View from the Shuckstack fire tower
Fontana Dam, enter the Smoky Mountain National Park 2200 ft up to rickety fire tower and on to Mollie's Ridge. 12.5 miles
We woke up in the hotel room and packed up. We had to get out of there quick or we were at risk for taking another Zero Day. We headed up to check out and get a big buffet breakfast at the lodge. As we were coming in for breakfast, all of our erstwhile cronies showed up from the trail to check in to the hotel (or at least get some breakfast). We all ate together and then we of the Brotherproof crew headed off to the post office to mail out some more extraneous gear and pick up a few last minute items from the general store before we caught a shuttle back to where we came off of the trail the day before. There should be a name for this. I’d like to call it the Punch Point or the Resumption. That’s it, I like it; “The Resumption.” I’m going to call it that from now on. “Let’s get back to the Resumption, Fellas!”
It didn’t rain yesterday in accordance with The Prophesy as ordained by our Lord and Savior, The National Weather Service and texted to our cell phones by the Father, our Dad; but, it felt like it might today. It was muggy as we hiked over the Fontana Dam and into the Smokies. It’s a huge dam and we got a lot of pictures and wasted a lot of time at the visitor center where they had an enormous relief map of The Smoky Mountain National Forest as well as the projects accomplished by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). We finally got out of the air-conditioned visitor center and someone pointed off to a barely visible fire tower on a distant mountaintop and informed us that we would be there in only 3 or 4 miles. It looked like an eternity both away and up. That’s what matters out here in case you hadn’t figured it out yet: Distance and Elevation. I couldn't believe we were supposed to be there in just over an hour. We were about to embark on a journey on the life-sized relief map of the Smokies. Scale of one foot = one foot.
In two day's we'll be at the highest point on the Appalachian Trail. At Fontana Dam we stood at 1700 feet, going to 4000 feet in just over three miles, then up and down several times over the famous “Rocky Top” and “thunderhead” to 6600 feet in a couple of days at Klingman’s Dome. Then we planned to resupply again in some town called Gatlinburg Tennessee. Today we would cross into the third state on our journey of 14 states. We hoped to reach the Tennessee/North Carolina Border today and follow it all the way through “The Smokies,” which also boasts the highest concentration of Black Bears in the World.
We made it up the legendary Shuckstack climb to the fire tower and precariously negotiated its rickety, rotten steps. We were there with the Walkens, parents of one of the thru-hikers we'd been seeing occasionally. After taking some pictures from what seemed to be a very unsafe perch, we then moved on. We had intended to get past Mollie's Ridge shelter; but by starting so late, it looked like we would have to settle there for the night.
When we got to Mollie's Ridge Shelter, it was pretty full and the ridge runner, Jim, was waiting on some reservations to show up. You have to make reservations to stay in the shelter in the Smokies. We planted our stakes out in the field and set up camp. I met some cool guys from Tennessee and we continued to see some of the same folks we’ve been running into for the past several days. We ate our usual meal and after dark, as I was going to my hammock, I saw a pair of eyes shining yellow out there in the dark. They were tracking me and I didn't like it one bit. I couldn't tell, from my headlamp, how big or just what the creature was but it moved like a cat and I shuffled out loudly toward it and yelled a little to get it to run away. It kept moving a little and then hunkering down. I thought I heard it hiss before it finally took off, I hoped for good. Later that night some thru-hikers came in and said they heard something running toward them and growling at them; which, would explain why the bastards were singing so damn loudly as they strolled in at 2AM.
David AKA "Jukebox"
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