Date: 2003-06-16
From: Stoney Creek Valley

To: Baily Gap Shelter
Miles today: 3.6
Weather: light rain

Date: 6.16.03Starting Location: Stoney Creek ValleyDestination: Baily Gap ShelterMileage: 3.6 Well, the day got off to a late start, as is the norm with town days!MG joined us for breakfast and then drove us back up to the trail. She has been so wonderful! She is taking off today to take care of some business and hopefully we will see her up North!   Well, we should have known there would be trouble when we got up and it was pouring.....and there were flash flood warnings.....and the road we needed was closed due to high water! But did we stay in town?! Of course not!! We are women, hear usroar! :) It turns out that the road wasn't exactly closed....it was just a suggestion, so off we went. The trail was wet, but fine...for the first tenth of a mile. Then we came to the "small tributary to Stony Creek" as the book described, and we came to an abrupt halt. The creek was only about 15 feet across, but it was deep, high, and rushing furiously! No way, I thought....I am not doing this! Well, Bumpkin had as much trepidation as I did, so we took quite a bit of time considering the situation. I got in a couple of times, but with the water up to my knees, the current was so swift that everytime I planted my pole, it just got swept back up again. This wasn't looking good at all. To add to the dilema, responsible stream fording calls for you to undo your waist belt so that if you fall, you can slip out of your pack. However, without your waist belt fastend, you have 30 pounds swinging to and fro on your back foiling whatever sense of balance you might have had!   Eventually, after several aborted attempts at crossing, we noticed that aways upstream, there were two trees laying across the water. It took a mixture of wading, swinging from rhodedendron trees, and inching along the bank in the mud on our knees to work our way up to them. First went Bumpkin. She took the high road and decided to walk across a very slippery tree over rushing water. She got halfway across and stopped to ponder her next step. At least, I thought she was pondering! It turns out that she froze for a little while, but being the strong woman that she is, she soon found the courage to keep going. With me chanting, "don't fall...don't fall", under my breath, she finally made it to the other side.   Originally, my plan was to walk across the stream between the two logs, however, it turned out to be too deep. Instead, I opted for the slightly safer, much less dramatic "butt scooch". Scooching across one log, leaning over and holding on to the other one worked fine....until they started to get further and further apart! Well, with a little help from Bumpkin and a little heart pounding, I finally made it over as well. All that was left to do was to bushwack our way back in the direction of the AT. We finally got back on trail. All in all we had covered about 50 feet of trail since we started. It took us over an hour.   (Note: We both agreed that as much as we wanted to be real mountain women, we had much too strong a sense of resonsibility towards the people we love,and that we would not do anything that would put ourselves in danger. Thus the hour spent finding the safest way across....we think it was worth it! :)   After our hearts stopped pounding, we proceeded up the trail. Well, due to the amazing amount of water coming down the mountain, the trail was literaly ankle deep water much of the day. Luckily, my boots were already soaked, so I didn't have to worry about it. By the time I got to the bridge that crossed the REAL Stoney Creek, (50 feet of creek raging high above its banks-thank goodness we didn't have to ford that!!), Bumpkin was waiting for me for lunch. Well, it was almost 2:00 and we had barely covered a mile and a half!! We knew that there was a really ugly climb for the next mile, and that there we would find a shelter and decide what to do.   So, up we went. And up, and up, and up! I have several strategies for such climbs, and I decided to use the number system for this one. It is simple....I just count steps. At first, I go 100 steps then breathe. Then 100 steps, breathe. As the afternoon wore on, I would go 80 steps....breathe, and then 40 steps....breath. You get the picture!    It was after 4:00 when I finally got to the shelter. Bumpkin was there with The Buddy, who is a computer programer from Ann Arbor, and my old friend Pirate! It turns out that there are no campsites for a long time after this shelter, so we decided to call it a day. It turns out that The Buddy is a musician so we spent the rest of the afternoon talking shop. Before long, it started raining, so we all settled in for a cozy night in the shelter. After dinner, Bumpkin mixed up the chocolate pudding that we had bought to celebrate being back on the trail together and we all four enjoyed it.   Tomorrow, we have to hike a lot of miles to make up for today, but for now, I am warm, dry and content. Love, Anna aka Mud Butt------------------------------Local access to PocketMail mobilee-mail now available in Europe, NorthAmerica & Australia http://www.pocketmail.com