Date: 2005-04-25
From: Spring Mountain Shelter

To: Jerry Cabin Shelter
Miles today: 15.4
Weather: scattered clouds

Today was a magnificent and treacherous day on the Trail after the snow. I woke up at 6 o'clock and it was cold as hell!! I packed my stuff up quickly. It was just too cold to sit there and start cooking grits. Jersey started packing up as I was moving. I still had 3 layers of clothing on. I hoped that the next shelter was at a lower elevation, and that it would be warmer. I packed some candy bars and beef jerky and took off. There was still 4 inches on snow on the ground. The first 30 minutes was on the ridge. It was pretty nasty. The snow was packed down and frozen by the hikers that had passed the night before. There was a choice of walking through the snow and get my feet soaking wet, or walking through the ice on the tread imprints from the other hiker's boots. It went on like that for about 30 minutes. It was a treacherous piece of trail. It got worse on the downhill and I started to slip all over the place. The Trail started to incline sideways at one point which was scary. Every step was a slide down toward the edge of the Trail with the possibility of rolling down the side of the mountain. I didn't want to do that. By 8 o'clock the Trail was clear of snow, the elevation dropped, it was still muddy and slippery, but it was better than walking on ice. The elevation kept dropping lower and lower. At about 3,000 feet, it seemed like it had never even snowed. The Trail was dry, there was no trace of snow and even the dead leaves on the side of the Trail were dry. I found out that it never snowed in Allen Gap. There was a sign on a post just before Allen Gap that said:                              Trail Magic!                         Come to our house for                   beef stew, ice cream and a good time!            go down the dirt road, make a right turn at the sign,                     go 300 yards to the driveway This is what I attempted to do, but, somehow I missed the driveway the 1st time and walked about 1/2 mile past it. I turned around and went all the way back up to the Trail and read the sign again.   I finally figured out that the sign they were talking about was the North Carolina Border sign, the one that says 'Welcome To North Carolina'. By that time I had blown 35 minutes and Jersey had beat me there and already finished a bowl of beef stew and was starting on some ice cream. The house belongs to a couple named John and Jodi. They were through-hikers in 1999, and bought the house specifically because of the location on the Trail. Their Trail names are Hercules and Fal. Hercules got his name because that's what he flew in the Service - the Hercules C-130 Transport, then went on to be a pilot of Southwest Airlines for 23 years. They are amazing, excellent people, dedicated to hiking.They said they had 290 hikers come through. He asked me to take my shoes off. He got me a cup of coffee and a bowl of beef stew, which I went through quickly. Then I got a big bowl of ice cream with walnut crunch, slathered in whipped cream and some sweet tea after that. What a treat!!I blew about 90 minutes sitting there, which dimmed my vision of doing a 20 mile day. I sat there until 10:30.The bad thing about gaps is knowing that you have to walk uphill out of them, the good thing is that, so often the Trail Magic is there. The Magic makes the walk amazingly easier. The walk up this hill was pretty steady and pleasant for the most part. At 3,500 feet, traces of snow started showing up again. At 4,000 feet I was back in a winter wonderland. The sides of the Trail had 4-5 inches of snow. By the time I hit 4,500 feet, the snow had once again invaded the Trail. There was slush all over the place and some patches of ice where there was shade. Where the sun had hit, there were puddles, some ankle deep. Some I could avoid, there were places where it was above the level of my shoes and I couldn't avoid it because these places were like a tunnel through the rhododendrons.After I went through Camp Creek Bald, ideas of doing a 20 mile day were totally erased.   Once you go over that hill, it becomes a boulder field. Just rocks, rocks, rocks, with snow in between them. In some places the snow was so deep that it almost completely obscured the boulders. There would be little points sticking up like rock icebergs. It's a total pot-shot of where it's good to step. At one place you would step and it was 2 feet deep between the rocks, another place you would step and there was a rock right there. Of course, it's all very slippery. A scary place to walk through, you just don't know what you're going to walk on. I managed to make it through there, although I noticed my right knee is giving me alot of trouble. I'm beginning to have alot of trouble putting weight on it and I attribute this to all the slipping and sliding yesterday. Any kind of lateral movement is not good for me.   I don't know what's going to happen, maybe I have to walk really slow.Some of the places where the Trail was running downhill in the sun, the snow was melting between the rocks, it was almost like a little creek running down the Trail.The rocks went on for hours. At one point, I came upon 2 signs, one said "Blue Blaze--bad weather route" and the other said "A.T. White Blaze". I took the white blaze going up. After about 5 minutes, I was beginning to regret taking that route. It went all the way up with rock steps, some buried in ice, very slippery. There was actually once place where I had to walk around a ledge. There was a good drop on it, the ledge was only 10 inches wide, you had to hug the rock and walk around the ledge and it was covered in snow. It was scary!! It was definitely a day where I was very happy I had trekking poles. They helped my stepping assurance. Just as I was thinking of going back to take the 'bad weather route', the Trail opened up onto the exposed ridge and what a magnificent view!! The ridge actually took quite a bit of time to walk through, maybe about an hour. But in the course of that hour you were up on this almost razor-thin ridge with a 360 degree view. On one side, mountains all covered in snow and on the other side a deep green valley with a big city in there. It was a very adventurous ridge walk.Just as I got off the ridge, I saw a peacock, in full feathers, orange tail, green wings. Later I found out that he sat on the Trail for hours. Quite an interesting thing to see out in the middle of nowhere. I took pictures of him.I got into the shelter at 4 o'clock. Took my pills. I ate, once again I have too much food but that's what happens with Trail Magic. I didn't eat my lunch, and breakfast ended up being the beef stew. I ate a few different things, and now i have some food I need to get rid of. I'm going to nurse this knee and see what happens with it.