Day 16: The March to Fontana Dam

March 23: It rained hard overnight, but much to everyone’s surprise, the sun was back out again by morning. It looked like it would be a clear and beautiful day! I was among the first to wake up in the morning and tried to quietly go about my business of eating breakfast and packing my backpack.

Another beautiful day! This was my view from Cheoah Bald early in the morning.

The day was largely uneventful. Downright boring when you get right to it. At Stecoah Gap, someone had left bananas on a picnic table, presumably for thru-hikers to help themselves.

I had originally planned to stop at Cable Gap Shelter for the night, perhaps the smallest shelter I had seen that looked like it would be crowded if more than two people stayed in it. I was feeling a little anti-social at the moment in any case and decided to go on a few miles further, cowboy camping between shelters.

Late in the day, I saw views of Fontana Dam and the lake it created. Life was good! I could have totally hiked there for the night, but I refrained because if the shelter at Fontana Dam was anything like I remembered from before, it was going to have a huge number of people there. It was among the biggest shelters of the trail and in a somewhat populated place. There would be hikers partying all night long. Or drinking. Or whatever. I didn’t want to be a part of that.

So I set up camp at an area my guidebook describes as a “stream” with a “footbridge.” If the stream or area has a name, neither are mentioned in my guidebook, but it left me about 3 miles short of Fontana Dam and—more importantly—largely to myself. It would be my first night on the trail all to myself. It didn’t look like it would rain so I didn’t even set up my tarp. Cowboy camping on the trail! And about an hour’s walk in the morning to Fontana Dam.

Step count today: 44,325 steps
Distance today: 18.3 (a new longest day!)
Total distance: 171.1 miles

My shadow picks up my pack. You didn’t know it could do that, did you? =)


A few trees look like they haven’t figured out that fall has already come and gone and that they should be in their winter hibernation state.


Mushroom colony on a dead tree.


Banana trail magic at Stecoah Gap.


Stecoah Gap




Cable Gap Shelter looked so small, it would feel crowded if it had more than two people in it!


Through the trees, I could see Fontana Dam and the lake it created behind it.


My campsite for the night. =)

Day 15: The Nantahala Outdoor Center

March 22: I was the first to leave the shelter this morning. NOC or bust! More likely, I was just with others who preferred sleeping in later than I did since I didn’t start hiking at a particularly early time—just my usual time between 8:30 and 9:00.

The trail descended steeply down to the Nantahala Outdoor Center, or NOC for short. Some of the other hikers weren’t sure what the NOC was. Was it a city? No, not really. I think of it more like a super-outfitter. You can buy gear and such, there’s a small general store, restaurants, lodging and a focus on water sports like kayaking down the Nantahala River which happens to run through the area. I remembered it being so crowded with people that it was difficult to breath! But all-in-all, I liked it. It was a scenic area, and anytime I could eat food that didn’t come out of my pack was a bonus.

The first thing I did was hit the restrooms. Running water! The second thing I did was hit the general store and get a few food items to resupply my dwindling supplies. I just needed a little bit—enough to get me to Fontana Dam.

Then I wandered over to the outfitters where they had set up a computer for thru-hikers to print permits for the Smokey Mountains. I logged in and printed the permit I had filled out on my smartphone a couple of nights earlier. I was set! Well, I also asked about some sort of strap or elastic cord that I might be able to use to keep bags hanging off my pack from swinging around. I made my pack a bit too small and have trouble getting everything I need in it—especially when I have more than a couple of days of food—so I took to hanging a couple small bags off my pack. But they had a bad habit of swinging around annoyingly. The outfitter was out of the thin elastic that I thought would work best, so I got a couple of small straps that I could cinch tight as needed. Hopefully that would do the trick.

And finally, I wandered over to the riverside restaurant where I ordered a Wesser Burger for lunch in their outdoor seating area next to the river. While waiting for the meal, I repacked my pack and added my new straps to hold the bags hanging outside of it in place. I also pulled out my smartphone to give Amanda and my mom a call to update them on my progress. It was a nice place just to sit down an relax next to the river and watch the occasional kayaker floating by.

But as all good things must come to an end, so did my meal and my time at the NOC. I didn’t intend to spend the night here, although I knew a lot of hikers would because the place can suck you in like a vortex. Unlike my first visit, this one wasn’t crowded with claustrophobic hoards of people. It was quite pleasant and probably a slow day by their standards, but I was happy with it!

The next part of the hike, however, I wasn’t looking forward to because I remembered it well from my last thru-hike: a steep, exhausting climb with many false summits. My guidebook showed it as a 3,000-foot climb—the biggest so far of the trail.

Filling up with water, again with the help of a leaf cleverly positioned by another hiker.

I started up and kept on going with barely a break. It was steep and tiring, but once again, not as bad as I remembered it. I passed quite a few people on the way up who seemed to be struggling a lot worse than I was, and about seven miles and a couple of hours later, I finally arrived at the Sassafras Gap Shelter. There was still plenty of room in the shelter and I joyfully piled into the top deck. It was supposed to rain overnight so I definitely preferred to stay in the shelter if there was room.

About 15 minutes after I arrived, it did start to rain and I was surprised at how well I timed it! Usually it seems like the rain starts about 15 minutes before I reach the shelter! The weather was quite considerate to wait until after my arrival this time around! The wet stragglers who soon showed up after me probably wouldn’t agree, though. =)

A couple of those stragglers who arrived had a clearly non-American accents and seemed to already know everyone else in the shelter. (I knew absolutely nobody upon my arrival, but that seemed to be the case most days since I was hiking faster than most people.) They all chatted for awhile, and when there was a lull in the conversation, I asked the girl where she was from. Switzerland. Really?! So I told her, “Gwita morka!” (not the correct spelling—it’s how I wrote it phonetically when I learned it).

The NOC—a small piece of civilization on the trail.

Which took her by surprise. “That’s Swiss-German! Not just German, but Swiss-German!”

Uh… yeah. She did say she was from Switzerland, after all.

“It means good morning,” she told me. 

“Yeah, I know that, but that’s the only thing I know how to say in Swiss-German.” Which dissolved into a conversation about my learning how to say “Good morning” in a couple of dozen languages, but “Gwita morka” was the first and only a handful that I can remember off the top of my head.

“You pronounce it very well!” she also told me, seemingly surprised at that as well.

“I guess I had a good teacher,” I told her. =)

When her significant other came back from wherever he had gone, I told him “Gwita morka” as well, but he seemed less impressed with my skills.

My Wesser burger, with the Nantahala River flowing in the background. That bridge in the background crossing the river—that’s the Appalachian Trail. It crosses the river on that pedestrian-only bridge. =)

“You just learned that, didn’t you?” while looking at the girl.

She answered for me, though. “No! I didn’t teach him that! He already knew it!”
The shelter eventually grew to be quite full by dark, and eventually everyone headed off to sleep. It was the end of another day!

Step count today: 30,699 steps
Distance today: 12.6 miles
Total distance: 152.8 miles

Kayakers would sometimes float down the river. I took this from the bridge crossing the river. (I ate at the restaurant in the background, although the outdoor seating area where I actually ate has been cut off. It’s just to the left of the photo.)

Coming out of the NOC, the Appalachian Trail crosses its first railroad track. Watch out for trains!

‘Twas a long, steep climb out of the NOC!

A memorial on the trail to a fellow who lost his life battling a wildfire exactly 783 feet from this plaque in the 1960s. I’m a little curious about the exactness of that 783 feet, though. Whose job was it to measure the exact distance from where this man died to the monument? Why did it need to be so precise?

The clouds are starting to look threatening!

The view from my second-floor spot in the shelter.

This was a special shelter—it came with an electrical outlet! =) That Swiss couple tried all night to use them, but didn’t realize that their devices used a different kind of outlet. (I’m totally kidding about that. In case it’s not obvious, this isn’t a real outlet and it was drawn in by hand. Nobody will ever connect anything to it!)

Day 12: ‘Twas a wet, wet day

March 19: It rained during the night and into the morning, and nobody in the shelter seemed excited about walking out into it. But as we all intended to reach Maine, walk in the rain we must!

The entire day, I saw almost nobody on the trail. It rained pretty much constantly—a light drizzle throughout the day. Occasionally it stopped, but it was often difficult to tell because the tree snot continued to fall during those brief interludes. It does keep one motivated to keep walking, though!

I stopped briefly at the next shelter—Standing Indian Shelter—for a snack break where I found Ice Cream buried deep in his sleeping bag. He had decided to take a zero day in the shelter in the hopes of waiting out the rain. Frankly, he looked more miserable than I did, and I was the one out in the rain hiking! I asked if he had any reading material to pass the time, but he said he didn’t. I know if it were me, I’d be crawling up the walls with insanity. To sit around all day long with—quite literally—absolutely nothing to do? I don’t know how people do it!

I continued onwards without any rests because it’s horrible to stop to rest in the cold, wet rain. I did pause briefly when I found a tarp on the trail, like it had fallen out of someone’s pack. It looked fairly clean and likely dropped recently, so I added it to the contents of my own pack and continued onwards in the hopes of catching up to the owner at the next shelter.

I continued onwards with plans to stop at the next shelter for the night. A shelter on a miserably rainy day like today would certainly hit the spot, but when I arrived, there were already a whopping nine people in the shelter. $#*#! Was I the only person hiking the trail today? Do these people not realize that they aren’t going to make it to Maine if they let a little rain take them off the trail?!

Even with nine of them, conversation between them seemed empty and hollow as if they had run out of things to talk about hours earlier. One of them commented that he was glad it rained all day because then he didn’t feel like he “wasted” an entire day doing nothing. I just wanted to slap him—but you did waste an entire day doing nothing!

And it’s weird, because every single one of them looked absolutely miserable tucked away in their sleeping bags like mummies. Cold and—although they stayed out of the rain—damp from the moisture that permeated the air. I was wet and generally miserable, but at least I felt like I accomplished something today instead of spending the whole day whining about the weather.

None of them claimed the tarp I had found, so I left it at the shelter for whoever came along and felt like they needed one. I certainly wasn’t going to carry it all of the way to Maine!

I ate a quick snack and thought over my options. I probably could have squeezed into the shelter if I wanted to. The main sleeping area was stuffed full of people in their sleeping bags—looking suitably miserable, but there was an overhanging roof that covered the dining area and I had little doubt that I could have squeezed into it if I wanted to for the night.

But I really didn’t want to spend an entire night with these people. They did not… impress me. Their lack of ambition and general look of misery suggested that it might be contagious. It seemed to have infected all nine of them, and I wanted no part of it. The next shelter, however, was so very far away for as late in the day as it was—and would have included a hike up Albert Mountain which I remembered being distinctly difficult and steep from my previous thru-hike. I had no desire to go up it in the rain.

My guidebook showed Betty Creek Gap a few miles ahead, though, where there would be water and places to camp. I’d shoot for that.

Onward I trekked through the miserable rain, finally arriving at Betty Creek late in the day. I saw a tent and a hammock already set up, which surprised me. It didn’t seem like anyone else was on the trail all day, and who’d be crazy enough to camp in the rain except someone like me? So I said, “Hello!” to meet my new neighbors. There was a slight pause of quiet before someone in the tent said, “Is that you, Green Tortuga?”

What?! Someone here knows me?!

“Uhh…. yeah. Who is that in there?”

A little section of door to the tent unzipped and a face peered through. It was Mouse and Georgia, who I had shared the shelter with last night (and this morning). They had left the shelter before me, but I hadn’t left much after they did and I hiked at a pretty good clip. I was sure I’d catch up to them at one of the shelters eating a snack, but I never did and wondered if maybe they had gotten off the trail somewhere to wait out the rain. They hadn’t, though—they had hiked exactly the same miles I did, but faster! I was impressed and delighted at their ambition.

Turns out, they had much of the same day I did, wanting to stop at the last shelter but deciding to go on after seeing how full it already was. Then they asked if I had seen a tarp on the trail—they had dropped one.

Oh…. crap! “Yes…. I did! And I carried it to the next shelter, but when nobody claimed it, I left it there.”

Oh, if I could turn back time, I’d have kept carrying that tarp for at least one more shelter. It would have been so great to have a happy ending—the lost trail item catching up with their owners. I’ve been the benefit of such mishaps and so wished I hadn’t given up on finding the owners of the tarp so quickly. I felt terrible.

Mouse tried to reassure me that it was okay. They had been concerned about littering on the trail and were happy to learn that at least I moved it on to a shelter. They didn’t even realize it was missing until they pulled out their tent to set it up and had no idea where they had lost it. “Well, I can tell you that much!” I said. “I probably carried it for four or five miles before I reached that last shelter.” They were surprised to learn that they had lost it so far back.

Anyhow, we caught up a bit. Nobody from the hammock ever spoke up, so I didn’t pursue who my other neighbor was. I also noticed another tent hidden even further back, but they also never said anything either so I didn’t pursue who they were. I was getting cold now that I wasn’t hiking and needed to set up my own shelter for the night instead of chit-chatting. =)

I found a place for my tarp and proceeded to set it up, then threw down my ground sheet underneath and unpacked my gear. Everything had a wet feel to it—that pervasive dampness that gets on everything because the air is so wet. I changed into my dry clothes, but even those had a clamminess to them, then into my sleeping bag for the night. I was done!

Total steps for the day: 34,826 steps
Miles for the day: 16.2 miles
Total miles: 106.4 miles

I found this graffiti in the first shelter I stopped at for a lunch break. Glad I didn’t have to sleep here! It looked like one scary shelter!

I did take a photo of the tarp where I found it on the trail—which I offered to show Mouse and Georgia in place of bringing the real thing to them. (They said it wasn’t necessary, though!)

Someone cleverly used this leaf to make it easier to collect water from this spring. =)

My original destination for the day was stuffed full of nine people when I arrived, so I decided to carry on.

My shelter for the night. It wasn’t crowded—that’s for sure! =) Camping alone like this, though, I was able to catch up on a lot of my reading rather than talking with other hikers all night long. I miss my reading….

Day 11: One State Down! Thirteen To Go…

March 18: We woke up to a beautiful sunrise, and I parted ways with Pink Panther and Jacoby. Pink Panther was heading into town and I didn’t expect to see her again. Jacoby, I figured, I’d see later that evening at the shelter. He might hike slower than me, but he seemed to keep up the same distances as I’ve been doing!

The first person I saw on the trail was a girl stopped along the side of the trail. It was near water, and I wasn’t sure if she was stopped to get water or just to rest, but she wore a black, long-sleeved shirt which made the bright, pink cap she wore really pop out, so when she said she didn’t have a trail name yet, I suggested Pink. She didn’t much like the name and said that there was already a Pink Panther on the trail (yep, I know, I shared the shelter with her last night!), but this girl seemed more Pink than the Pink Panther did. =)

I continued onwards where eventually I bumped into another fellow who told me his trail name was Clean Shave because he didn’t intend to grow a beard like most men on the trail. He was a little pudgy and spoke with a thick accent, so I asked where he was from: Puerto Rico. He seemed to enjoy talking… a lot! But there’s something likeable about the guy. He also told me that he started the trail with a 90-pound pack explaining that in the military, he had to carry even heavier loads and thought a 90-pound pack didn’t seem particularly heavy. Yikes!

Apparently, however, that didn’t work out well for him and he had since lightened his load to 40 pounds. Still a bit on the heavy side, but at least within the realm of normal. He asked about the girl “wearing pink” behind me. I laughed. She really needed to find a trailname or get rid of that pink hat if she didn’t want the trailname Pink to stick. =)


I headed onwards, including a quick stop at the Plum Orchard Shelter. When I left the shelter, I found Clean Shave and “Pink” sitting on the side of the trail resting and eating a snack. Neither of them seemed inclined to walk the 0.2 miles off trail to the shelter like I did, but I did tell the girl she should get rid of the hat because when I ran into Clean Shave, he asked about the girl “wearing pink.”

“NO!” she exclaimed, looking at him. “You did not call me Pink!”

“It’s the hat,” I told her. “You need another trailname quick or you need to ditch the hat!”

Apparently, Doppelganger had also been suggested as a trailname for her after someone mistook her for someone else (Pink Panther, perhaps?) Clean Shave and I both thought that sounded like a great trailname, but she didn’t much like that one either.


I continued on, never to see either of them again on the trail. (At least not by the time I’m writing this post.) I have no idea what trailname the girl settled on or was forced onto her, but I hope she likes whatever she ends up with. =)

Near the end of the day, I reached the North Carolina border. Georgia was finally done! The first time I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, I remember being absolutely ecstatic about reading this point. At the time, it marked the longest backpacking trip of my life. I’d never hiked to another state before. This time, I still felt a sense of accomplishment, but nowhere near the ecstatic feeling I had before. I hadn’t even hiked a hundred miles yet. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a scratch compared to my previous exploits.

As I remembered from my last thru-hike, North Carolina welcomes hikers with a serious punch, climbing steep hillsides with not even a hint of a switchback. It wasn’t as hard as I remembered it, but I was in better shape this time and not suffering from blisters and other ailments which slowed me down the last time. The trail, however, definitely turned more difficult almost immediately after crossing into North Carolina, even if it was easier for me this time around.

I finished the day at Muskrat Creek Shelter where I met an entirely new cast of characters. It seemed like I was meeting entirely new cast of characters on a daily basis—I was definitely hiking longer and farther than most people. This time, it included a father-son pair named Martha Stewart (clean up your crap!) and Dr. Pepper (for drinking 4 liters of it in an hour), a couple named Mouse and Georgia (I tried to convinced Georgia to name his blisters after each state the trail runs through so his first blister would be named Georgia. He claimed that there wouldn’t be enough states, though!).

Then there was Copperhead—named for her red hair—another Seattleite! Seems that our section of the world happens to be well represented on the Appalachian Trail this year. =)

Somewhat surprisingly, however, Jacoby didn’t make it to the shelter that evening. I guess I finally outpaced him too.

Total steps today: 37,888 steps
Miles today: 15.9 miles
Total miles: 90.2 miles

Sometimes shelters are built off-site then brought into the backcountry by helicopter like this depiction shows in the Plum Orchard Shelter. I’d really like to see that happen in real life, though!

Clean Shave used to have a 90-pound pack at the beginning of the trail. He’s managed to whittle it down to a mere 40 pounds now. =)

She actually wears more black than pink, but that bright pink contrasted against that black really makes the pink pop. However, she does not want to be called Pink. So from now on, I’ll just call her “Not Pink.” =)

I make friends with the tree that marks the Georgia and North Carolina border. =)

I took this photo because it was such a strange tree, but No Toes was using it as a resting place and wound up in my photo! =)