Next time a machete

Joyce Kilmer/Slickrock Wilderness (NC)
6/25 - 6/27/18 (2 nights)
2018 bag nights: 12
Cheoah Dam Trailhead
mix of cell phone and real camera photos

I had a couple nights to myself to recover from Sweden and I realized that I had not been back to the Joyce Kilmer/Slickrock Wilderness in a while. I decided to start at the bottom and climb the Slickrock Trail to Naked Ground and then over to the Bob Bald and then maybe check out the Foderstacks to complete the circle. As usual with this wilderness area, things did not go according to plans.

I got to the trailhead and it was looking to be hot and humid, no real surprise for the end of June. I knew that the Slickrock Trail had lots of creek fords, so I hoped the humidity would not be too bad. It was bad :) By the time I had hiked about a mile, I was soaked with sweat. I got to the creek and stripped down and jumped in. The water was on the cold side, but felt good.

I slowly made my way up the creek/trail and got more soaked when the sky opened up, but eventually I got to a good campsite near the intersection with the Stiffknee Trail. It wasn't as far as I had expected to go, but it was a good stopping point and I was a little frustrated with how overgrown parts of the trail were. Basically, I was ready for a break and a little bourbon pick-me-up :)

Along the way, I passed a couple nice trickles ...

... and drops in Slickrock Creek that made me get out the tripod.

Someone must have really liked Jere Lee to put the effort into this sign :)

I quickly setup camp since it looked like the rain might come back ...

... and then enjoyed the view and sounds of Slickrock Creek ...

... and the Rhododendron flowers.

The next day I got moving up the trail still with the idea that I would take the direct route to Naked Ground via the "Nutbuster".

I took my time and stopped for an early lunch at Wildcat Falls.

And then a little later I ran into 3 guys camping who mentioned that Tipi Walter had mentioned the trail being covered with blowdowns and a couple rattlesnakes. Given that info and my frustration with the trail the day before, I decided to take the long way to the bald and go through Big Fat Gap.

Along the way I ran into a trail crew doing trail work and Tipi Walter. He showed me photos of the snakes which made me glad to avoid the Nutbuster.

I got lucky and caught the end of the Flame Azaleas blooming ...

... saw some great views ...

... and made my way to the Bald. I was a little hopeful for some stars mixed with clouds given what the sky looked like when I first was setting up camp ...

... but the weather changed very quickly. I was in a pretty exposed area and the wind really picked up, so I actually broke camp in the pouring rain and moved to a more sheltered area. 

The next morning, things looked a little better, or at least a little drier. I was still pretty damp from sweat and humidity and rain, but was hopeful that things would dry out a little bit...

... and then I got back on the trail and was promptly soaked by all the wet leaves. At this point, I checked the weather on my InReach and thought a little bit about bushwacking in the rain and decided that I would rather head for the car and sleep in a dry bed.

As I hiked, the sky made me think that I had made a reasonable decision.

So I retraced my steps back to Big Fat Gap and then took the Windy Gap Trail to Nichols Cove Trail to Yellowhammer Gap Trail to Ike Branch Trail and back to my car. In those roughly 5 miles I got to do more bushwacking and got completely soaked by a couple inches of rain.

At one of the trail intersections is this little grave site. The inscription basically reads "Two sisters born Dec 14 1914, died Dec 20 1914" yet another reminder of how hard life was in these parts a hundred years ago.

I stopped at the pullover on the Tail of the Dragon for a photo op, this is looking down on Calderwood Dam on the Little Tennessee River.

So the title of this post, after all of what felt like bushwacking I decided that some of the trails needed to be brushed back quite a bit. The trail crew was working on the Benton Mackaye Trail, but were not going to hit the side trails that also needed a lot of work. So I went on Amazon and found a sort of light weight machete and I plan on going back in the fall and seeing what I can do to help maintain some of the trails.

She Did It

Bob Stratton Bald
8/3 - 8/4/16
2016 bag nights: 17

Beech Gap trailhead (off the Cherohala Skyway)

I have been trying to get my wife to give backpacking a try for a couple years. She has been car camping, but the lack of "facilities" was an issue for backpacking. As our kids have got older and gone backpacking with me, the fear of being left behind began to dominate the lack of facilities. Then, it was just a matter of lining up childcare so we could go off into the woods for a couple of days without any kid distractions.

I wanted to go somewhere with a nice payoff and something that would be difficult to do on a dayhike. I decided that a trip to Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock would work, specifically a couple nights on Bob Stratton Bald. Hopefully, we would get killer sunsets, lots of stars, and a little bit of dayhiking to finish it off.

My mother was in town to see the kids and the weather looked reasonable for the Southern Appalachians this time of year, so we left for a two night trip to Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness. We had a short hike in from Beech Gap on the TN/NC state line (roughly 3.5 miles), so we each carried a beer for happy hour and she had a couple cans of wine while I had some bourbon.

It was an easy start to the day. The thermometer in my car read 75 and there were some dark clouds, but it did not look like it was going to rain.

The trail is an old forest road for the first 1 - 2 miles and was lined with wildflowers.

A hint of wildlife :)

And then a tiny snake in the middle of the trail.

The bald looked very different from the last time I was here (March).

The trees had leaves, all of the blackberry brambles had filled in and the grasses were knee to waist high, but we found a great campsite and enjoyed our happy hour beers surrounded by wildflowers, with a view of the mountains to the south.

There was not a great sunset view because the sun was dropping behind the trees, but the clouds to the east were very pretty.

I started a fire on the early side because we were going to have "pizza rolls" based on a recipe in the new Backpacker magazine. I don't know why I trusted the recipe, since I don't trust Backpacker for anything else. This recipe proved to be a bit of a problem. I think it would have worked with a huge bed of coals, but we would have had to gathered three times the amount of wood and burned it all before we started cooking dinner. A small fire and a bit of coals, meant that dinner took about 1.5 hours and it was almost 9 when we finished eating. I dumped the rest of the wood on the fire as we ate and we enjoyed the fire while the stars came out.

There was some lightning on the horizon that was lighting up the clouds, it made for an interesting view. Unfortunately, all of my photos that captured the lightning also captured passing planes.

We woke up in the morning to a ton of dew, it made for nice pictures, but my feet were very wet. It turned out that my feet/shoes were about to get a lot wetter.

And then we headed off towards Naked Ground and the Hangover. The trail was very overgrown (completely different from March) and the grass and plants were covered in dew. My wife referred to it as "the carwash"

We enjoyed the view at Naked Ground for a bit ... 

...before moving on to the Hangover. Unfortunately, the clouds had moved in and there was not much of a view. It also turned out that the lens on my cell phone camera was smudged, so this picture looks way worse than reality.

After about 30 minutes, we headed back to Naked Ground. We sat under the trees and avoided most of the drizzle that had begun.

The drizzle did not last long and did not really matter since the carwash had us pretty wet already. We got back to camp and I spent some time chasing the butterflies around...

... and then had an early dinner before the rain came again (a lot harder this time). Thankfully, it did not last long and we crawled out of the tent to see a sky with lots of dark clouds. About this time the thunder started up and my wife spent some time inspecting the clouds trying to figure out if we were about to get hit by lightning.

While she was thinking, I tried to capture a rainbow.

We had not seen any lightning and I thought that the thunder was moving away from us, but my wife had visions of dying in the middle of the night. It was about 7pm so there was about 2 hours of daylight left (enough to get to the car without too much trouble). I told her that she should decide if she wanted to stay or go and I would do whatever made her happy. About that point, there was a loud crack of thunder that seemed to be a sign. So we packed up and headed down the trail.

In less than 2 hours we were at the trailhead.

We found a hotel since it was too late to think about driving home. It is hard to say what would have happened on the bald, but there was rain (and lightning in the distance) on the drive down to Tellico Plains and then it poured at the hotel by I-75 all through the night. I suspect we made the right decision and hopefully my wife will join me again.

Beat by Slickrock again

Joyce Kilmer - Slickrock Wilderness
March 12 - 13 2016
2016 bag nights: 1

My previous two visits to the area had ended in failure, but third time's the charm, right? :)

The weather report did not look good, but when you have permission to abandon your family for 3 nights to go visit the woods ...

I met JC at Beech Gap for what was planned to be an easy 3 nights, covering about 25 miles.The weather report called for a high chance rain most days and there was a threat of thunderstorms one of the days, but it wasn't looking like it would be too much rain. We hoped for lots of grey and a minimum amount of water (The NWS had forecast .1 - .25 inches overnight), didn't turn out that way.

The view from the old forest road gave us hope regarding the weather.

Looking north into the Slickrock watershed.

We had an easy hike up and over Stratton Bald ...

... and on to Naked Ground where we set up camp, gathered water and had dinner. The wind was blowing a pretty constant 20ish MPH and the sky was overcast, but the view was still nice. There was a hint of the moon and even some stars at one point, that left us hopeful that maybe the weather was going to cooperate.

Awesome view looking down the Little Santeetlah Creek watershed towards the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. You can just make out Lake Santeetlah in the distance.

Heard some rain in the middle of the night, but rolled over and went back to sleep. Woke up around 5:30 with lots of wind-driven rain against the tarp and somewhat of a cold butt. That was surprising since I had a 20 degree underquilt and it was above 40. I discovered that I had water running down my hammock lines and it was pooling under me. There was not a lot, but it was enough. I realized that I would not be going back to sleep and so I got my phone and read for a bit and listened to the wind and rain. After a while, I noticed an occasional drip on my face. At first I thought that it was humidity getting bounced off the inside of the tarp, but I realized that I had hung my new tarp wrong and the seam was channeling water under the tarp. It was about this point that I realized that this trip might be cut short.

The rain finally slowed down around 9 and I crawled out of my hammock to find JC and retrieve the food bag. We talked a bit about bailing and when he checked his phone for the weather, it was saying 80% chance of rain all night and the whole next day with possible thunderstorms. As we were talking, the rain kicked up again and we decided it was a sign. While we were packing up, I noticed that JC had left his cup out against a log. It had almost 2 inches of water in it and my pot that had a lid on it (just a tiny hole) had accumulated about a 1/2 inch.

Same "view" as the evening before, the Memorial Forest is down there somewhere.

We decided to leave our packs at Naked Ground and have an easy hike over to the Hangover. It was basically like hiking in a cloud, but the rain had mostly stopped.

Not much to see from the Hangover. This is looking south towards Jenkins Meadow.

By the time we got back to Naked Ground, it looked like the clouds were trying to lift. We decided this was a good place for lunch before heading back to the trailhead.

 Once the rain finally stopped, it was actually nice hiking, the mist/clouds provided extra "atmosphere".

 The bald looked very different today.

An uneventful hike and a couple of beers at the Beech Gap parking lot then a quick bite in Tellico Plains and then a longer than normal drive home since northbound I-75 is still shut from the slide a couple weeks ago. I got home around 10 and enjoyed a warm shower and sleeping in my own bed.

Once again, not the trip I planned for the Slickrock Wilderness, but a good trip nonetheless.