Firescald to Big Bald

If you play with fire, you're gonna get burned.

While I didn't get burned, I did get scalded, a scolding from Mother Nature. Looking back I wish the name "Firescald" alone would have reminded me of that childhood aphorism. But then again, when you're hiking the AT, there aren't many decisions that you have to make. Sure, food is a big one; so is where you'll find water and make camp. Other than that, it's just a rather mindless exercise of following the blazes. Occasionally there won't be a blaze where you need one and you may not know at first which way to go. Other times you may find yourself perplexed at a double blaze, an indication that the trail does something that you should pay attention to: the start of a switchback, an intersection with another trail, or similar situation where if you're not observant you could easily find yourself walking off-trail.

So yes, there are decisions to be made, but Firescald Knob forced a new choice into my path: a choice between two viable options.

I took a moment to look at the sign, then looked up at the sky. There was plenty of gray, but that had been true all day. There was also plenty of wind, also present since morning. Given how normal the overcast, blustery weather had been I didn't give the sign much thought. Besides, why wouldn't I remain on the "true" AT path?

I went for the exposed ridge and was excited because a local told me that Firescald provided some of the best views from the trail thus far. As the trail wound up the ridge, the trees got smaller. Then the trees gave way to only rhododendron and mountain laurel, and before long even they became stunted in their growth due to the harsh, exposed ridge environment. Now being the tallest life form on the knob, I got my view and I didn't like what I saw.

The spine of Firescald stood tall, over 4500 feet high, towering over the valley to the west. As the westerly wind hit the mountainside it was hurled upward and its warm air collided with the cool, ridgeline atmosphere. The result: localized thunderhead clouds taking shape and billowing upward just to my left. Knowing that lightning can lead the edge of a storm by as many as ten miles, I now felt exposed on the "exposed ridge" trail. An impending sense of doom intensified as the first peal of thunder ripped across the sky. I suddenly felt taller than I ever had before.

So I did what anyone might do: snapped a picture to try and capture the moment, and then hightailed it north to lower elevations. The next half mile of scrambling across ridgeline rocks seemed like an eternity. I exhaled a welcome sigh of relief once I felt safe(er) amidst trees once again taller than me.

Later that evening I stopped at a shelter to enjoy a warm dinner: mac and cheese with tuna and freeze-dried peas, corn, and red bell pepper. Delicious. It was only 6:30 when I finished eating and the next shelter was six miles away with downhill terrain between. I could make it in two hours, so I pressed on. Soon after the sun dipped below the horizon, I crested a hill to find myself in a strange location. The ground was covered in healthy, green grass amidst a stand of pine that was mostly standing dead. I then passed multiple piles of bear scat adorning the trail, only to reach a headstone of a thirteen year-old girl who had lived and died in the late 1800's. The gravesite was decorated in fake flowers that looked strangely neon in the dusk sky. The whole stage left me with an eerie sensation, an acute visceral reaction that I wanted to leave the bears, the dead pine, and the fluorescing grave behind ... and quickly. It's a good thing it was dusk or I would have also noticed the perfectly preserved bear tracks in the nearby mud.

Two days later I found myself hiking up Big Bald. The morning air was crisp and the winds were high, sustained at 20 mph with gusts at 40 or more. As I crested Big Bald I hiked up and into the low-lying clouds. The suspended mist whisked by me, resembling the dust tossed up from a dry dirt road, recently disturbed by the tires of an old pickup. As I neared the top the wind grew in force, making it difficult for me to stay on the trail; each heavy gust left me as helpless as a piece of tumbleweed, tossed about like a rag doll. From the summit the trail dipped into a saddle and then back up the neighboring Little Bald. Venturing into the gap I marveled at the power of the wind. At eye level clouds were tearing in from the east of the bald as well as from the west, ripping past each other across the trail ahead of me. Just overhead there was a third wind pattern slinging clouds northward in the direction of my travel. I have never seen wind patterns with three different paths swirling in the same location, made visible by the misty clouds they took with them. It was truly a sight to behold.

It just goes show that mountain weather is an interesting, powerful and unpredictable force of nature.

It's all Downhill from Here

Before I write about my four days and three nights in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I need to get something off my chest: I didn't see a bear. For all the hype about two bears for every square mile and this season's higher numbers of bear cubs, I expected otherwise, just shy of being welcomed into the park by Smokey the Bear himself. Instead, I saw one pile of bear scat to tease my imagination, and my bear radar never even blipped once.

That's not to say there weren't good memories from the Smokies, but I'm not sure I ever did make a full recovery from bearing my initial bear-less disappointment. There were good memories, to be sure. There were also those that bordered on the bizarre, and others still that I hope to quickly forget.

Day 0

Before even crossing Fontana Dam into the park, my attention was quickly pulled from studying the spectacular amount of cement that is required to hold back a lake with over 10,000 acres of surface area and 238 miles of shoreline. My gaze went from the spectacular to a spectacle, from the dammed lake to a sea of yellow, as fifty-five Mustangs displaying four shades of bright yellow paint thundered into the parking lot.

I went from not seeing one car over the past three days to seeing a swarm of American muscle that you couldn't help but be mesmerized by. And after having the urge to pee, I couldn't wait to get into the park and run away from the Yellow Mustang Registry.

Day 1

I entered the Smokies after a night at The Hike Inn, weathering the deadly tornadoes that swirled on either side of Fontana. The initial uphill hike inside the park led me up to a rickety old firetower.

The angle iron was rusty, some of the wooden steps were rotting, missing bolts, or both, and a wind advisory was still out from last night's storms. The higher I climbed the stronger the wind became and the more the tower shook and swayed. Quite the adventure with quite the view.

From there I went deeper into the heart of the Smokies, with my left foot in Tennessee and my right in North Carolina. I soon found myself where the Spring Beauty could be mistaken for a light dusting of snow resting at the feet of a grove of Buckeye trees. Once I reached the first shelter I took a half-hour break while the temperature dropped a degree a minute, settling near forty degrees. The once snow-like Spring Beauty shut their petals and bowed their heads as they endured the cold; I shut my jacket and bowed my head as I hiked on to stay warm.

Day 2

The next morning I woke up to a quarter-inch of frost, windblown off the sides of stems and limbs. I had slept through the snow and ice that fell overnight, glad to still have my warm sleeping bag. Once I started hiking the wind blew the frost off the branches, the small crystals falling as snow against a cloudless blue sky, and the large flakes of ice falling to the trail as wood chips on a playground. As I hiked up Rocky Top the sun beamed down, glistening off the ice frozen to the surrounding grass. I could barely see a thing, and in a strange way it felt as though I were climbing Mt. Sinai, only at the top there was stone but no tablets.

The other side of Rocky Top gave way to more Spring Beauty with Trout Lily interspersed. However, the serenity of that view was quickly besieged by a group of singing hikers. It was obnoxious, really, as I had no interested in hearing Casey Kasem's Top 40 while on the trail. Unfortunately, the off-key a cappella gang followed me all the way to Clingman's Dome, the highest point on the AT, and farther still to the Mt. Collins Shelter where I had the duty to try and fall asleep to their bellowing. I planned an early start to the morning, and I wished more than ever that I would see my first bear that night.

Day 3

As planned, I woke up and hit the trail early. The morning began entering what seemed like Mirkwood forest. The thick pine blocked out the sun, leaving the forest floor dark and damp, an environment where even a slightly creative mind could imagine evil lurking in the shadows, perhaps even the Giant Spiders that inhabited Mirkwood itself. Thick moss lay covering the ground, dripping from fallen logs, and creeping up unsuspecting trees, adding an eerie green hue to the undergrowth. The trail was muddy and narrow, the going as treacherous as my imagination would allow.

From there the trail emerged once again into swaths of Spring Beauty. Only this time the grove of Buckeyes was replaced by a stand of pines, many of which had long since seen their youth. The eldest of the pine stood as only skeletons of their former selves: stripped of their bark, sun-bleached, and ashen-gray, they still stood proud, preserving the memory of their former prowess, though they no longer clung to life. I wondered if this was part of the natural lifecycle of the pine, a hazard of rooting on a ridge in the Smokies, or a plight brought about by an invasive species of some kind.

Day 4

My last day in the park was a collision of worlds where the Smokies were visited by Thor and his mountain-leveling hammer. Long stretches of trail saw large trees level with the ground, as if Thor got carried away in a game of "king of the mountain" and brazenly swung his hammer, swatting down any tree in his path. Some of these trees rested precariously against others as they leaned over the trail. In the wind they would creak and moan as bark ground against bark, daring any hiker to pass underneath. I warily trekked on, and soon found the northern boundary of the park.

With the Smokies behind me, three things have changed. First, I now hope Shenandoah will provide what the Smokies did not: the bear sighting I desire. Second, I now say that I am hiking to Katahdin and not just hoping to. Sure, hope is still an important part of the journey, but I have a large measure of confidence now too. Third, after cresting Clingman's Dome, the highest point along the Appalachian Trail, I can now say that, "It's all downhill from here."

Who Needs a Map and a Compass?

Navigation on the Appalachian Trail is an interesting discipline. On the one hand, it's as basic as following the white blazes that are painted on trees, rocks, fence posts, and signs, marking the way north (or south). It's like following Hansel and Gretel's trail of white pebbles. Simple, functional, and you don't even need a "White Blazes for Dummies" handbook. It just makes sense.

The white blazes make map and compass work entirely peripheral to the hiking experience, to the point where the map and compass just add unnecessary weight to an already burdened pack. In this way a data book, with mileages between water sources, shelters, peaks, roads, towns, etc., is much more useful. This is the resource that I carry, and it's worth its weight in gold.

If you dig a little deeper, the navigation question becomes more complicated. For example, let's take a look at the question, "Which way is north?" You could be talking about "AT north," which, if you're hiking from Georgia to Maine, is whatever direction your facing while hiking. Data books rely heavily on AT north, referencing objects as west or east of the trail, when really they mean left or right.

You could also be talking about true north. As you stand on the trail, this would be the direction you would have to face in order to be looking at the North Pole. If you've ever used a road atlas, these maps are oriented with the top of the map pointed toward true north. Again, pretty simple.

Finally, you could be talking about magnetic north. If you did take the extra weight of a compass during your AT hike, this is the direction the compass needle would point. But isn't that the same as true north? It depends on where you are, and on the Appalachian Trail that is never true because magnetic declination comes into play. Declination is the angle, measured in degrees, between magnetic north and true north. In general for 2011, the Mississippi river draws a north-south line across the US where magnetic and true north are close to the same. As you head east toward the Appalachians, the compass needle is "pulled" back west toward the Mississippi; the further east you go, the further the needle is pulled. At the southern end of the trail the compass needle is pulled counter-clockwise about 5 degrees; at the north end, declination grows to 15 degrees or more. So, while on the Appalachian Trail, to calculate true north you have to "add back" the declination to the compass reading to get true north. In other words, you are theoretically moving the compass needle clockwise the amount that it has been pulled counter-clockwise (or west) by declination. Make sense? If you're still confused, believe me, you're not the only one -- and I haven't even mentioned yet what happens when you head west of the Mississippi instead of east toward the AT, or how declination changes over time, but that's for another post.

All of that to say, on the AT I've found that it's more interesting to know where you're headed by sight, not by any of the three meanings of north. Yes, sighting the white blazes is part of what I mean, but there's also another meaning that is a bit more subtle and requires some practice. When I'm standing on a peak, I first enjoy the view. Then I'll look in the general direction of "AT north" and try and spot the next prominent mountaintop. Nine times out of ten, this is where I'm headed next. What if that next bald is some distance away? Usually, I'll just use line of sight to connect the summit I'm on to the one in the distance by a ridge line or gap that connects them; and if not a ridge, I'll visually connect the knobs that stand in between like a simple game of connect the dots. It's amazing how with a little experience, this method of navigation is fairly reliable, made possible by the fact that the AT loves to visit the vistas and other high points of the mountains along its course.

So how would you navigate the AT? Visual anticipation? A map and compass? Just a data book? Nothing at all? You'll find all of these types of hikers if you spend enough time on the trail.