Date: 2015-05-11
From: Asheville road

To: Little gap
Miles today: 10.0

After watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy Sunday, the beginning of the walk reminded me of walking through Mordor, death and blackness. Evidently some kind of controlled burn had recently been performed. The under growth was blackened and the bottom of the trees were scorched for the first several miles. I saw a cottontail rabbit sitting in the blackened ground seemingly not knowing what to do. He didn't even move as I walked by. I expected to see the Palmerton rocks from the other side of the river but the fog was too thick. Crossing the river towards highway 248 an ominous sign warned me of the symptoms of a stroke. This seemed like a bad omen. Crossing the highway was supposed to be done at the light but even there a "don't walk" sign discouraged the practice. I waited for a safe moment and hurried across, flaunting authority. Now I could see the barren ridge, rising like the back of a Segasauras rising from the highway. The was more vegetation than I expected but the upper portion was pure rocks. It didn't look to be 1000 ft high but I found out why later. Starting the climb I immediately encountered a parking area and my wife, waiting to watch me ascend. She was intimidated by the rocks but knew better than to dissuade me as I continued up, disappearing into the sparse brush. The climb was moderately steep but not difficult, even when it broke into the rocks. As I reappeared into my wife's view I waved and started picking my way through the boulder field. This was too easy. Where was the problem?Suddenly it was right in front of me, about 500 ft up. Standing in a relatively secure crevasse the next step was using a finger grip and toehold to climb a sheer wall about 6 ft to the next safe shelf. It was too steep to do with my pack on, so I thought. This must be where the other guy pushed his pack up first. Except that didn't seem possible either. The upper ledge was not reachable to support the pack. A slip up would send the pack on a one way ride into the lower rocks. Knowing my wife was watching I decided my best option was to pull the pack up after me. I wonder how many other hikers made that decision at this place. I almost lost the pack taking it off. Rebalancing it I realized how delicate my position was. I had to open the pack and partially remove several dry sacks to get to my stuff sack containing 50 ft of bear bag twine. It had never been used (I have an URSACK) but still tangled ridiculously when unraveled. Even though it should be 60 lb test I decided to double strand it for this job. Smart move. I took time to thread it through the pack's lift strap, both side straps and the shoulder straps. After attaching my sticks to the Velcro holders I also threaded the rope through their hand straps. I should have done more. The pack was stable in a crevasse but was on the wrong side of me. I didn't have room to move it around me so I had to step over it and then shot put the remaining knotted mess of rope up onto the upper ledge. So far so good. Without looking down I grabbed the handhold, pulled myself up to the toehold and reached for the upper ledge, careful to not disturb the rope. I pulled myself into the ledge an let out a breath. I found a place to tie off my rope, supposedly adding a level of safety to my next step of pulling my pack up to me. I lifted the pack off it ledge and was surprised how heavy it seemed. It swung into the side of the ledge and almost immediately caught on something. I swing it back and forth a few time along the ledge and managed to raise it about 2 feet when one of the strands broke with an emphatic twang. There I was was, my pack three feet below me hanging by a single strand of twine. I couldn't afford to pull on it now. I stepped back down to the toehold and slowly reached for the pack, finding first the stick pulls, then the rope loop and finally the pack lift strap. I felt like I was in a movie where the two hands slowly grow six inches as they reach to grasp each other. With two fingers around the lift strap I pulled the pack past the catch. It was my Gatorade bottle and it fell from sight down into the rocks below. I'm not sure anyone will recover that one. As I brought the pack up my level I hugged it like a lover, lying back in relief. I texted my wife "are you seeing this?" She was and did. The rest of the climb was anticlimactic. There was still some tricky portions and I pushed my pack ahead of me over the ridge,which looked like the top of the mountain to both of us. There was still a few hundred feet to climb on the other side of the ridge but even those rocks were easy compared to the ledge. Back in the birch trees I felt such a rush, realizing how close I came losing my pack or worse. I am still having flashbacks where something goes wrong!