Mt. Mitchell

We hiked that last weekend! It was the longest backpacking trip I've ever taken. We left Ohio on Thursday, got to see Seth and Alta and AJ for dinner (who knew that a random tiny rural town in North Carolina had great Mexican food) that night, it was great to see them. We started hiking Friday morning, came down Sunday midday.



I used my vibrams again for most of the trip, I really liked them. One of the fun things about this hike lower down was all the tiny runoff streams. There was pretty heavy rain Thursday night, so I don't know if they're always running. But they were pretty, and made for fun mini-waterfalls at a couple of spots. Higher up, though, it was just wet muddy muck, with some ice intermingled.



This was the "We're almost there but I'm totally done" moment. Ben wasn't as willing as I was to wear that on his sleeve, but I'm pretty sure he felt like I look in this picture. I learned about a new trail classification: "Most Difficult" and/or "Strenuous." And they weren't kidding. There wasn't a lot of roller-hill kind of trail. It was either fairly level switchback or really steep trail (the steepest thing we hiked was a little .4 mile connector spur called Tom's Gap - the condition of the sign leading to it should have tipped us off, but that's another story!). Came around a bend after some serious inclines, saw this one, and just wanted to sit down. But we kept going! When we stopped for lunch the wind was strong and cold enough that I switched into boots, but I wasn't happy about it. My feet were warmer but much less comfortable, and I felt less adept and able to balance. I REALLY like barefoot shoes, and needing to switch made the last mile and a half of that day less comfortable than it might have been. But I really didn't want my toes to freeze off!



THE TOP! There's actually a parking lot at the top of the mountain....you don't have to hike up to get to see the view. BUT, we like to do that (maybe for the same reason I like running up hills? Dunno.). So we left the car down below at Black Mountain campground and walked up. The view was really pretty, we made the summit just during golden hour. The mountains were very blue with a few little fog/cloud patches, and the light was a really soft golden orange. We didn't stick around long because it was WINDY (we've both got like four layers on in that picture, and I think we still look cold), plus we needed to find a place to camp for the night.



The next day we took a meandering way around to pass the ranger station again, see Camp Alice, and hike some trail that was different than what we hit on Friday. We ended up doing a loop with another "Most Difficult" designation, but we saw a waterfall along the way that we took off our packs and bouldered around for a minute. That helped. This picture is at the top of Mt. Craig, the next neighboring peak (another high point in the NC mountains). I'm not a huge fan of bandanas, but when I'm gonna be out for multiple days they're a necessity for me....I HATE having oily hair hanging in my face. I was really glad to have remembered this one.



Coming down from Mt. Craig we spent Saturday afternoon on the cold side of the mountain. There were TONS of ice formations along the edge of the trail. These huge icicles are the most common thing we saw, but there was also a wide flat rock face with an ice sheet over the whole thing, and bubbles and water flowing underneath it. That was something I'd never seen before, I thought it was spectacular! We hiked down to this point on the horse trail from the Low Gap trail by going across a little spur called Tom's Gap. The condition of the sign, like I said before, should have let us know that something was up. It was broken in half but still on its post, with painted letters so faded that we could only tell what they said because we already knew it. We turned down it and started into a really steep descent - which at first was nice because we'd been going up so much. After a while, though, it started to get wearing. There were no switchbacks, it just followed a stream bed straight down the mountain. The blazes were few and far between, but we were okay.

We found a GREAT little sheltered campsite further down the mountain from there in the national forest part of the mountain. It was warm and (for the first time in a day and a half) not windy!



After we hiked down Sunday we took one last little very short side jaunt to this waterfall (only about a fourth of it is in the picture). It was a great way to finish out the trip, even though it meant hitting the bottom of the mountain and walking AWAY from where the car was! Actually making the turn was hard, since I think we were both pretty beat (I'm not sure how many miles we hiked, I know it was at least 12). But we could hear the waterfall, which was good motivation.

I'm glad that this isn't something that Ben restricts to him and scouting, or something that he does with guy friends. I love being outside (which he has always known), and I've really enjoyed learning the things he knows about backpacking. I appreciate him spending the time to accumulate all the things we need for a trip like this - he spent every birthday and Christmas for YEARS asking for things a bit at a time, since it was never something in our budget. We finally gifted packs to each other as the last step. It was totally worth it. I wish it that this kind of trip and the knowledge you need to do it was something that was emphasized for me when I was younger, but there weren't opportunities for girls in YW like there were for the boys in scouts. I could follow a map, yes, but had no idea how to hang a bear bag (for example). Better late than never, though! Since I get to be the camp director now (hee hee, hooray!), I'm going to remedy that for my girls.

Anyway. We had a wonderful trip, it was a nice way to spend part of spring break. Now I'm looking for little packs (not frame packs, just day packs) so we can do a two-nighter with the kids. How adventurous is that?!?!