Plumorchard Shelter to NC line and back to Blue Ridge Gap

Day Ten – Sunday, October 9
7.5 miles in 3.5 hours
Plumorchard Shelter to NC line and back to Blue Ridge Gap

For the first time this morning I felt no sore muscles in my legs. We hiked 4.4 miles to Blue Ridge Gap. 

We took one water bladder and some snacks, our camera and my journal and hid our backpacks in the woods.  Then we headed toward the North Carolina line.

Entering the Southern Nantahala Forest.

Going the remainder of the 3.1 miles up to the line was a breeze, wow! What a difference it made not to have a load of 35 and 45 pound backpacks on our back. 

We were surprised to see the tree in the middle of the trail and realize it was the tree that had the NC line sign on it in 1.5 hours!  We celebrated by taking lots of pictures of us and the tree, then sat down for a snack of cheese crackers and water. 

Our first view of the NC/GA line. 

Yee-Haw!  We made it!  The first 76.4 miles of the AT!

The little bag that Wait-Up was carrying was even lighter on the way down and he was leading the way, so we made it back to Blue Ridge in 1.25 hours. 

Like one old man said when we met him coming up the trail when we were going back down, “We're hiking machines by now!”  He and his wife also came from Springer Mountain and left the day before we did.

We then picked up our backpacks where we had hidden them and started walking down the rough gravel road to wait for our ride.  The walk down was rougher than any walking we had done today.  At the end of the gravel where the paved road started (about a mile down), we laid down and rested until Sally came and picked us up.  She was a welcome sight!  

The slag road at BlueRidge Gap we had to walk down to get to our last shuttle ride. 

When I got in the car, my leg started itching (my inner thigh to be exact).  By the next morning, I had a full-blown case of poison ivy on my inner thigh and it later spread to other surrounding areas…..

We booked a room at the Holiday Inn (no more Budget Inn for us!) with a king size bed and a Jacuzzi.   Awwwwesome!

We were on the trail for parts of 10 days, hiked about 8 1/2 days of the those 10 days.  Walked a total of 81.5 miles in 59 hours, a rate of approximately 1.4 miles per hour. 

We have already planned our strategy for next Spring.  We will park our car at Sally and Joyce’s house, have them shuttle us up to NC to some point depending on how long we want to hike and we will hike backwards to Blue Ridge Gap. 

Can’t wait for more adventure !

Sassafras Gap to Plumorchard Shelter

Day Nine – Saturday, October 8
10.7 miles in 8 hours
Sassafras Gap to Plumorchard Shelter

 The Lord saw that she was afraid of noises, so the Lord said “I’ll send the wind to blow so that she won’t hear the noises.”  And He did. 

The wind blew all night long so loud that she could hear nothing else. We slept like a baby in the middle of the wilderness, not knowing if there was anything outside to make noises.  Even when we awoke the next morning and broke camp, the wind continued to blow for most of the morning. 

My backpack felt like an old friend this morning when I strapped her on.  We were low on water again since we did not find water at Sassafras Gap, so we had Fig Newtons for breakfast.  BUT it made our pack lighter. 

At the end of the day yesterday I began to notice an odor that I had not noticed  before, uh, yea, it was warmer now and we did have a strenuous day, but I don’t usually smell like that when I sweat.  It finally dawned on me as I was walking today – I didn’t apply my deodorant when I showered at the Inn!  Ha ha, not a good time for that!  I guess I was too interested in getting started on that foot rub after the shower. We didn’t carry deodorant with us on the trail, of course, - to lighten the load, you know, so I would have to wait until civilization again.   In addition to that, I forgot to pack the sports wipes this time.  They had been a small effort toward a shower for us, but of course nothing like the real thing.  Now I didn’t even have those.  And, remember, I had stopped packing a change of clothes.  Oh well, we just have to live with the smell for now.  That’s the primitive life!

We bypassed Addis Gap, not knowing for sure that we would find water there and because it was .5 off the trail.  At 11:30, we made it to the streams right before Dicks Creek Gap where we found a beautiful flow of water coming out of a pipe right beside the trail.  Ah!  Finally we could have coffee!  We cooked our oatmeal and enjoyed our breakfast. 

The water source at the streams right before Dicks Creek Gap.

Us at Dicks Creek Gap.

4.5 miles more to travel today.

We got to Plumorchard Shelter about 4:15.  This one is known on the trail as the 3-star shelter, I guess because it has 3 floors.  We had traveled nearly 11 miles today in about 8 hours.  Although it was early to stop, we felt that we had done enough for the day and this was the best place to camp for the night.

3-star Plumorchard Shelter

In a little while a man struggled in and we laughed to see him fall out on the shelter floor from exhaustion.  It reminded us of what we had done at Blue Mountain Shelter several days before.  You do reach such a state of exhaustion sometimes that you can hardly move.  That’s the way he was, he said, “Just give me a minute and I’ll be okay.”  We knew exactly what he meant! 

He was shortly joined by 4 other men, coming in one at a time.  Two sets of brothers in the group.  They had come from the north and had traveled today from Standing Indian Shelter on the NC side of the line, about 12 miles.  It was interesting to hear the story of people along the trail.  These guys live in Raleigh, NC and they often take the end of the week off from work to hike the trail in short sections.  They started in Virginia and have hiked the trail south from there.  On this particular trip they left their vehicle at Dicks Creek Gap and were shuttled back up to Franklin, NC to hike south.  One more trip like this and they would make it to Springer Mountain to finish the southern portion of the trail.  Sounds like a fun thing to do on boy’s vacation, huh?  They had some interesting equipment, Wait-up was particularly interested in their hammocks and was inclined to get one for our next venture, but I am not convinced that I would like to sleep out in the open like that, although we tried one of their hammocks and they are very comfortable.

Knowing they had come from where we would be going the next day, we began to ask them about the trail.  They told a different story from the man and boy we had met the day before.  Their story was confirmed by the Hiker’s Companion.  The mountain on the other side of the line was 1650 feet above where we were now sitting.  Did we really want to hike 11.3 miles UPHILL on our last day of hiking????  I don’t think so.  We had to make it all the way to Deep Gap, US Forestry Service Road 71 since that was the first pick up point on that side of the line, or we could go to the line and turn around and come back to Blue Ridge Gap in GA to be picked up there.  Although we originally voted against backtracking, we now decided that was the better option to make our hike only 7.5 miles.  We would have to retrace our trail 3.1 miles from the line south back to Blue Ridge.  That also meant on our next time out, we start the trail in Georgia again, but, oh well, we’ll worry about that next time.  We had had enough for this time.