Date: 2009-04-20
From: Burningtown Gap

To: Somewhere in the Nantahala Gorge
Miles today: 11.0

The weather decided to be on the weird side for us today (big surprise). It was in the 40s with rain, fog, and a chilly wind ¢til around 3:00, then the sky cleared, the sun popped out, and it became a gorgeous sunny day in the 60s. We¢d stopped for a little breather and a trail-mix snack to enjoy the sun and had just started back up the Trail around 4:20 when the sky suddenly turned dark, the temperatures plunged, and a deluge of sideways-blowing rain (complete with sleet!) slammed into us. It took about 3 minutes to go from being sunny and having a nice day to being drenched and shivering under a rhododendron canopy trying to block as much rain/sleet/wind as we could. Then 5-10 minutes later it was over. A heavy fog bank nak moved in and the rain/sleet combo kept coming and going for the next hour or so. Just long enough to obscure my view from the top of Wesser Bald and the amazing fire tower atop it. Even though it was another mountain-top view where all I could see was fog, I almost climbed the steps up to the top of the tower anyway but decided against it since one of the freak sleet storms had started falling just as I reached the top. No worries though, random weather is what you get out here and these rainy foggy times just make the sunny days and views that much better.I did enjoy the sunny time we had earlier in the day and managed to get a decent pic of a view from the top of Copper Bald. Although I did have a slight misstep and experienced my first falling down episode of the trip so far. I had stepped off the Trail a few feet to take in a great view and was stepping down from the ridge back to the Trail when my right foot slipped on a wet rock and I ended up on my backside with my left leg underneath me. I was afraid I¢d hurt myself when it happened but after standing up and testing my leg out, I didn¢t feel anything our of the ordinary. I need to be careful though, I keep telling myself that all it takes is one misstep to royally screw things up.When we got to our stopping point of the day at Wesser Bald Shelter around 6:00, we changed our plans and made a decision. Instead of calling it a day and setting up camp we decided to go for the big money. It was only 6 more miles to the NOC, and it would mean hiking by headlamp in the dark, but it was all downhill. Sure we¢d get there late into the night, but we¢d get there a day earlier than we thought, walk our biggest day yet, and have a cool story to tell about it later. Right?While the sun was still up we were treated to some spectacular views of the Nantahala Gorge, especially from a little lookout called the Jump Up. It¢s called that because to get from the rock down to the Trail there¢s a 4 foot ¢step¢ that requires a bit of effort to get up and down. But after walking all day with a full pack on your back and not much food in your stomach? Yeah, not so much. We did make it down though and kept going well after dark. But it ended up being a fairly scary little adventure. We could only see a few feet in front of us with the headlamps so it was hard to make a lot of the terrain around us, but there were parts of the Trail that felt more like a crumbling cliff face than a footpath. By 10:00 we¢d decided to give up and call it a night. Our pace had slowed to a crawl and it was getting too late to feasibly keep going so we found a place to camp on one of the ridgelines. (It was a nice wide ridgeline Mom, we didn¢t camp anywhere near the steep parts).I¢m thoroughly exhausted and it¢s a bit late, but we still ended up doing an 11-mile day though, AND we experienced our first night-hiking. Not bad.