Day Three on the Appalachian Trail - July 31, 2019
On Wednesday, the third day on the trail, we woke up with the sun again. We managed to eat and pack up camp a little faster than the day before, but not by much. Filling up our water took a while. Since Left Buddy (LB) drinks his water straight from the Sawyer squeeze filter (paid link) connected to a Smart Water bottle and doesn’t need to squeeze his water into another bottle, he could help Right Buddy (RB) finish filling up her water bottles. Just as we were about to get back on the trail, a hiker with a trail name of Pilgrim stopped at the campsite to rest and have a snack. Not wanting to be rude, we chatted with him for a few minutes. We therefore didn’t get started on the trail until 9:15 am, just a few minutes earlier than the day before.
Starting out, we were a little surprised that our legs were not stiff and sore. RB had a couple of leg cramps during both nights, but, otherwise, our legs were feeling pretty good. Our training has paid off so far. The first mile and a half was downhill, about a 900 foot drop in elevation, to Tellico Gap. It appeared that we were the first ones on this stretch of the trail for the day because we were running into lots of spider webs across the trail. When one of us would get tired of wiping webs off of our face, we would switch who was in the front. Just when we would get tired of waving our poles at real or imagined webs, we would drop our guard and take another one to the face.
When we got to Tellico Gap, we heard a voice talking to us. Peeking around the corner we spied Viva sitting near a cooler. Viva was section hiking the trail in the southbound direction, with braces on her knees. She was resting after just completing a long downhill section. She told us that there was trail magic in the cooler and thought there was at least one Dr. Pepper left. We are not big fans of Dr. Pepper and it seemed a little early in the morning for a soda, so we didn’t open the cooler, saving the drinks for hikers who are doing longer sections than we are. From our understanding, trail magic is common not only along the Appalachian Trail, but also along most of the long distance trails in the country. Trail magic is when a generous person decides to deliver a treat along the trail for others to enjoy, usually food, drinks or water. It’s even more of a treat if it is cold, as there isn’t a way to keep things cold while hiking. People who provide trail magic are sometimes people who have previously hiked the trail and want to give back, but often are just people who are fans of hikers and just want to make someone’s day, even if they don’t get to meet them. Sometimes people will hang around and interact with the hikers who receive the trail magic, but not always. The person who delivered the cooler to Tellico Gap was nowhere to be seen. But that is understandable, since the trail currently, that we could tell, has hikers several hours apart. We talked with Viva for a little while and thanked her for clearing our next trail section of spiderwebs for us before we started up the incline to reach the observation tower at Wesser Bald.
It was a pretty steady climb to Wesser Bald, almost 800 foot elevation gain over about a mile and a half. We managed to keep up a pretty good pace, but we had a good sweat going by the time we reached the observation tower. We grabbed food for lunch out of our bags and climbed to the top of the tower before sitting down for some well-deserved relaxation time. The views from the observation tower were even better than the views at the Wayah Bald tower the day before. A handful of day hikers joined us. Then Bruce, Kristine, and Karen showed up. This was the largest crowd of people we’ve seen in the same place since we’ve been on the trail. Evidently the Wesser Bald tower is the place to be. Through our conversation with Kristine and Karen, we found out that they had camped less than a mile from us again. This time they camped at Rocky Bald and woke up with a view of the sunrise. That sounded much better than where we camped. Just as we were leaving Wesser Bald, Pilgrim was coming up the trail.
RB was hoping to wander off near the tower to squat in the woods, but there were too many people around for her comfort. So we headed down the trail to find a good spot. Unfortunately, the terrain was pretty steep near the trail. In the meantime, we took the short side trail to the spring-fed stone cistern to refill our water. After about a mile, we reached the Wesser Bald Shelter which had a privy. RB was glad she waited. She’ll take a privy over squatting every time. While we were taking turns using the privy, Pilgrim caught up with us again. He was planning to spend the night at the Wesser Bald Shelter. After some more interesting conversations where we learned that for Pilgram, trail life is his life, we hit the trail again.
The trail from Wesser Bald Shelter to the Jumpoff was relatively flat and we felt we were making good time. We were leap-frogging a family of four who was day hiking to the Jumpoff, passing each other when one group would stop for a water break. It wasn’t very clear exactly where the Jumpoff was. The trail headed out along a ridge to a point and started to descend quite steeply. The trail became very technical at this point, very steep, with tall step-downs and very rocky. It wasn’t quite a scramble, but it was very close to one. At some point RB had split the toenail on her longest toe, so the steep downhill was becoming pretty painful. When we stopped so that RB could try to tie her boots tighter to prevent her toes from touching the front of her boots, Bruce passed us.
From Jumpoff point, things started to go downhill, literally, physically, and emotionally. In hindsight, tying the toe box tighter on RB’s boots was a mistake. This just caused blisters to start to form on her toes. To add to the misery, RB started to get some chafing from her pants. After about a mile, the trail turned from rocky to overgrown. It was still pretty steep, but the trail was narrow and you needed to hold your hands up to keep the vegetation from slapping you in the face, especially when there were thorns. RB managed to get a cut on her hand from the thorns. Just to make things more interesting, we came across quite a few downed trees across the trail that we either had to climb over or crawl under. Then to make things even more interesting, it seemed like RB bumped her sore toe every time she tried to climb over or crawl under a tree. We thought we didn’t have much further to go, especially when we passed what we thought was a "weak spring" shown on our map. What really dashed our spirits was when we reached the real weak spring, we were a mile and a half short of where we thought we were and still had two and a half miles to go. That was a little depressing to learn.
When we reached the A. Rufus Morgan Shelter, which is one mile from the NOC trailhead, we were feeling pretty battered. We were tired, RB was in pain and we were low on water. Bruce was there. He was planning on staying there for the night until he realized that it was only one mile further to the NOC, where he could rent a cabin, eat in a restaurant and take a shower. It was an easy decision for him to keep going to the NOC. We started feeling better after we rested, replenished our water, ate a snack and bandaged RB’s hand. OK, one final push for the last mile then ice cream at the Big Wesser! That was enough to motivate us to get up and move on.
It was such a feeling of accomplishment and relief when we saw the trailhead sign. We made it! And it was only 6:15 pm! We waddled over the bridge to the other side of the Nantahala River to use the flush toilets. Our next priority was food. LB was kind enough to walk up to the counter at Big Wesser and order loaded nachos and cold Cokes while RB plopped herself down at an outdoor table next to the river. The food tasted so good, but we think we enjoyed the cold Cokes even more. Now it was time for ice cream! RB gingerly walked up to the counter to order them. “Sorry, we’re closed.” Nooooooo! We thought we had plenty of time because we knew that the River’s End Restaurant closed at 7 pm and we just assumed that the Big Wesser, which is a bar, would close later than that. Evidently, it is only open late, until 8 pm, on Fridays and Saturdays, but today was Wednesday, so they closed at 6 pm. They were already doing us a favor by serving us the nachos after 6 pm. The employee RB spoke with felt sorry for us, but he explained that the soft serve machine had already been emptied and shutdown, so it wasn’t possible to serve us ice cream. OK, it’s not the end of the world…but it was close to it.
Earlier we were hoping to spend some time at the NOC and meet up with Bruce, Karin, and Kristine one last time. However, we weren’t sure how long it would be until Karin and Kristine finished the trail and LB spotted Bruce all cleaned up and heading over to the River’s End Restaurant. RB didn’t want to walk any more than she had to because the chafing was really tender. Driving back to the Tsali Campground for a shower sounded like the best option so that’s what we did. We wish Bruce, Karin and Kristine the best and hope they enjoyed their trips. And, who knows, maybe we’ll run into them again somewhere on our future travels.
Before we left the NOC, we made sure to post on Facebook that we finished the trail, so our kids would know we had gotten off the trail safely. It feels like a little bit of a role reversal to be checking in with your children, but we've been trying to make it a habit during our travels for our own safety. We had previously texted them when we were at the Winding Stair Gap trailhead when we started hiking. Amazingly, we remembered to text them our progress while we were enjoying the views at the Wayah Bald stone tower and the observation tower at Wesser Bald, which were about the only two locations along the trail where we had a cell signal.
The showers felt so good back at the campground. It also was great to put on some clean clothes. Even though we tried rinsing out our underwear and socks on the trail and hung them on our packs during the day, they never really completely dried. Almost the whole time we were on the trail, our shirts were soaked with sweat. RB swears her shirt started smelling like mildew on the last day. As RB was hanging out all of her gear at the campsite to air out, she noticed that LB had headed to the showers without his towel. So she grabbed it and walked it over to him, despite the chafing. It was worth it to see how grateful he was when he opened the shower door and she handed the towel to him. Now that’s love!
As we were getting ready for bed that night, we could hear the loud cicadas in the campground. Why were there no cicadas while we were on the Appalachian Trail? That's something that still baffles us. This campground was only a few miles from the trail. Our Neolite backpacking mattresses (paid link) are pretty comfortable, compact and light. We sleep pretty well on them while we are backpacking, despite the noisy crinkling noises that they make when we roll over. However, that night it felt so good to crawl into bed in our van with its five inch memory foam mattress. Is that why we go backpacking, to appreciate the comfort and modern conveniences when we get off the trail? Well, maybe that’s part of it. We are definitely more appreciative. But we think it’s more about the adventure, discovering what is around the next corner, pushing our limits, feeling healthier through exercise, feeling more connected to the nature around us, and the great feeling of accomplishment when we conquer the challenge. In summary, we feel more alive.
Check out our related YouTube video: Three Days on the Appalachian Trail 2019.
(RB)