Date: 2009-04-16
From: Wayah Bald Shelter

To: A. Rufus Morgan Shelter
Miles today: 16.0
Weather: clear sky

Land of the Noonday SunWe got up early because we had a 16 mile hike ahead of us. Our plan was to make it to the A. Rufus Morgan Shelter just before the N.O.C. (Nantahala Outdoor Center). While packing up I heard a scream, followed by laughter and other loud noises, coming from the shelter. When I got to the shelter I found everyone gathered around an open backpack laying on the shelter floor. It turns out that while packing up one of the hikers found a mouse moving in the pack. But upon emptying the pack he found a litter of baby pink mice that had apparently been born there overnight. We took some pictures while the mother mouse came and carried each one off in her mouth, one by one.It was a tough day hiking, including many MUDS and PUDS (mindless ups and downs, and pointless ups and downs). The MUDS I don't mind because you can allow your mind to wander - and it can wander to some far off places on the trail. I sometimes feel a bit like Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim from "Slaughterhouse Five", who became unstuck in time and kept travelling back and forth in his life. The PUDS are frustrating, because you feel like who ever designed that portion of the trail just wanted to make the trail has hard as possible, descending 2-3000 feet deep into each gap, then straight up several 1000 feet to the peak of the next mountain, just to go back down into the next gap and back up to the next peak, and so it goes. You just know while your hiking it, that there could have been a much easier path along a ridge or around the base. But its all part of the trail experience.The highlight of the day was reaching Wesser Bald, which had a tall metal and wood tower with breathtaking views of the Smokies. We could also see a series of humps resembling the back of a dragon. It looked like it would be a long smooth series of ups and downs descending into the NOC gorge.This stretch was tougher than we thought it would be. The guidebook and most southbound hikers we passed indicated it was a long gradual downhill hike. The reality, as often is the case, was far from it. The terrain would go up 2-300 feet, down 3-400 feet, up again and down a little more, and so on. This continued for about 4 miles until the trail began a steep descent about 2500 feet over the last mile, most of which was quite rocky and highly technical. Of course, while we struggled to climb over and down the rocks, Einstein effortlessly bounded down behind us. A few times I had to help him over a rock or two by using the handle on his harness, but otherwise he handled the terrain far better than we did.Toward the end of the hike, we began to get worried because the sun was setting earlier than we were used to behind the towering mountines to the west, and the shelter just never appeared any of the times we thought we were almost there. Jen was especially worried because she had no headlamp, and it was getting harder to make out the features on the trail. So she and I raced ahead to try and beat the dusk.We finally made it just as dark was setting in and as luck would have it, there were a lot of vacancies in the shelter. Knuckles, Improv and Jedi were camping down by the river, leaving only Muscles, Ezra and Ten Sticks in the shelter who were quite fine with Einstein sleeping with them. So Liz, Einstein and I were able to spend our first night in a shelter at A. Rufus Morgan.