From Hazard’s notes:
Day 10: May 19, 2009
Travel:
From: Nantahala Outdoor Center, Wesser, NC
To: Brown Fork Gap Shelter, NC
Beginning: 10:30am
Ending: 6:30 pm
Number of miles hiked:
a) Trail: 16
b) other:
c) AT Mile Marker: 151 cumulative
Weather:
AM: Chilly but lots of sun.
PM: Warmed up and stayed beautiful all day.
People: Loyal and Crawl at tonights shelter.
Animals: Couple of snakes for the first time this trip.
Money: $10 breakfast, $10 1 liter dry bag, Total: $335
Notes of the day:
AM: We slept in today and it felt great. If you got a bed it’s ok to sleep in. After packing up, Spoon and I got some breakfast at the restaurant on the river. Eggs, sausage, hash browns, and a biscuit never tasted so good, or was more expensive. Totally worth it. I grabbed a 1 liter dry bag from the outfitter to take over as the bag for my electronics and use the massive one I had already for my clothes. Now things fit a little better and my clothes bag makes a wicked pillow. When we left, Bombadillo was buying a new pack to replace his old external. We said goodbye and got hiking. The trail out of NOC was about 4 hours if constant accent, which was brutal. Really wore out the muscles early on but we were rewarded with the great view from Cheoah Bald.
PM: The rest of the day was rolling up and down and some ridge walking. Despite being only a 16 mile day it was really tough and by the time we got to the final uphill to the shelter I had hit my brick wall. We were burned out. So a quick dinner and then crawled into the sleeping bag. Our shelter mates for this evening are Loyal (thru hiking as a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity) and Crawl (big guy with sleep apnea and an ankle swollen purple). Loyal is stuck on the trail because of his organizatin and Crawl has no business being out here; who knows how long he’ll last, I just better get to sleep before him. Then around 8 pm Bombadillo comes singing into camp. He had left NOC about an hour after us. Good to have him around again. Looking out of the shelter I see that the sun is setting but I can’t see it. Problem with going to bed so early is you miss the beautiful sunsets… I’ll have to stay up one night to get a picture soon…