Ben and I had planned an AT hike near Roan Mountain for Saturday of this weekend, but that's the day the Hurricane Laura remnants were moving through, and we decided it was best not to be walking in the woods with tropical depression-type winds blowing. Ben had other plans for Sunday, but I really wanted to hike this weekend (what else is new?), so I grabbed my day hike book and found a 17-miler (1.2 miles on the Maddron Bald Trail from the trailhead to the junction with the Old Settlers Trail, then 15.8 miles to go the length of the Old Settlers Trail).
I normally use 15 miles as my max for a day, but the day hike book described this one as "very nice, easy, trail with a few strenuous but short uphill climbs hiking in either direction." Nice, easy trail? Short climbs? Yeah, okay, I can do 17 miles of that. The "brown book" said that "this trail can provide a challenging two-day backpacking trip, if you camp at site # 33.... If you are an experienced hiker and go for the entire length..., be sure to start early on a long summer day...." Seems a little conflicting, but the day hike book hasn't steered me wrong to this point, so I went with "nice, easy" (see how confirmation bias works, kids?). Turns out I should've listened to the brown book, because I'm pretty sure the lady who wrote the day hike guide must've been hallucinating when she wrote the blurb for this hike. There was not much easy about this trail.
It started off okay. Maddron Bald is a nice, wide, roadbed-looking trail (at least to the trail junction; I haven't been past there). It was a climb, but nothing too strenuous. It all went downhill (figuratively, at least - not literally) after I got on the Old Settlers Trail, though. Because it was early morning and I was the first person on the trail, there were hundreds of spider webs across the trail. Due to the lighting, or me trying to watch where I was placing my feet, or any number of other factors, I wrapped at least half of them around my face and head and spent a ton of energy wiping them off and making sure no spiders were on me.
Then there was the issue of water crossings. There were TWENTY-ONE water crossings on this hike. I knew that going in, and that's not normally a huge problem, but this time the very first crossing (at mile 1.7 of the hike) gave me trouble. This is the crossing:
This was my leg when I finished the crossing:
Yep, when I was stepping off of the last rock before I reached the opposite bank, my foot slipped and my leg went into the water. It was so dumb because it probably could've been avoided if I had just pulled my hiking poles out and used them as extra points of contact for the crossing. But I was in the middle of an uphill section; I don't use my poles on uphills; and they're kind of a pain to get out and stow again. So I was lazy and didn't do it, and I ended up with a wet foot. I do love my awesome, waterproof Hoka shoes, but the bad thing about waterproof shoes is that they're only waterproof from the bottom and sides and don't really help if you dump water in them from the top. AND they don't dry quickly. So I expected to have a pretty miserable 15.3 miles left on the hike with one wet foot. Surprisingly, however, my awesome wool socks wicked the water away from my foot, and my wet foot was no less comfortable than my dry foot for the rest of the hike. Also, my shoes were completely dry the morning after the hike. Another win for the Hokas (and Fits socks)! Silver linings, people.
Anyway, I was annoyed with the water crossing situation (annoyed with myself, actually), and the spider web saga continued to get worse. There were times when I cleared three webs in a row with a stick, only to get a fourth wrapped around my face within the span of about 50 yards. I tried waving one of my poles in front of me for a hundred yards or so but realized I was expending a lot of energy doing that, and I really wanted to conserve my energy for, you know, walking 17 miles.
So I just tried to be more careful about actually looking for spider webs, but that caused me to miss a lot of the cool stuff that there was to see along the trail. I would find myself in the middle of a stone wall before I even realized the wall was next to me. The upside of this trail, though, is that there were a lot of stone walls, chimneys, and other remnants of mountain settlements, so I still saw plenty of cool stuff.
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These were the walls of one of the old Parton family homesteads.
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Another nice thing about the trail was that it was basically beside a creek at all times (you know it has to be with more than one water crossing per mile, right?), so there were lots of pretty water views.
And sometimes the water views and the settlement remnants came together (which makes sense, considering the settlements were all along the water sources).
Not-so-great aspects of the trail include the fact that, due to all the water sources and the Hurricane Laura-related rain that had moved through the day before, there were a lot of slick rocks and muddy places on the trail. I fell at least four times, and likely a few more times than that (after the fourth fall, which was the worst, I lost count). I felt like a drunk person clumsily stumbling through the woods. Most of them were just little slips and "half-falls" where I caught myself before truly falling, but a couple of them were doozies. On the third, I fell onto my left side, scraped the palm of my hand, and bruised my hip. The fourth, which was the worst, involved one of my treasonous feet sliding down a sloped rock, causing me to fall backwards. At that point, I had both of my hands in the hand loops that I attach to my shoulder straps to keep my arms elevated throughout the hike (if I let my arms hang by my sides for too long with too much weight in my pack, my hands go numb - the loops are really awesome!). Apparently I reflexively yanked down so hard with my hands to try to keep from falling, I pulled both loops loose from my pack. At the same time, I was also trying to lift my butt up in the air so I'd fall on my back (letting my pack take the brunt of the rock behind me) instead of busting my tailbone. I was successful on that point; however, I banged my left hand on the rock behind me, right on the bone that connects to the wrist on my pinky finger side. I've got a knot and a bruise there, but apparently that also tweaked my hand so that the bone at the base of my thumb (or, more likely, the soft tissue there) is also jacked up, as I'm not able to grip anything with my thumb still. Quite a problem for a left-handed person to have (try brushing your teeth with your off hand - I'll probably get cavities from this, too). And today, two days post hike, my left shoulder is also hurting, so residual effects of that fourth fall are still appearing.
At one point after the two big falls, there was a point in the trail where the trail was yet another sloped rock, this one sloping upward. I tried stepping on it, but my foot slid off (because of course it did). So I tried bending at the waist and walking on my feet and hands, which also didn't work. At that point, I just had to crawl up the dang rock. Really glad no one else was on this trail to see me crawling up rocks, cussing out spiders, and trying to ice my hand in the water of every creek I passed.
Another downside to the trail is that about half of it was being actively reclaimed by plant life such that, in some places, it was difficult to even see the trail.
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This area wasn't so bad because I'm less concerned with rhododendron and mountain laurel touching me than I am with some other plants...
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...like these weeds. I was just praying the whole time that I wouldn't get poison ivy/sumac, chiggers, or some other itchy malady.
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In some places, the weeds were higher than my head, so I was fighting them (AND MORE SPIDER WEBS) off with my entire body, which was bruised and achy anyway. It was slow going and exhausting and not at all enjoyable. I knew that my Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby were at a campground on Hwy. 321 that I could reach from an unmaintained side trail off of the Old Settlers Trail about halfway through my hike. There were supposedly several side trails that one could take to get to Hwy. 321 if one were smarter than I and didn't want to hike the length of the Old Settlers Trail. I didn't see very many of the side trails, but that's probably because they're "unmaintained" trails, and if the maintained trail was so overgrown in so many places, I can't imagine what the unmaintained trails looked like. Hell, I could've been on one for all I know (except that, occasionally, I'd stumble upon a trail marker reassuring me that I was still on the Old Settlers Trail - I haven't seen those on any other trails in the Smokies so far, so that was nice). But I really did feel like I was bushwhacking for half of this hike. It was the bushwhackiest maintained trail I've ever been on.
Anyway, if you think it was easy to power through this hike knowing that I had a family member within a few miles of me who could lend me a washcloth to remove spider webs from my entire body and a ride to my car that was still 8 miles away, you crazy. But I'm also stubborn as hell and don't want to be the prima donna hiker who taps out at the first (or fifty-first, apparently) sign of adversity, so I kept walking, and bushwhacking, and cussing.
When I got to about mile 12, I started wondering which of my family members I should text and ask them to hike in to me and motivate me to finish the hike. I was climbing the last of five climbs on the hike (none of which, by itself, was very difficult, but putting all of them together was a good bit of elevation gain, and also more downhill than my knees and toes really want because what goes up must come down), and the fifth climb was the worst one. I knew from the trail profile that it had a false summit and that, even once I made it to the real summit, I had at least a 2-mile downhill to finish the hike. And the damn spider webs wouldn't quit.
Then I met my little trail angels. A couple of boys (high school-age, maybe) were coming down the trail towards me, and they asked me how far it was to the top. I laughed and said, "Well, I'm on my way there, so I really hope it's about a mile behind you." They said they thought it was about a 3-mile hike from the trailhead to "the top," but they were expecting a big view, or a waterfall, or something dramatic; and unfortunately, that wasn't the case at this "top." Maybe in winter there would be a little bit of a view, but nothing in August. They were tired, so they turned around and hiked back toward the top, waving sticks in front of them to clear the spider webs that they had missed when they came through the first time. YES. I will follow you boys ALL DAY. This was my favorite part of the hike.
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Brandon and Tyrone, the motivation (and spider web assistance) I needed to finish the hike.
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When we got to the top, they needed to take a break, and I needed to eat a snack, get my poles out, and get prepared for my last downhill, so we sat down on some logs. They said they were starving; I asked if they had snacks; and they said no. I had my PBJ (which I was about to eat), an extra protein bar, and the last of my dark chocolate peanut M&Ms. I gave the protein bar and the M&Ms to the boys. If you know me, you know that giving away my M&Ms is a true act of love, but I figured they deserved them because I didn't get wrapped up in a single spider web while following them for two miles. And I really needed a break from the damn spiders at that particular point.
Obviously, I finally made it out. The last time I was so happy to see my car, it was after our 20-mile hike on the AT from Max Patch to Hot Springs. I've been dealing with the aftermath for a couple of days, with my left hand/shoulder getting progressively stiffer. I think the third day is supposed to be the worst, so hopefully it'll start getting better after tomorrow. I also had to lance three blisters with my Leatherman tool, so I'm feeling a little Bear Grylls over here. Not too Bear Grylls, though, because there were two more blisters that I couldn't attack because I was about to pass out from the first three. 😂
So I don't close the blog on a negative note, check out these pretty orange flowers!
Unduplicated Smokies miles: 75.6
Total miles: 89.2
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