Dehydration in Linville Gorge!

I might not have made it a full week past my 60th birthday:

Maybe the most physically exhausting day of backpacking of my life. It started out okay as I left camp at exactly 7:00 am. Maybe an hour and a half later I missed the main trail and ended up hiking down an unnamed spur trail. By the time I realized that I was not on the right trail I had descended a good 800 feet into the gorge, which meant that I had to turn around and climb back out! When I left camp I had what I figured was enough water to get me back to my truck. But climbing up the very steep trail in sweltering heat and humidity caused me to consume most of my water. Within a mile after returning to the point that put me once more on the main trail all of my water was gone. And I still had quite a ways to backpack. The forests in that side of the wilderness were completely wiped out by the drought-induced wildfire in 2007. So not only was I carrying my pack with no water and in hot weather, there was almost ZERO shelter from the sun.

I quickly began to become dehydrated. The only thing that I could do (since finding water was not an option) was to hike a hundred or so feet at a time and then rest for ten or fifteen minutes, hiding behind low shrubs for shade. A hike that should have taken two hours at most ended up taking me six hours. A nice couple from Tallahassee Florida gave me a liter of water that maybe saved me from passing out. As it is, drying out like that did something to my vocal chords. I can talk, but my voice sounds like I'm talking with sandpaper.

More later.

I love the National Forest Service signs for Wilderness Areas.

Approaching The Chimneys, one of my favorite areas of the Gorge.

Hiking down into Chimney Gorge on the way back up to Shortoff Mountain.

My campsite on Shortoff Mountain.

The whippoorwill in the night.

Rugged Territory

Another brief post for today.

One of my favorite spots in North Carolina is the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area. It's true wilderness and very rugged. About as rugged as terrain gets in the eastern side of North America. The gorge is over 2,000 feet deep in some places, and it's easy to understand why people get lost in there even though all you have to do to get out is either follow the river upstream or down, or climb either side of the gorge (avoiding the cliffs, of course). Still, people get lost in there all of the time. People get killt down there, too.


These are the cliffs of Shortoff Mountain. "Shortoff" is the English corruption of the Slavic name Shortov, or Chortkov. There are a lot of mountains in the southern Appalachians called "Shortoff Mountain". There were apparently some Slavic people passing through the region at some time or another--enough of them to leave names behind.

This Shortoff Mountain is probably the most spectacular of them. It has tremendous cliff bands, and some really scary chasms.

And here I am a couple of winters ago, actually on Shortoff Mountain on the opposite side of the gorge from where I took the first photo. This was on one of the best hikes I ever took into the Gorge, with my pals Andy Kunkle and Jack Thyen. This photo was taken with my little Canon A1100IS camera by Andy (I think Andy took it).

Trail to Summit of Shortoff Mountain, Part IV

The only "bad" part of the hike to Shortoff was the connector trail that begins at the end of Wolf Pit Road. This trail was blazed by rock climbers who were seeking a quick and relatively painless way to access the rock faces of the mountain. This is one of the major rock climbing spots in this part of the country and it's really popular for that sport. Thus, the trail here has always been unofficial.

However, over the years the rock climbers have done a pretty good job of pounding out the route. There have been some attempts to create some water breaks to alleviate erosion, but not much effort has been steered toward this kind of thing. Grading is pretty much only a fantasy where this trail is concerned.

So the hiking here can be pretty messy and difficult if there has been recent wet and/or icy and snowy weather. We had all of that before we got there, so the trail was truly a hideous thing to behold. Over long sections where it wasn't a sticky, mucky mess, it was running with water so deep that the trail resembled an active mountain stream. Within minutes after we'd started the hike, my boots were already leaking and I was regretting my decision of leaving my waterproof overboots in the back of my truck. But by that time I had climbed too many vertical feet to go back for them.

I'm hoping that, eventually, this trail will either have some major work done on it, or else it will be abandoned and closed permanently, as the Forest Service has done with the old Sandy Flats Trail on the opposite side of the gorge.

Big stretches of the trail were like walking in a stream.

Trail to Summit of Shortoff Mountain, Part III

Icicles and snow and mountains!

Shortoff Mountain with the famous climbing walls visible on the left.

OK.

The following are just kickass photographs taken by either me, or Jack Thyen, or Andy Kunkle. The views and the conditions were about as perfect as one could hope for in winter time. There was snow and ice on the ground and in the trees. The winds were low to non-existent. And the temperatures were around freezing on the peaks so we didn't have to worry about getting frostbite.

We spent a considerable amount of time on the summit. The hike up was relatively short and easy so we had plenty of time to waste. If you consider looking upon some of the most majestic scenery to be had in the eastern half of this continent to be wasting your time. The only thing that finally chased us away was that all three of us had leaky boots and melting snow had gotten our feet wet. Our toes were beginning to lose feeling, so we decided to call it a day and head back down.

Me and Boone the dawg. Photo by Andy Kunkle.

One of the things we wanted to see before we left was a large spring that drains the pond near the top of the mountain. However, because of the snow cover and the fires of recent years, we couldn't find the right trail. With the cold eating into our feet, we called off the search for the spring and headed on down. It's just another reason to return at a later date.

If you want to see these views for yourself (and I highly recommend it), then get off of your ass and go hiking. You can't see this stuff from a car. You can't see it from a parking lot. You have to hike to see this kind of thing.

The Gorge in all her glory.

Dark spot in the center of the photo is the Linville River.

Fantastic view from the summit of Shortoff Mountain.

Trail to Summit of Shortoff Mountain, Part II

After Jack and I stopped to take some photos from the first of many of Shortoff Mountain's lower summits, Andy caught up with us and we headed on. By this time I noticed that my old, worn pair of yaktrax were beginning to have some major problems. Nothing against these things--I love them and they're great for walking on icy surfaces--but my pair were several years old and walking across patches of bare rock were causing them to break. Before we even got to the very top of the mountain, both pairs had begun to deteriorate to the point that they were only hanging on to the heels of my boots. But I left them on, because the extra traction on my heels was better than just negotiating the icy patches without them.

Also, the higher we climbed, the colder it got. The forest really began to get very icy and the air was colder. However, the wind was blowing hardly at all, so we all found that we were able to shed some of the layers of winter clothes we had started out with.



This cliff top is where most of the climbers head. You can see the top of the descent gully that they use to access the base of the cliffs. This gully is Class III scrambling and makes for a precipitous, but relatively safe way down to the bottom of the cliffs. There, the rock climbers use their technical gear to climb back up the Class V walls.

Another view looking down into the descent gully.

Self portrait on one side of the gully.

This was a really swell overlook where we all gathered to admire the views.

The view we had from that point.

Soon after we entered the forest where the fires had not reached either in 2002 or in 2007. The trees were glazed and with the sun shining on the ice, it was a magical place. The forest was also alive with the sound of expanding ice and the occasional tumble of ice chunks that were breaking free in the near-freezing air.

It was just very calming to walk down this trail in the ice and snow.

Tons o' fun hiking in the crusty snow!

Boone scoots ahead of me along the trail. He had a great time.

I really enjoyed looking up at the sunlight glinting off of the glaze of ice.

This is one of only a very few natural ponds in the entire Southern Appalachian mountain chain. The geology of the southern Apps does not lend itself to natural lakes and ponds. Thus, there are only four or five such bodies of water in the entire chain south of New England (where glaciers carved many lakes and ponds). There are actually two of these in the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area, ironically located on opposite sides and opposing ends of the gorge. This one, on Shortoff Mountain, is the largest of the two.

A short video of the pond.

My hiking pal, Jack Thyen, along the Mountains to Sea Trail near the pond on Shortoff Mountain.

Not far from the pond, we reached the best summit and the nicest views on the trail. This is, so far for me, the best grandstand in all of Linville Gorge.

Click to enlarge this great stitched panorama. Of course there's nothing like actually hiking up there to see it in person.

The view from the best summit area.

More tomorrow...

Trail to Summit of Shortoff Mountain, Part I

For the next few days I'm going to be hard at work on my novel. Therefore, I'll post a photo log of our hike to the summit of Shortoff Mountain. I'll show a few images per day, plus some text descriptions.

This is where we parked the truck, at the end of Wolf Pit Road. We took my vehicle since it has four-wheel drive. There had been a snow and ice storm the night before.

Just past the truck we approached the trail head. I love the official wilderness area signs constructed by the National Forest Service.

Andy had worked out on a bike the night before the hike and his legs were not in the best of shape because of that.

Large sections of the wilderness were ravaged by terrible fires during the droughts of 2002 and 2007. The first part of the hike went through one of these sections, so it's not the most beautiful of spots. Time and Mother Nature will heal the wounds.

The first part of the trail was very muddy and very rough. It was never an official trail; just a track made by rock climbers to access the cliff tops where they could then scramble down the face to do some climbing. But it climbs quickly and soon you find yourself on the first part of the mountain's ridge lines.

View looking back down the track. You can see Lake James in the distance. Lake James State Park is there, and is one of the worst state parks I've ever been. In summer months the lake is very crowded and stinks incessantly of gasoline fumes from the thousands of motorboats tearing across its surface. I won't go back there.

A self portrait taken at the first really nice set of cliffs we hit. It was a bit dicey to get to this point. Fortunately I was wearing my yaktrax which helped me keep a good footing in the ice. However, by the time we made the summit, they had started to come apart.

One of the first really great panoramic views we saw along the trail. (Click to embiggen this beauty.)

More tomorrow...

Ice Hike

I went hiking today (Sunday, February 7, 2010) in the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area. Our goal was the summit of Shortoff Mountain. It's hard to describe a hike like the one today. It was something like magic, I think. That would be the best way to grace it with a word.

Here are a few images until I can write more about it.

She breathed on water. Ice glazed the land. Like music, it played across the winds.

The forest was alive with the sound of creaking and falling ice. A very strange and wonderful kind of music from the voice of Nature. (Turn the volume up for the full effect!)

Self portrait at the summit of Shortoff Mountain. The heights and depths of Linville Gorge were revealed behind me, coated in snow, in ice.