Day: 021
Date: Monday, 15 May 2023
Start: Just past Allen Gap (AT Mile 290.3)
Finish: Approaching Devil Fork Gap (AT Mile 310.6)
Daily Kilometres: 33.0
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 524.5
Weather: Overcast and humid all day with some light showers in the afternoon and evening.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Trail mix
Dinner: Soup and rehydrated meals
Aches: Dave - exhausted; Julie - nothing to report.
Highlight: We passed the 300 mile mark of our journey today.
Lowlight: It took more than hour to cover one mile along the razorback ridge of Big Firescald Knob (4,530’) clambering up and down jagged rocks for a few very hazy views.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
Having decided to do two 20-mile days so that we can get to our next town and day off, Erwin, by mid-afternoon on Wednesday, we got up half an hour earlier at 5:30am and were under way soon after 6:30am on a very grey overcast morning.
A mile after leaving, we crossed a road where the “Southern Cookie Lady” lives nearby but decided it was too early to go knocking on her door to get the free cookie she gives to AT thru-hikers. Next time.
Three miles later we had our breakfast break at Little Laurel Shelter, the first shelter after the section where camping had been prohibited and a shelter closed because of aggressive bear behaviour. We thought there might be a lot of thru-hikers there but were surprised to see more than 20 in the shelter and tents nearby at 8:30am when, presumably, many hikers would have already left. Consequently, throughout our day we saw quite a few thru-hikers, often leap-frogging our way down the trail as we each took breaks to our own schedules.
As we climbed higher during the morning we entered the clouds and had a misty few hours walking through the peaceful woods. Dave was not a fan of the climb up over Big Firescald Knob (see above) but the later “balds” (treeless summits) of Bald Mountain and Coldspring Mountain gave a change of scenery, even though no views were to be had.
A poignant part of the day was visiting a peaceful clearing in the forest where the Shelton graves were located. Two Unionist soldiers, one only thirteen, were killed there while visiting family in the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
The last part of the day involved a long steady descent at the end of which we passed another very crowded shelter. A few miles later on we found a tentsite for ourselves beside the trail and set up camp and had dinner to the sounds of distant thunder. It started raining almost immediately after we retired to our tent at 8:00pm. Good timing!
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