Date: 2007-03-27
From: Kincora Hostel, TN

To: Vandeventer Shelter, TN
Miles today: 17.5
Weather: light rain

I woke up to "osprey" making homemade apple pancakes. It was around 6am and soon everyone was up. "stitcher" made a good pot of coffee. The pancakes were awesome. "Osprey" in his kilt making all this food kept hearing the joke, "your going to make someone a good wife someday!" He would just smile and keep going. Soon everyone else, except Fed-Ex, went with Bob to "slackpack" back to the hostel going south for about 12 miles to avoid the steep climb of Pond Mountain. Fed-Ex and I were going to do the climb. It is not so much that I am a "purest"(a hiker that does every bit of the white blazes on the trail & in one direction); I just dont like to ask Bob to do things for me. Fed-ex left about an hour before I did. I stayed and talked to Coughdrop for awhile then left. The walk around Laurel Falls is really beautiful. These are the first real falls that the trail has passed. If I had female company, I would have stayed here all day. I then began the climb up Pond Mtn. It was a haul. All the "slackpackers" came by going the other way. It was really hot and for the first time on this hike, buggy. The gnats were out in full force. Luckily, they were not biting too much. They were annoying though. I tried to climb Pond in one climb; but nearly passed out about 20 yards from the first false summit. I still felt good about this. This was a serious climb. I did finally get over the top and found a nice spring and drank alot of water and made a nice big meal. I have recently started taking long breaks. I dont seem to get as worn out. I made the long descent down to Watauga Lake and nearly jumped in the lake to swim. I have found the best therapy for my aching feet(particularly my old army/football ankle injury) is swimming. The no impact and the full movement of all the tendons, muscles, cartilage, is so therapeutic. With all that said, I did not jump in because I was right by the highway and 100's of cars were driving by. I didnt want to be a spectacle. I got my stuff together and got going and saw Bob who was dropping off Guthook. He did the "slack" and was now coming here and going north. Tao yelled at me and said I should come back to Bob's, they were having hamburgers. I thought about it; but just asked for some water and kept going. It was a climb of pud after pud to the Vandeventer Shelter. There is even one spot where they take you off of the Watagua dam road to go over a tough climb of about a mile only to come back down to the road, only about a half mile from where you went up by road miles. It was starting to get dark when I got to a spring about a mile from the shelter. Bob said to get water here because the water trail at the shelter was very steep and about 3/4 mile. My pack must have weighed 70 pounds for that last mile. It was tough. When I arrived there was Fed-Ex and Gut hook. Gut hook said I was just in time. He meant I arrived just before complete darkness. We talked about how tough of a day that was. I guzzled a bunch of water and took one of Fed ex's tylenol pm's that I found laying on the ground. They got a big kick out of that. I was quickly asleep with dreams of "Complete Package".