Date: 2015-04-24
From: Fontana Dam 

To: Mollies Ridge Shelter 
Miles today: 11.1
Weather: overcast clouds

I didn't journal today so this is my recollection from today's perspective (04/25)I really, really, wanted to just stay put at the beautiful shelter on the lake. I counted my dinners and counted the miles until my next resupply in Gatlinburg and just thought about the shuttle into Fontana dam village and the restaurants and all the good things. Glumly I packed up my tent, used the flush toilets one last time, and hit the trail, why? because this show must go on and i could have stayed there for days. I also was excited to get into the smokies. There are rules in the great smokey mountain national park (GSMNP) about staying only in designated camp areas or shelters. I intended to hike in and stay at the first campsite 6 miles or so in. I was hiking behind some friends when i saw them coming back down the trail south. They said that they had got a weird feeling about a southbound hiker and came down to check on me. I did run into the guy and he did give me the willies so it was really nice that they backtracked about a quarter mile just to check me out We spent some time and had some amazing views from on top of a firetower. I had been teasing the guy for a couple of days that i wanted to hear his punk rock song voice because he was in a band. He put his earphones in and said "this ones for you rue" he was singing at the top of his lungs when we rounded a bend and he took his ear buds out and said "bear". Huh what do you mean bear? "Bear". A huge black bear was standing on the side of the trail, maybe 30 feet away. Now usually from what ive read once you see a bear he runs away. Not this one. The three of us grouped together and started to bang our hiking sticks and yell at him. Nothing, the bear just looked at us. So I got out the very scariest loudiest voice I had and we banged some more. The bear took a couple of big butted and (very cute) hops up the ridge and kept right on staring at us. We decided we had better just pass on by and so we slipped by single file with an eye behind us. Right around the next bend I noticed a tiny baby bear foraging around, he didn't even look up. That he bear was a she bear, a mama bear with a cub. The experience was both incredible and terrifying and i am grateful to have gotten through safe. Saint (the punk rocker) said "if my grandma was still around she would say that creepy guy was an angel". If they had not turned around hours before they or I would have encountered the bears by ourselves. If Saint had not been singing to me who knows what would have happened. The last thing you want to do is startle a mom bear with a cub around. I am still emotional when I think that those guys were ready to fight the creepy angel if I was in trouble. And if they weren't I might have had a really scary bear encounter. Crazy. Anyway. We ran into the bears about a half mile from the campsite I had intended to stay at. When we got there no one else was there, not a soul. I told my friends Id be fine there and they said um no let's go, they had planned to go 5 more miles to the shelter. I did not want to go 5 more miles to the shelter at 5oclock but on I went. 11 miles all up hill. The dam i crossed that morning was at 1700 ft and the shelter that night was 4602. Long day. We didn't get into camp until 8:30. I hiked for 10 hours. My friends walked in slow motion ahead of me as I hobbled as quickly as I could behind them and they did that all the way until the shelter. I had rubbed two large raw patches into the insides of each heel and every step burned. I felt and knew that I had reached the end of my pain tolerance and then we could see the shelter up ahead. By the time we got in and ate and set up our tents (with head lamps and in the dark) it was very late. I am incredibly and overwhelmingly saturated with emotion following this experience. The miracle of it all. Well being is so fragile. Gratitude fills my heart and mysticism my mind, there is no such thing as coincidence. I remember, firmly, how I felt when that mom bear looked right into me and what it meant for me to be right there with her. And the tears are just rolling down my cheeks now as I write this because I am so sad to have been so loud and angry to her and so sorry to have yelled and did my best to frighten her when she was just there with her baby. I feel so terrible because I loved her so much.