JEFF HALL'S PAGE

After a full day on the road from Nashville, TN we arrived at the Parking area at Big Fat Gap, near Robbinsville, NC - around 5:50 local time in the afternoon - It took shorter than expected to pack all of the food into our packs, although it wasn't until we made it to the peak the next day at Haoe Point we discovered the cheese I'd vacuum sealed earlier hadn't made it out of the refrigerator. Besides having no spoon for Paul and only one cup between us, we had all we needed, that is, all we needed for a normal spring hike... The hike started around dusk that Friday evening with temps in the mid 40's. At the parking lot we noticed 3 vehicles; one was a large van from an outdoor school in North Carolina judging by the plates on it. Two young men were at the lot when we arrived - suiting up for a hike. They started up the hangover lead trail only to turn back and take the slickrock trail just before we started our ascent up the hangover lead trail which, in my opinion was fortunate as we had the "grove" to ourselves that night.

Hangover Lead Lookout - right click movie for menu

FULL SCREEN PLAY HERE

The first ½ mile for me was pure adrenaline but soon wore off as both Paul and I realized the pace of what’s to come. We hiked for about an hour in the twig light and made it to the place we call “McTyeire Grove” – named after the dorm at Vandy. We unpacked in this small campsite and put up tents and started a fire in the fire ring already there. As we enjoyed the fire we cooked dinner on the Svea123 stove along with some strong coffee I made up by pouring grounds in the pot and letting settle to pour into cup with powdered creamer. That night we slept well, although we both woke up to roll and reposition against the ground many times. The next morning we woke around 9 and started the Svea swiftly to cook freeze dried eggs and coffee. We hit the trail after packing up the site, but not before we were greeted by two groups – one group of 3 each with border collie on leash – and one single guy around 50 moving swiftly by himself behind them. As we started the more aggressive ascent from around 2000 ft msl heading for the lookout at 5249 msl, our bodies found the rhythm , albeit slow and methodical, which led us to slowly upward on the morning of our second day. Halfway up the trail we found our water running low, so we stopped to gather water from a trailside “puddle” formed by dripping water over mosses into a small bowl shaped area we dug into the bank. After 5 minutes the water cleared enough to begin slow pumping of one quart filtered water. This water had a slight “tea” color to it after filtering, so we added one tablet of iodine for 30 min and neutralized before drinking a few minutes later. This held us fine to the summit, which took another 2 grueling hours to accomplish, around 2:30pm est. We were fortunate to find the place to ourselves and took advantage by sprawling in the sun and taking our time shooting photos and relaxing for about an hour. At that point, we gathered our things and headed south along the ridge called “haoe lead trail” which took us to our 2nd nights site called “Naked Ground” – this is a very special location along the trail as it lies in the saddle of a long ridge and is both flat, beautiful, and narrow – with both east and west exposure at an elevation around 4900 ft msl. As a result, we knew we may be in for some windy sleep.
After dinner, as it turns out, we found the weather very calm, relaxing and actually warmer than it had been most of the day. Waking up Sunday at naked ground was a very sobering time – both Paul and I felt as if our blood was pumping but no oxygen was making it to our motivational brain center – later on I realized the partial pressure at 5k ft might be a factor – as a result, we did what I considered a very positive move and put on our modified day packs for a descent down the naked ground trail – many pictures were taken on this trail, and two flowing tributaries were crossed on the venture. We made our way back up after several hours and felt much stronger as the day wore on. We decided that later on sometime before sundown we’d better reposition ourselves to the east or northeast side of the mountain to avoid incoming weather. This is the “usual meeting juncture” for multiple hiking groups, as it is a great mid- point for most of the trails in the slickrock area. We saw approximately 4 different groups pass through that day including a girls outdoor school, which was very fun to see – it reminded me of our group outings at Wilderness Skills - … we surprised two girls as we left by passing them on the trail outbound as they squatted into a hole near the trail, which apparently they had no clue of until we popped in and got them laughing hysterically. The other group that arrived mid afternoon on Sunday was a Man in his early 50’s and a boy around 18 who were coming up the naked ground trail just after the girls had come down the Stratton bald trail- they were also followed 3 min later by a mid aged man who appeared to be with them. The girls were met from 180 deg by a couple more in the group coming from hangover lead. Lastly, the man who had passed us going up the hangover lead trail on sat morning showed back up by coming down from the Stratton bald trail area.

In our late departure, due to all the visiting groups and so forth, we had about 45 minutes to find a good spot… Rather than heading into the valley called slickrock creek trail, we decided to spend the night up high again, just making sure it faced east or northerly which we did. The spot was off the trail about 50 yds, and required minor bushwhacking to finally settle on a flat area just large enough for our two tents - We boiled up the dinty moore beef stew and took an early retirement as the rain had just begun…..

Morning of Monday we woke to find ourselves in the middle of an increasing storm of ice, ice fog, snow and lots of wind… the temperatures were falling rapidly, and the snow flakes were coming down hard with large wet flakes sticking to everything including the laurel. This later accounted for lots of wet snow down the backs of our packs and necks. After deciding not to take the naked ground trail as previously thought, I made a last minute decision to descend down the aggressively steep slickrock trail in search of lower elevation for higher temps and lower winds… the descent was rather challenging because all of the trail flora – which had not been disturbed by people since last season – was packed full of snow and laying horizontal now - in both of our ways, and also preventing me and Ross from staying leashed without tons of effort… I decided to let Ross off the leash on tue, and It proved a smart thing to do, as we saw no one for the rest of the trip…

Food Consumption:

April 3- Fast Food \- Mcdonalds, Wendys. Dinner-Chocolate and tea

April 4- frzdryed eggs (MH)-paul granola bar/coffee- jeff Lunch- crackers, almond butter & honey, rice sticks,MM’s dinner- chicken&dumplings (BP)Ice cream bar(MH), chocolate nuggets, 3qt. H2o and 2 coffees.

April 5- 2 packs oatmeal and dried fruit, tea coffee, and 2 granola bars. Lunch- almond butter, crackers and pumpkin seeds, Vienna sausages. Granola bar. Dinner-Beef Stew(DM)+ H2o crackers, nuts, rice sticks, chocolate nuggets.

April 6- In the tent breakfast- (BP) dehydrated eggs, apple d’lite and dried fruit. Lunch-granola bars, tuna fish and coffee. Dinner- 2 teas each M&M’s, beef stroganoff (MH)-paul Beef Stew(MH)- jeff ,crackers, dried fruit- (bananas cranberries and seeds)

April 7- Coffee ex-strong and granolas. Lunch at Taco Bell

Ross- 4 lil’ceasers, 1 bag pup-peronis, 1 9’lives, 1-1/2 bags dry food.