Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail (9 page)

Scottie went to the pay phone at about nine o’clock to call his wife. Forty-five minutes later he came back ashen-faced.

“Hey man,” Captain Hook said, “what happened?”

Uncharacteristically terse, Scottie said, “My daughter in France.”

“Oh no,” I said alarmed.

“Well, she’s okay right this minute,” he said, “but I have to get off the trail.”

Scottie was kept off the trail for more than a month, but didn’t give up. He got back on the trail and began racing all-out every day. But, on October 7 torrential rains made the trail impassable in Massachusetts and he spent several days waiting to cross a swollen, impassable stream. Finally, he had no choice but to give up on his dream. He’s now back in the computer business and wondering if he will ever get another shot at a thru-hike.

We had been warned that the pull out of Nantahala would be the most difficult thus far. That alert, combined with a dire weather forecast, had me tense. Unfortunately, most of the group I had traveled with the previous day had dispersed.

The first eight miles up to Cheoah Bald offered a net ascent of 3,300 feet. Almost immediately upon embarking, thunder began rattling in the distance and my gut tightened. The tendency in such situations is to hurry, which I tried to resist. Attempting to sprint up a mountain that long and steep was a hopeless enterprise.

Big, cold rain drops began to pelt me, and the sky became a veritable pyrotechnics show. The conditions steadily worsened with the elevation. I saw a tarp set up very low to the ground, right in the middle of the trail. Squatting down I yelled inside, “Hello, dry person.”

“Skywalker, is that you?” Seth’s voice came from parallel to the ground. “With your height you might want to look for somewhere to hide,” he yelled out.

“I’ll see you at the shelter,” I said and hurried off.

I had never thought my height made me much more vulnerable to lightning, despite many jokes over the years. But someone at the Appalachian Trail headquarters had told me that lightning (which travels at a decidedly brisk two hundred seventy thousand miles per hour and has the width of a pencil) was an underrated source of danger. I would later meet a hiker named Lightning Rod, who had twice been indirectly struck by lightning in previous years on the AT.

But the one thing my height did make me vulnerable to was getting “clothes-lined.” In the rain I would wear my baseball cap with the bill pulled low and the hood of the marmot jacket pulled to my eyebrows. This reduced my line of vision to just a few feet. Many times in the rain I would be walking along, only to have my head ram into some low-lying limb. Every time it rained I worked on my technique to avoid such headers, but never completely solved the problem.

As for trying to stay dry—forget it. All that expensive equipment we had purchased, with expert advice about how this or that piece would keep you from getting wet, ran into overwhelming reality on days like this. A hiker just had to become resigned to listening to the staccato patter of rain drops bouncing off synthetic equipment as your backpack, clothing, and persona became ever more water-logged.

A couple hundred yards farther up the mountain someone called out, “Skywalker.”

It was Tigress, hiding under some thick rhododendron bushes that lined the trail. Joining her, I asked “Do you think we should head back down the mountain? We’re heading to exposed areas.”

“No, that’s not a good idea,” she said calmly. The minute there was a letup in the intensity of the rain we hightailed it to the Sassafras Gap Shelter and settled in for what would be a long, miserable afternoon.

As the afternoon progressed, the shelter filled up, and the conversation was lively. One couple, Greenpeace and Greenleaf, were doing their doctoral theses in environmental science and couldn’t wait to get to the Smokies to view all the rare plant species there. Indeed, the southern Appalachians in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee are said to boast greater biodiversity than any deciduous forests in the world.

“We’re from Asheville,” Greenpeace said. “It’s the San Francisco of the South.” The counterculture element on the trail was strong.

Normally quite social, I sat curled up in the corner of the shelter, in a sullen mood. I have always been cold-natured, due to my tall, thin frame. Nonetheless, I had lived through ten Chicago winters. But the stark difference was that on frigid days there I always went inside at the end of the day. Out here I was stuck outside with neither the prospect of warmth, nor a good night’s sleep.

As things stood I had only done 5.9 miles for the day, which was not a pace that would get me to Maine before winter.

The next day was to be the coldest single day I experienced on the AT. It was a sharp climb to Cheoah Bald, and the visibility steadily worsened. The one thing I could see was a tarp set up right at the top of the bald, just ten feet from a steep dropoff!
Is this person crazy or am I just a wimp?

I practically ran to get off the exposed bald, but then it began to sleet. This brought out my worst phobias, and I hurried to catch up with Seth. Not having expected weather quite this bad, I had taken off my long johns before hiking, and didn’t want to slow down to put them on. This was a mistake; the same one I had made on Blue Mountain in Georgia.

“The nice thing about sleet,” Seth said, “is that you don’t get wet.” The guidebook was wrong. The topography in this section was ferocious and made all the more difficult by the high winds buffeting us. Once again I was urinating every fifteen minutes. “Looks like you’re hypothermic again,” Seth noted in half droll, half-serious fashion.

We finally descended steeply into Steccoah Gap. But the powerful wind howling through the gap made it impossible to take the usual break before beginning the climb out of the gap.

The ATC guidebook didn’t even mention a climb out of Steccoah Gap, which was a grievous oversight. Had I known what lay immediately ahead I might have tried to hitchhike somewhere on the highway that runs through the gap. The trail ran straight up the mountain, with the wind tearing at me from the west. It was impossible to keep up with Seth as he galloped ahead. That was a bad sign for the simple reason that I had usually outpaced him during the first couple weeks on the trail.

On the steep ascent I ran into Ken and Ruth, a middle-aged couple from Michigan. Ruth was reed-thin and diminutive, while Ken had a strong, ruddy complexion and a powerful gait. As I passed by he was cheerleading her with the likes of, “Yes, honey. You’re the one. This is your trail.” Ruth, meanwhile, had a stricken, exasperated look. She also appeared to be the only person on the trail colder than I was.

Coming the opposite direction, down the mountain, I made out the face of Uncle Charlie. He had passed by the shelter the previous day and then announced in his salt-and-vinegar style that he was going to continue despite the weather.

“Uncle Charlie,” I called out as he approached, “looks like you’ve found the best direction to hike this bloody mountain.”

After letting out a blue streak of expletives, he said defiantly, “Fuck this. I’m going back to Florida.”

As he quickly disappeared into the fog I began to wonder if I shouldn’t at least follow him down to the road. Instead, I stopped to quickly eat a Pop Tart. Ken and Ruth trudged past, and I handed them each a piece as they grunted thanks between gasps of breath.

After nine miles I finally arrived at Brown Fork Gap Shelter, which had been my intended destination the previous day. It was sleeting again and Seth was lying there in his sleeping bag. I quickly pulled mine out and jumped in to preserve my body temperature, but the shelter was exposed to the cutting wind. It was useless. The discussion all around was whether to risk going, but staying there in that kind of cold also seemed like a risk to me. I was seriously considering retracing the 2.5 miles I had just climbed to get back to the road.

Ken was urging Ruth to continue. She looked as enthusiastic about heading out as she would have over the prospect of contracting leprosy. Her hands were so cold, even wearing mittens, that Ken had to buckle up her backpack. “We’ll be okay, honey,” he said as he literally physically aided her forward progress back to the trail. (Their game effort lasted another 150 miles).

One way or another I had to get out of there as well. Bidding Seth goodbye, I retraced the side trail on which the shelter lay to get back to the AT. Up to within five feet of arriving at the AT I honestly didn’t know whether I was going to take a left to go back down the mountain I had just climbed or take a right and go forward.

I turned right and continued north, but once again I wondered if my life was at risk from exposure. It’s unnatural to do any strenuous physical activity without breathing through your mouth. However, the one useful thing I had taken away from two years as a feckless kung-fu student back in Chicago was how much energy a person can save by breathing through the nose. It helps relax the muscles and regulates the energy flow. As I bore into the howling winds and sleet, focusing on this efficient breathing technique helped relieve my anxiety, despite the trail being abandoned. After several miles of roller-coaster terrain I was elated to come across Yellow Creek Mountain Road.

I walked three miles down it without seeing a soul, until the well-known Hike Inn came into view. Jeff and Nancy Hoch offered me a room and a ride into town to resupply.

Out in the parking lot to my surprise were Tigress, Greenpeace, and Greenleaf. They had gotten off back at Steccoah Gap and hitchhiked here. That was ironic considering that I had been treated at the shelter the previous evening as some sort of hypothermic freak show, but lasted longer in the diabolical weather today than they had. That evening I savored one glass of ice water after another without ever urinating—a sure sign of deep dehydration.

I awoke buoyant at the Hike Inn, after my first good night’s sleep on the trail. Yesterday’s gruesome-but-successful march in adverse conditions seemed like a big step forward mentally. Jeff drove me back to the trailhead to hike the remaining seven miles to Fontana Dam.

I came upon Seth and Rooney in the Cable Gap Shelter after less than a mile. Both had the grizzled look of having been in the woods; they were poorly fed, cold, wet, and were moaning about everything. I, on the other hand, was clean, well-shaven, well-fed, warm, and upbeat. The tables had been turned on them, and in unison they exclaimed, “Asshole,” when I walked up. We started hiking, and I noticed I had regained my speed.

At the top of the mountain Fontana Dam came into full focus. Built by the TVA during the Depression, it is the largest dam east of the Mississippi, and the view is spectacular.

When we got to the dam there was a booth set up to get a free permit to enter Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Chapter 5

S
moky Mountain National Park, which is spaced out on both sides of the North Carolina-Tennessee border, is the most visited national park (ten million annual visitors) in the United States. The Smokies are labeled the second wettest place in America, and are especially renowned among AT thru-hikers because this is where the trail passes through its very highest elevations. Due to the sudden upward thrust in elevation out of the Tennessee Valley the weather here in April is utterly unpredictable—
in the spring it rains twenty out of thirty days in these parts
. Many experts suggest hikers carefully plan their entrance into the Smokies—the same advice given for the White Mountains in New Hampshire.