Date: 2014-04-10
From: Wesser Bald shelter

To: locust cove gap
Miles today: 16.2
Weather: few clouds

Thursday, April 10: Day 12Mail-drop & night hiking Woke up at Wesser shelter around 7am and picked up to hike into the Nantahala outfitter center (NOC), a short 6 mile journey to start the day. Have a mail-drop to pickup. The trip was short and sweet a nice decline into the alley where whitewater rapids and a nice tourist center is. Icecream, zip-lining, a outfitter, tons of school kids, and even Great Smoky Mountain train runs though this little intersection. A great tourist trap and outdoors center, that just happens to cross the AT's path. Many grabbed some icecream and had a dinner. I was worried about how much food I would have to pack out so I kept eating my trail mix. Ugh, so much trail mix! Have a couple pounds. It's great energy but so heavy. A blessing and a curse. Though I did grab a small bag of Doritos (cool ranch) and a new smart water bottle, since the last one melted a bit. Checked the NOC outfitter and my package hadn't morning yet. Dang! That's why I slowed down the last couple days, so I wouldn't outrun my package. But I managed to anyways. Waited for a few hours and people watched. Even saw Trish and said hi. She said she stayed in the NOC bunkhouse last night and wanted to stay a few days to hangout, maybe go whitewater rafting or zip lining. I think, also to wait up for her girlfriends, who she outran by a couple days. After a few hours of waiting for the post to arrive, I got my food package. Even with my scaled down 6 day supply from my parents it's still a ton of food. Not a lot but a heavy load. Almost to much to fit into my food bag. Trying to fit 10 days worth of food to camp the Smokies all in one package was a bad idea. Way way to heavy. But I'll try to make it work. I think it almost doubles my pack weight from before the NOC. I had a two day supply of food coming in (jerky, tea, potatoes, trail mix, cliff bars). Now I'm overloaded! Oh man. I can eat the weight down. Haha.I have so much that I create a small hiker sandwich bag of gum, chocolate, and a instant tea bag, and give to it a couple hikers staying at the bunkhouse. On my way... Leave the NOC around 4pm. A whole 4 hours of just hanging around. Craziness! I didn't even have icecream or a nice dinner. I'm silly for not doing that. Kind of regret not taking advantage of luxuries when I have the chance. I'm trying to so as fast as I can with maybe a 43+ lb. pack on. It's crazy heavy and I have to go straight up a mountain. Like 1000 ft in less and a mile. And it's the height if the sun! Sweating everywhere. I play games with myself trying to beat and trick myself up the mountains. Pretending I'm land skiing, and racing imaginary creatures. I'm drinking my water like it's the last I'll ever have and finally make it 5 miles to the shelter. Then, when I finally make it there I'm crazy pumped and think I'll go a few miles more. I trek up 3 more mountains and hit the highest peak so far, right in time for sunset. I actually race to the top almost tripping on some roots and stones trying to make it to the top. But it was worth it. An amazing 360 view of the mountains and the sun was perfectly cresting the ridges making the mountain mist glow and the layers of mountains seem so magical. After the sunset I looked around for a place to camp but everyone (about 15 others) had already taken the best places out of the wind. The mountain top was a bald so grasses grew but it was seriously windy. So, as the sun went down I made the crazy decision to hike the next camp area with water, about 2 miles away. Night hiking! It was just the magic time when sun was just down so I could see a bit. Then moon was pretty bright and no clouds were in the sky so for the first mile or so I walked pretty easily. After I turned the corner of the mountain and the trees arched over the trail, the it got tricky. I grabbed my tiny headlamp and trekked the rest of the 2 miles with my lamp on. It was a scary and fun walk. Scary because I didn't know the terrain I was getting myself into, and fun because I was the only one out and doing this. And just doing something at night puts an uneasy edge to the adventure. I didn't see any white blazes while night hiking and this section of the AT wasn't very well marked so that made another interesting bit to the journey. As I walked, I almost missed my destination and had to shine my headlamp on the post. One guy was already there. So as quietly as I could I put up my bearbag of food (super heavy) and put up my tent to sleep. I was so exhausted I forgot to eat dinner (something you should never do while hiking, especially when I've almost over exhausted myself). I texted with Monique for a bit since I was high up enough and still within cell signal of town and hit the hay. Bedtime 10:20