13.7 miles
9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
We woke up to a rainy day of hiking. It was nice to meet Tom “10-K” Bradford today since I have seen his posts of Whiteblaze so many times and seen him mentioned in other hikers’ online journals. He picked us up at Nolichucky River where we left our car and shuttled us to Greasy Creek Gap to begin our hike. At Greasy Creek Gap there is a well-known hostel called Greasy Creek Friendly. Evidently she named it that because of a hostile neighbor who has given her some trouble so she wanted hikers to know that it was a friendly place.
When we arrived at the gap, I went up to the porch to ask
how to get to the trailhead. There was a
note on the table beside the door which said, “I am gone to trail days in
Damascus. Please help yourself to the
hostel or the front porch. Please don’t
pee in my creek.” Okay. We didn’t get to meet Connie today.
So we started walking up the old jeep road behind the house
to find the trailhead. The bunkhouse is
behind the house and there were a couple of hikers in the yard. We asked them if we were headed in the right
direction and they said yes. We asked
them if the trailhead was easy to find at the top of the hill and which way do
we turn? The lady said, “Well I’ve never
been up there, but it’s easy and you turn to the left.” Okay.
After a few guesses on which path to take as we went up the
hill, we found a campsite and the white blaze.
Wait-up pulled out his compass to help us find the southerly direction. It said turn right on the trail. Umm, that didn’t seem right. Plus the lady said turn left, although she
had never been up there. What to do? I
was thinking - Have we ever gone north
on the trail to go south? Of course we
have; the trail switches around all the time.
So, do we trust our instincts or go with the compass? I thought about calling someone from one of
the hostels to ask, but we didn’t have cell phone reception. While I was wondering around on top of the
mountain to see if I could get reception, I found a note on a tree with a “You
are here” map. We were able to determine
from the map that we do indeed turn left to go south. So off we went.
We got to Iron Mountain Gap in record time – 4.2 miles in 1.5
hours. Wow! That was the first time we saw people to ask
them if we were headed south, but we were glad to have them confirm that we
were. At 1:00 we met a nice brother and
sister middle-age couple at Cherry Gap Shelter. Evidently they were trying to
wait out the rain.
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| The sign at Iron Mountain Gap |
Just past Cherry Gap Shelter while I was stepping over a
fallen tree on the trail, I heard a noise down the side of the mountain. I immediately said, “What was that?” Wait-up and I looked down the ravine to see a
small bear scampering away down the hill.
He then climbed a tree while we were watching and looked back at us to
see where we were and what we were doing.
We were just standing there watching him since we were not close to
him. When he spotted us again, he
scampered down the tree and went away.
Too bad I didn’t have time to get my camera. This is the first bear that Wait-up has seen
on the trail, my second. I saw one in
Georgia.
 |
| Having lunch under the overhang of a rock. |
We had a hard time finding a dry place to eat lunch. Resourceful Mr. Wait-up finally found a rock overhang and we were able to stay a little dry while eating.
Then we started making the climb up Unaka Mountain. It was a rocky path and a typical
mountain. When we reached the top of the
mountain we came into a forest. A spooky
forest. Since it was rainy and cloudy,
it kinda looked like a haunted forest. I
was glad to exit it.
 |
| Unaka Mountain was spooky in the fog. |
When we came out on
the other side of the forest, we met a man who seemed to be somewhat
disoriented. He had already set up his tent for the night although it was early
in the day. He told us that he had been lost, wondering around the
mountain. He was suppose to camp at a
site before the mountain but couldn’t find it. We asked if he was alright and
he said no, he was out of water. Wait-up emptied his water bladder into the man’s
water bottle so he would have water to prepare his evening meal.
We planned to camp on Beauty Spot. We had to stop at the first available
watering hole to resupply. There was a
nice campsite beside Highway 230 but, since we don’t like to camp beside roads,
we got water and moved on. It was hard
to tell exactly where Beauty Spot was.
The highway ran alongside the trail off and on and in our book we saw
USFS 230 listed twice along with Beauty Spot Gap and Beauty Spot. And there was also a Deep Gap listed there
with a campsite but it must have also been beside the road. Since it was raining
and foggy, we couldn’t really see much of Beauty Spot anyway, so we finally
just found a level spot in the woods and set up our tent in the rain. Everything was wet by the time we got up the
next morning.
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