for unknown reasons.  I hope he's OK, and that he not only gets back on, but catches up.  He's fun to be around.It really seemed like Spring today.  No snow.  Clean, pretty dry trail to walk on.  Warm and sunny, and lots of green plants pushing up.  Also, several kinds of wildflowers, including daffodils.  There still isn't a single bit of green on any of the millions of hardwood trees in these forests.  But the brown is starting to give way to green.  Yay!