Wooooo! New shoes! 17 miles, ups, downs, I was going faster than ever, and for the first time on a 14+ day I felt like i could easily keep going. Still slightly sore feet, but what I was having before was more than just soreness, the ball of foot and big toe would be kind of numb, after 17 miles in these guys there’s none of that. What had looked to be a difficult day went by quickly, I think I felt like Barry Bonds stepping up to the plate and taking a home-run swing at the first pitch right after removing all the bat weights – each foot was probably a pound and a half lighter and I actually had some cushion. They’re La Sportiva Wildcats, almost seems closer to a road running shoe than a trail shoe, just with extra traction on the sole.
The great day went beyond the shoes though. The landscape changed rapidly and frequently today beginning at under 1500 feet and reaching over 5100. What began as the standard appalachian forest changed instantly to what seemed like a much drier section of mostly shrub like plants as soon as I crossed Indian Grave Gap. The ground was sandy, and the trees were scarce in that section, but as I climbed out of the gap the regular forest returned. The big finale for the day was Unaka mountain, a 1.5 mile climb gaining 1066 feet, and summit at 5180. It was a surprisingly smooth climb capped off by a dense grove of spruce trees on the summit. There was basically nothing else up there other than the bed of fallen brown pine needles, bright green moss coating the roots and lower part of the trunks and the tall spruces. It all amounted to a unique place, and the most interesting place I’ve seen on the trail. The pictures taken with the phone don’t come to capturing it – the trail disappeared in the pine needles, instead the frequency of white blazes jumped dramatically in order to navigate through.
Cherry Gap is a few miles down the other side of Unaka, Strider and I are here with an older section hiker who grew up right in this area. He seems like he’s done a good bit of the trail, he said he’s been hiking since ’88 or something. That didn’t stop us from getting a kick out of his bear bagging method. He tied his food hanging bout an inch from a fallen tree leaning at an angle on another tree – seems like anything that is interested can use the downed tree as a ramp and get to the food. Still it’s much better company than what would have been at the first shelter of the day. We stopped to rest there and found a couple guys who are apparently basically living there for now. One was an older guy – fat, long hair, loose cotton shirt, who said he’d been in prison; the other college aged, but dropped out of school to “hike the trail” which seemed to mean live at this one shelter and get high. Easily the strangest people yet, and the first time I would have found somewhere else to camp if that had been my destination. There were a couple others from the hostel that I didn’t really care to see again and these couple of 16+ mile days of big mountains will likely see to that. I will miss Jupiter and Sir Stooge who both had to get off the trail temporarily – Jupiter for a wedding and Sir Stooge to go meet some friends or something.
Also, there’s an owl hooting somewhere in the woods tonight!