Date: 2020-06-19
From: Cosby Knob Shelter

To: Max Patch
Miles today: 24.0

Today was a lot of walking. I've covered nearly 48 miles since leaving Gatlinburg yesterday and my feet are feeling it.Woke up later than usual in the tent at Cosby Knob, around 7. Sun rises around 6:20 but the forest and tent filter it. Packed everything up, a process that takes a good fifteen minutes since I have to deflate and roll up the sleeping pad along with stowing the tent. Foam pads are so much easier, but far less comfortable. Guess I'm getting old!Sunshine and I trooped off after a light breakfast. After three miles of down and up over nice trail we took the side trail to Mt. Cammerer (pronounced ka-MER-er). Usually a mile-plus roundtrip would be passed up but I skipped this last year due to heavy rain and had to see what the fuss was all about. Near the end the side trail crossed many boulders and had awkward footing. Horses are allowed on the AT and other trails in the Smokies, but in this case the hitching post was situated before the boulders began. The rocky path led to a two-story octagonal stone tower with a wooden catwalk built into a rocky outcropping overlooking the northern end of the park. A light rain sprinkled us as we explored the 1938 CCC-built structure, named after the park service director at the time. Fog surrounded us except for a narrow view to Davenport Gap in the east. Getting back to the trail three women from last night's shelter were resting and asked us about our hike. They asked if the trail was open, under the impression that big parts are closed. We would get the same question from a couple other folks today. Seems the rumors of trail closures spread a lot farther than the truth. Of the 2193 miles of the AT only 3 miles in Maine (Katahdin above treeline), 27 miles in Virginia (the McAfee Knob area often swamped by dayhikers), and the portions in the Smoky and Shenandoah national parks were ever closed. The national park service owns most of the trail and pointedly ignored a request by the ATC in March to close it in its entirety. Trailheads were closed in some areas for a few weeks, and many shelters and privies are still closed, largely because maintainers haven't been allowed out to keep them up. The trail is now open everywhere except Katahdin which opens July 1st. In the Smokies the shelters are open and rangers are once again encouraging people to use them over tenting.We descended 3000 feet over relatively easy trail and past numerous cascades on Stateline brook to Davenport Gap, the northern end of the Smokies. Shortly beyond we walked into Standing Bear, an open-air hostel with a series of cabins and outbuildings with kitchen, showers, laundry, bunkroom, resupply store, and more. One cabin is a treehouse. Another is over a stream. We had chili dogs and lots of soda and enjoyed the sun finally making an appearance after on and off showers all morning.One of the young helpers was caring for a baby skunk, whom he named Zorro, whose mother had died. It had a distended rectum from eating solids to replace momma's milk and he was trying to get one wildlife agency after another to help rescue it. Ultimately none of them would take responsibility. He intends to get a state license that will allow him to keep the skunk as a service animal, a kind of therapy skunk. The young man, still in his teens by his looks, had escaped from a drug-addled home and friends to start a new life here. Sunshine and I set out in the middle of the afternoon to hike another 14 miles to Max Patch, a grassy Bald known for spectacular sunsets. It was almost hot by now and we sweated climbing the 3000 feet out of the gap. The trail was mostly soft dirt but was constantly climbing or descending. At one summit I passed an FAA radar station that looked like some 1950s vision of a futuristic ice cream bar. My earbuds died yesterday so I've taken to listening to my audiobook without them. I turn it off when other hikers are near. It helps pass the time, without letting my mind run in circles all day. Finished "Grandma Gatewood's Walks" and working through another Bill Bryson book "The Thunderbolt Kid" about growing up in Iowa in the 50s.Several hours later I caught up with Sunshine at a stream just below Max Patch. He had a startling story. He'd heard a loud HISS a few minutes back and feared a snake was near. Instead a football-sized turkey hen came out of the foliage and charged directly at him. It was apparently quite serious and wanted him dead or gone. Having no training in wild turkey charges Sunshine defended himself on pure instinct, kicking at the small bird. It predictably went hurtling away. Sunshine escaped with his life. Whether the turkey was defending her brood he doesn't know. By the time I came through there was no sign of it.Max Patch was, unsurprisingly for a nice Friday evening, littered with tents from locals overnighting and parked in the lot a couple hundred yards away. The view was incredible, with mountains stretching in every direction from this unobstructed 4600 foot grassy plateau. The Smokies loomed in the distance, under a cloud of course. The sun set a bit early thanks to our altitude, but into a cloud, giving the mountains ghostly shades of light blue and the clouds pink and orange highlights. Misty tendrils blew across the summit.A cold wind whipped up and sent us into our tents once the colors had faded. The locals stayed up late but I was quickly asleep.