Addition.

One thing that I wanted to add to yesterday's posts is a detail concerning some of the trails that allow you access to, and through, our official wilderness areas here in North Carolina. And that detail is that pretty much the trails are unmarked, unsigned, and unblazed. What I mean by that is that there are no signposts marking and identifying trails once you enter our wildernesses. And there are no blazes. For those of you unschooled in such things, blazes are the paintmarks placed on trees and (in the absence of trees) rocks. For instance, if you are on "Big Bob Trail", it might be blazed with red circles. Therefor, if you see a red circle on a tree trunk, then you can feel sure that you are on the "Big Bob Trail" and have not lost your way.

The very essence of wilderness means that the land is supposed to be unmarked by the hand of man (technologically speaking) and absent of artificial constructs such as signs, paint marks, carvings, and other such nonsense. What this means is that you have a pretty darned good chance of feeling that you are in true wilderness. (Even campfires are illegal in Shining Rock Wilderness.) It also means that if you are not paying attention then you get your ass lost. In quick order.

I know very experienced veteran hikers and backpackers who get themselves lost in such places. I have been lost in such a place, as I have pointed out in the past. I have always been accustomed to hiking and backpacking in National Parks and National Forests where signs and blazes are the norm. But many wilderness areas are administered in such a way that even the most basic of artificial things like signs are forbidden. In such a situation you really need to have good, accurate maps, and you need a compass (or a GPS device), and you need to know how to use these things.

One of the wilderness areas where I'd like to hike is Shining Rock. I have always avoided it because most of the time when I've been there the crowds have been horrendous. And you all know by now that I go to the forests for solitude, not to stand in line to climb a mountain. To Hell with that. And Shining Rock Wilderness is so beautiful and so unique that it is the single most popular wilderness area in North Carolina. Heck...it might be the most visited wilderness in the south, considering the lines of humans I have seen climbing to it heights.

What I have decided that I will have to do is go to hike and backpack there at a time when most others can't do so. This means that I'll have to head in on a weekday and when there are no holidays with which to contend. And when I finally do find such a time (winter is not a bad idea, either), I want to avoid getting lost at a particular spot where many others have lost their way. It's called Shining Rock Gap. Now, there are lots of places to get lost and misdirected up there, but I've been told that this one spot is like the Gordian Knot of intersections. There are several trails leading into and out of this gap, and there are also dozens of false trails, game trails, and manways meandering all through the spruce fir forests up there.

And you should also recall (if you've been visiting here for very long) that my personal kryptonite are forests of Red spruce. I almost never fail to get freaking lost in those.

That is why I am taking a particular photograph with me when I go. It's an image shot by a hiker (some guy named Trent Tibbits) who has been kind enough to take a photo of the trail intersections in that gap and to carefully mark each one so that you don't end up where you're not supposed to be and find that you have to backtrack several miles uphill to find your way.

And here is the photo. I'll be printing off a copy to take with me on the day I finally get to hike up there.

Confusing as hell intersections explained.

Also, this guy (the Foothills Backpacker) has done a decent video showing how not to get lost at this spot.

I'll probably still get lost.

YOW!

I've told this tale before. Several times, in fact. It's one of my favorite stories and I like to return to it from time to time to see how memory effects the retelling.

Some years ago I decided to take a solo-backpacking trip into the Middle Prong Wilderness here in North Carolina. It's not a terribly popular wilderness area, which is one reason I knew I'd like to visit it. Also, it's a very high place with several peaks in excess of 6,000 feet in elevation. That's my kind of spot--high country with real solitude.

Unusual for me when I'm hiking alone, I got a very early start and arrived at my destination in quick order. I parked at the Black Balsam area where there is a big parking lot and a large and stinky vault toilet for the many visitors who park there. It's a popular spot because it's where most people leave their cars to venture into the Shining Rock Wilderness, which is probably the single most crowded wilderness area in the state. Also, adjacent to the same parking area is the high meadow just below Sam Knob where many weekend tourist go to camp without having to follow the normal wilderness rules.

So I got an early start and hit Sam Knob, taking time to climb to the summit for the views and then come back down and caught the trail to head over to Middle Prong. Unlike Shining Rock, Middle Prong does not get a lot of visitors. It doesn't have the high, open meadows that attract so many to the more heavily visited wilderness. I have quite literally seen lines of people headed into Shining Rock, hundreds of them snaking their ways to the high country. In contrast, I have only encountered a few other people in Middle Prong.

Quickly I was back down Sam Knob and headed over the Mountains to Sea Trail, across NC 215 (which separates the two wilderness areas), and was on my way. I wanted to camp near Green Knob in one of the meadows and I knew by this time that I'd have plenty of opportunity to stake out a good campsite. Along the way, though, I had to pass through several big patches of Red spruce forests.

My hiking kryptonite are spruce forests. I can't help it. Every time I walk into them I get lost. If you've ever hiked into a Red spruce stand, you'll know what I'm talking about. Most of the trees in them are so uniform that you can't tell one from the other. The forest floor there is covered in rusty spruce needles and they're generally criss-crossed with game trails. Walk any distance in there, and if you don't have a keen eye and a good sense of direction...well, you're lost!

I actually get nervous any time I have to hike through one. However, the Mountains to Sea Trail, which I was using, was blazed with white paint blotches placed on various trees and so I made my way safely through the first few plots of spruce trees that I encountered.

Then, I had to leave the MTS Trail and head off into the deeper wilderness. Most wilderness areas don't have maintained trails and most don't sign the trails. So you have to use your map and compass (or GPS device), and have some common sense. I have a terrible sense of direction, so I really depend on maps and my compass to get through tough-to-read trails when I'm hiking alone. And as soon as I had to track right, leaving the MTS Trail, I found myself walking down unmarked trails through my dreaded Red spruce forests.

In short order, though, I was out into the open meadows again with Green Knob in front of me (I'd picked it out as a possible campsite), Mount Hardy to my left, and vast views to my right. I'd stumbled upon a truly superlative campsite and I decided at that moment to go no further looking for a better place to pitch my tent, because I realized I likely wouldn't find a better spot.

Once I had my tent up and my gear stowed inside I went for a brief walk around the vicinity, taking in the views. I had plenty of time to kill. After meditating and just looking around, I fixed supper, cleaned up my cooking gear, packed away my food, hung my foodbag from a safe spot (Middle Prong is bear country), and I still had daylight left.

Sitting in the meadow, I looked around and my eye kept being drawn toward the spruce forest I'd hiked through to get to the campsite. I decided to just walk over to it and wander in a few yards and take a look. So what I then did was the following:

Since I was only going to walk maybe the length of a football field away, I emptied my pockets. I dropped everything I normally carry with me in the tent: my knife, my emergency whistle with compass and waterproof matches, my wrist watch, my keys. I didn't have a cell phone then, but if I had I'd have left it, too. I even took off my jacket (it was Spring and a warm day, but the night would be cool...I just didn't need the jacket at that particular moment) and tossed it in the tent.

Then I wandered toward the forest. And into it. My eyes to the ground, looking for something interesting, I continued to walk. Just a few yards. Only for a few minutes. I looked up.

The sun had descended more than I'd liked and the light was getting dim in the woods. It was time to head back. I turned around and began to retrace my steps. Several minutes passed. I was still in the woods. Stopping, I looked all around me in the fading daylight. Nothing but those uniform spruce trunks and rusty needles littering the ground.

Wait a minute. I was on the wrong trail.

Peering through the woods, I realized that the forest was a maze of wandering, twisting trails. Game trails. Hiker trails. Trails where people had looked for a private place to shit. Trails made by backpackers looking for firewood. Everywhere a trail.

Figuring I knew what I'd done wrong, I found the right trail (it was OBVIOUS!) and followed it.

In another few minutes I was deeper in the forest. I was no closer to the meadow. I couldn't even SEE the meadow. All I could see were spruce trees in every direction. It  was getting darker. I was going to be trapped out in the woods wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt with no way to make a fire and it was going to be COLD!

Fuck!

I had, by this time, completely lost my already lousy sense of direction. I glanced up at the sky, looking for an indication of the sun, but the sun was already below the horizon and it was DARK in there and GETTING DARKER. I couldn't even tell east from west. At that point I decided that the most logical thing to do was RUN! Yeah, that's right! That's right! I'd pick a trail and RUN DOWN IT! If it was the right direction I'd pop out in the meadow where my tent was, and if it was the WRONG direction I'd end up on the Mountains to Sea Trail and I could then find the trail to the campsite and follow it to my tent where all of my stuff that would keep me alive was located! YEAH! THAT'S WHAT I'D DO!

So I chose a path and ran. And ran. Until I got winded. Then I stopped and looked around. It was darker. There was nothing around me but trees. Goddamned Red fucking spruce trees.

And then...oh, then I panicked. Thinking of the temperature plunging down to 20 and me with no way to keep warm I screamed like a little girl and started running in circles. Really. Like a crazy little kid screaming and running around in ever-widening circles in the deep, dark, red spruce woods.

Finally, I stopped screaming and stopped running around. Probably because I was getting tired, but maybe because I had finally gotten control over my panic. Standing there, for the first time thinking, I remembered the scenery from the meadow. To my left had been the big cone of Mount Hardy and, beyond that, Richland Balsam. If I could make out at least one of those obvious peaks and put them to my left, all I had to do was walk in a straight line and I'd come out somewhere near the meadow. But all around me all I could see was dark forest growing darker. I couldn't even SEE the mountains.

But.

I detected a glimmer of pale light downslope to my left and so I headed in that direction. In a few yards I could see the sky and, there to my left, Mount Hardy.

OK.

So now all I had to do was turn and keep Hardy to my left. Just march forward until.

The forest broke. I was at the bottom of a meadow. The problem with these recovering high elevation meadows is that, as the forest reclaims them (they're a relic of the timber business and not natural), they get full of brambles at the periphery. Sharp, adamant, thorny brambles. And I was in shorts and short sleeves. I picked my way into the brambly meadow, keeping wonderful Mount Hardy to my left and looking ever uphill, to my right, scanning for any glimmer of my tent which I'd pitched on the top of the ridge.

And there it was. I could see my tent. Maybe a quarter of a mile away. I could either go back into the woods and pick my way back up, or I could very carefully tiptoe through the brambles and keep my eye on the tent. Since I was now scared shitless of the spruce forest what I did was run like a madman through the brambles, never taking my eye off of my tent.

By the time I got to the campsite, my arms and legs were cut by a hundred thorns. I was bloody as hell. But I didn't give shit one about that. I  was back at my tent. Back to my warm clothes and warm sleeping bag and stove and matches and.

Well, I wasn't going to freeze to death in a fucking Red spruce forest in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Climbing into my tent I got blood all over the mosquito netting. It's still there, several years later, to remind me not to be a total dumbass. Once inside I swabbed my jillions of cuts with alcohol. That hurt, but it didn't bother me. I was now safe.

I still think of myself in that forest, running around in circles and screaming like a little girl. Even while it was happening, in the back of my mind I kept thinking: "This is going to be embarrassing if another hiker sees me like this."

When the sun set for well and good a few minutes later, I snuggled down in my sleeping bag and went fast and completely to sleep.

Lesson learned.

Sam Knob from below the Black Balsam parking area.

Me, on the summit of Sam Knob that day.

Spruce forest on the way to Middle Prong. (Note the paint trail marking.) Everything looks the same in there!

My wonderful campsite. And the spruce forest behind me where I went to go for a "brief hike" as the sun was setting.

One thing I did right. I stood around and noted all of the big peaks in the vicinity. (See that brown stuff just downhill? Those are not just shrubs, but nasty, vicious brambles.)

This was not long before I decided to empty my pockets and wander off.

This is the nice trail I walked down to go into the forest. See how well trod it is? NO WAY you could get lost in there!

The peak that kept me from getting totally screwed. Those brambles are the very ones I ran through to get back to my tent.

This forest is in the Smokies...but you get the idea. Wander into this shit and you'd best know what you're doing and where you're going.

The Black Mountains have it in for me.

Western North Carolina is home to the Black Mountains, the highest range in the eastern USA. They top out at Mount Mitchell—6,684 feet above sea level (2037 meters for all of you outside the USA). I visit the range two or three times a year, and go on extended hikes there as often as I can overnighters if I can arrange the necessary time for that.

Over the years, the roughest hikes I’ve taken in the southeastern US have been those I’ve found in this compact range of peaks. Before this past week, the toughest of these trails had been the Black Mountain Crest Trail, which traverses the spine of the range over approximately 13 miles from the base of Celo Knob to the summit of Mitchell. It’s a tortuous route of ups and downs taking you steeply to the very mountaintops and down into deep gaps over and over, hitting a number of the tallest peaks.

But I’d heard that one of the side trails connecting to the Crest Trail was notorious for its difficulty. Setting up a base camp with my fiberglass travel trailer at the Black Mountain Campground (operated by the National Forest Service) in the shadow of Mount Mitchell, I decided to finally see just how tough the Woody Ridge Trail truly is. Early on Monday, June 18, I drove out of the campground and headed for SR1155 a few miles away. After one wrong turn (the map I had showed the trailhead on SR1157, which was wrong) I found the trail at the back of a parking area on the dead end of SR1156.



Loading my pack, I headed up the trail, happy to see the familiar signposts used on trails in the Pisgah National Forest. I do a lot of hiking in wilderness areas where trails are relatively unmaintained and not signed at all, and lacking a certain sense of direction, I’m always happy to see the NFS signage. In quick order I entered a very deep and healthy cove hardwood forest, left behind the stream at the trailhead, and began to climb.

At first, I figured the stories about the difficulty of Woody Ridge were overblown. It was steep, but nothing like I’d heard. The first ¾ of a mile or so were merely a steady uphill slog through a classic southern hardwood forest. The goings was quite pleasant and I was enjoying the woods, wondering what all the fuss was about concerning this trail.

At about a mile the trail met up with a logging road and took a sharp left turn up the ridgeline. Soon after this, I began to learn why the trail had its well-deserved reputation. After passing through a strange and very pleasant section that goes through an extended patch of grasses beneath tall hardwoods, the trail suddenly begins to tackle the steep ridgeline straight-on. There are none of the familiar switchbacks of most Appalachian trailways. You go forward and up, pushing and sometimes having to grasp nearby trees and rhododendron shrubs to continue higher up the peak.


The trail map I had listed the Woody Ridge Trail at 2.2 miles in length. Trying to figure my pace, I soon realized that not only had this map gotten the trailhead wrong, but also the distance of the trail. There was no way this was a mere 2.2 miles. After a couple of hours of constant uphill, some of it tough scrambling over expanses of exposed rock and the twisted root systems of hemlock trees (dying, of course, from hwa), I was nowhere near the summit. Once again, the Blacks were proving to be home to yet another of the toughest trails I have hiked.

Knowing at this point that the map wasn’t right on distances, I realized that I was going to have a longer day than I had thought when I’d started. This wasn’t a problem, as I had loaded about a gallon of water into my daypack, along with the emergency essentials I always take when I hit the trail. A longer day was not going to be a problem. But at 50 years of age, these steep slopes were taking a toll on my old lungs and legs. I pushed on.



Finally, I broke out of the changing forest (it had gone from strictly hardwoods to a mix of dying hemlocks interspersed with oaks and some spruce) onto an exposed ridge. I thought that I must certainly be getting close to the summit, and so climbed out onto a high boulder to get a better look at the heights before me. And I realized I was still a good 1,000 feet from the top. Putting my shoulders into the mountain, I headed on and up, stopping from time to time to catch my breath, wipe the sweat from my brow, and halting now and again to catch my breath.

Once again, the Black Mountains were kicking my ass.

Finally, after passing into the spruce-fir regions of the range, I was near the summit of Horse Rock, the destination I’d set for the day, and the peak nearest Celo Knob. I came out onto a cliff face where I dropped my pack as the only other hiker I’d meet that day arrived with two dogs to join me on the cliff. I chatted for a bit with the young guy—a local who lived at the base of the mountain—and to feed cookies to one of his friendly mutts. He soon headed back down, and I had the cliffs to myself as I rested and waited while cramps traveled the insides of my legs, doing their best to twist me into pretzel of pain. But I just lay there and kept my legs straight, enduring the pain and waiting for the cramps to pass while I drank down water and ate a few cookies and tried to get some minerals back into my system.


The stroll to the very top of Horse Rock was relatively easy from that point, with the exception of having to pick my way through the confusing maze of a spruce forest. There is nothing as confusing to me as having to find my way through a maze of spruce trees. Every trunk looks the same, and the uniformity of the trees and the rusty lay of old needles on the ground produces a daunting sameness that can get you lost in a hurry. I always move slowly and deliberately in these kinds of woods, having gotten lost in this forest type no less than three times in my life.

I then headed back down the mountain, and the Woody Ridge Trail reminded me every step of the way why it has its reputation. I steadied myself on steep slopes with my hiking staff, and halted my downward gait by grasping the odd rock and tree and shrub as I went down and down. Once more I was passing through forest zones, this
time in reverse order. Out of the spruce-fir region and into hemlocks and then hemlock/poplar mix and finally into the familiar and beautiful cove hardwood stands.

At about 4,000 feet or so above sea level, I made my mistake. Gazing up at the big trees, I missed the right turn on Woody Ridge Trail and instead took a logging road in error. It was only as I reached the intersection of this logging road with another that I knew I’d taken a wrong turn and would have to turn back and climb at least a thousand feet back to the intersection. Looking back up the steep slope I just couldn’t bring myself to climb back up the mountain to where I’d made the mistake. I looked at the intersection of old logging roads and saw one that led sharply to the right and figured that would take me back to a point close to where I’d left my truck.

Heading that way I continued to descend the mountain, passing out of National Forest lands and onto what must have been private property, for the forests gave way to a vast expanse of mountainside that had been recently logged to the bare ground. All around me were tree stumps and twisted snags of trees cut and run over by bulldozers and flatbed trucks. I headed into a deep valley and after picking my way down what appeared to be a graveled drive, I found myself in the parking lot of a small Baptist church. Stopping to drink down some of my dwindling supply of water, I pushed on and came to SR1154 and knew I had to take a right to 80S and then another right to SR1155 and then back to my truck.

The four-mile hike along the highways was rough. In the full sun I soon depleted my water and by the time I made my truck, I was feeling totally exhausted and dehydrated. I had four bottles of water waiting in the cab, and soon had emptied those. I sat for a while in the cab of my truck, running my AC full blast and doing my best to cool off. As soon as I felt able, I put my truck into gear and headed back to my campsite at the Black Mountain Campground.

The trails of the Black Mountains almost always get me in ways I don’t expect. I’ve been lost in them twice, have leg cramps almost every time I go, and yet I know I’ll go back. I reckon I just like a challenge.