Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Tye River Footbridge



Here is some footage of the Tye River Footbridge, it is a pretty cool bridge.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Wolf Rocks to US 60: Mile 806.3 to 795.2

I am not sure, but I think those are the Wolf Rocks to the left

It rained so much last night, we got up this morning during a small break and packed up our soggy camp, ate breakfast as quickly as possible, threw on our rain gear, and headed down the trail. I had another furry visitor in my shoes last night, it chewed through my sock.

The hike was cold and wet. We passed several areas that probably had great views during a clear day, but we had so much rain and fog we could barely see 20 feet.


A couple that I would love to go back and visit on a better day are Cole (Cold) Mountain and Bald Knob. Sorry I do not have any pictures of these two, the only pictures I took all day were of our campsite at Wolf Rocks. Also, Hog Camp Gap appeared to be an outstanding area for camping.

Passed several more hikers bringing our total for the trip to something like 29 or 30, many of those we saw were thru hikers heading towards Katahdin.

We made it out about 1130, so we packed up, changed, and headed into town for lunch. One more trip down and we cannot wait until our next one...possibly mid to late August.

For me it is almost time to head to Nicaragua on a short term missions trip.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Tye River to Wolf Rocks: Mile 820.9 to 806.3


We packed up and left camp at the Tye River heading up towards The Priest at 8:00 am, we reached the top of the Priest at around 11:00 am. If you are keeping score, we left the Tye River (Elevation 970) and climbed up to The Priest (Elevation 4,063), 3093 feet of elevation gain over 4.3 miles in 3 hours. This was by far the toughest extended climb that we have accomplished during any of our stage hikes. The toughest pure climb was Sharp Top in North Carolina of course. What made the climb so hard (other than the 3100 feet of vertical gain) was the constant climbing, there were little to no areas of neutral slope to grab a small respite from the climb.


The Mountain was beautiful and it was here that we saw several deer just off the trail.

All in all the hike was beautiful with varying and beautiful terrain all the way to Wolf Rocks. We did stop in at the Seeley-Woodworth Shelter to check in for the night, but the bugs were awful so we filtered water and continued on.


Once we arrived at Wolf Rocks we decided to eat dinner before heading on. Tired and already way ahead of schedule, we changed our minds and decided to set up camp at Wolf Rocks. We set up camp while we cooked supper and barely finished when the rain began to fall, and fall, and fall. We grabbed our supper, crawled in the tent, and called it a night.

Today we saw several more hikers on the trail and we stopped to chat with just about each one...I think our total was up to something like 20.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Three Bits

http://www.our2bits.com/

Let me know when you figure it out!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Humpback Mt. to Tye River: Mile 839.0 to 820.9

Before you start to think that Straight Leg and I are Ironmen Hikers, let me explain that we hiked a side trail around Three Ridges cutting off about three miles. We had already hiked Three Ridges twice before and felt no desire to hike it a third time this day.

We packed up camp and started hiking South preparing for the solitude and loneliness of hiking on the AT...except that it was anything but lonely, I think we saw about six hikers--two within the first fifteen minutes out of camp. Straight Leg and I had to revise our estimate of hikers seen during this trip, our new GUESS was twenty.


Yesterday was our water day, today was our rock day.


Walking down the trail Straight Leg lost his footing and did a 180° spin, it was perfect, he went from walking South one moment to facing North the next. How I lament not having that real time video camera. That would make for some riveting footage, "and here we are hiking down the trail, (6 hours later) yep still hiking...

When we got to the Tye River we were hot and decided that a bath sounded like a good idea, although the water was very cold. Straight Leg, trying to decide whether or not to dunk his tired body found a slippery rock and the dilemma was solved. The water was very refreshing and it felt great to be clean after a pretty warm day.

Day two without rain...