Date: 2005-03-27
From: Cold Spring Shelter

To: Nantahala Outdoor Center
Miles today: 11.4
Weather: overcast clouds

Happy Easter, let's hike 12 miles. After our late arrival and my unfortunateexperience with the mice, I was rather eager to make some miles. It took me alittle while to reorganize all of my stuff, so I took off with Freeze Dried insteadof James and Bubbletoes who had left 15 minutes a head of us. It was OK hiking,easy going and not too bad uphills, Freeze Dried and I even took time to stop forlunch. It was at this point when I realized I have a new mission in life. I openedthe small pouch on the hipbelt of my pouch and found my beef jerkey, with a holechewed in the bag, and mice crap all over the place. DAMN YOU MICE! Not only had Itrucked this now useless weight all this way, I had to truck it to town to p itchit, and I couldn't eat it. This time it's war, I'm gonna pick up a few mousetrapsat the next town, and I'll have my revenge on the dreaded mice.Fuming with anger the second half of the hike went relatively OK, I was somewhatannoyed with all of the uphills that we kept taking, since I knew that we weredropping 3000 feet in elevation to the NOC. As the buildings of the NantahalaOutdoor Center came into view, I saw a figure run out from behind a red pickuptruck, across the road, and up the trail. As he got closer and I made out thetie-dyed shirt and trailjournals.com hat, I knew who it was heading up thetrail...MOUNTAIN MAN. There has been more than one hiker to go by "Mountain Man" who has hiked the AT, soI'll clarify. This mountain man is Trey Harding, of Side Track Cafe and Damascus,VA fame. I met him a few years ago through a friend and 2000 thru hikerZak(Kramer). So anyway, Mountain Man had called earlier in my trip and apparentlydetermined my location from my call back, and he surprised me at the NOC. We huggedand went through the "How ya been?" routine, and then back at the truck he took my 4person crew and a fella named Lion King to town. While we're loading up into thetruck, Newbie strolls by, and says "Hey, remember to set your clocks up an hourtoday". Hrm, guess you just forget about these things when you're on the trail.We were looking all over for a place to eat on easter sunday, and we find pizza hutwith a sign that says something like "Because of easter, we will be opening at 4PM".We look at our watches, 3:56 PM, alright, right on time. Hrm...4:00 comes and itstill looks empty in pizza hut, 4:10, and we decide that Newbie's a bit off and thatthe clocks didn't change, so we head back out in search of something else, andnoting to ourselves to step on newbies toes at some time in the next few days. Finally, we find the Western Sizzlin' in Bryson City and chow down on some buffet. Over dinner we decide that we've been spending too much money on hotels, and that weshould camp tonight. By "we", I mean the other 3 people I've been hiking with, Iwould've preferred to hotel it, what with the storms and all in the forecast, but Iwas outnumbered 3 to 1. After some eating and drinking and being merry, we decided to head back to the NOCand to the super cool super secret campsite that Lion King had scored. About 30seconds before we were finished setting up, thunder clapped and the first stormbegan, so we hoofed it back to the NOC to shoot some bull and kill some time. Itwas good catching up with Mountain Man and talking to everyone around theoutfitters, conversation can be a lost art out on the trail, but all good thingsmust come to and end and soon it was time for the old boy to return to Damascus andfor us to retire to the tents. Now since my tent sucks, we used it for the gear tent, James and Freeze Dried stayedin Freeze's tent, and I stayed with Bubbletoes in hers. This will beinteresting...tarptents in thunderstorms...