By Tim Homan
From late May to early September of 1984, I worked for the concessionaire at Lake Hotel in Yellowstone National Park (1*). My first two days off, I lit out on a solo backpacking trip tramping the Yellowstone River Trail (2*). I chose the route because it traversed some of the lowest elevations in the park and offered some great views of the Yellowstone as it roughly paralleled the Black Canyon of its namesake river. The snow was completely melted, the ground nearly dry, the grades mostly easy -- a good spring warm-up hike while I was still acclimating to the park's high elevations (3*). The ranger station weather forecast called for warm and sunny both days.
by Tim Homan
During the early 1980s, when small backpacking shops thrived in Atlanta, the manager at one of the stores called me up and asked if I would assist in guiding a beginner's backpacking trip to the Ellicott Rock Wilderness. I would meet the crew, the paying customers and lead guide, along Burrells Ford Road near the Chattooga River on a Saturday morning in mid-spring. From there, we would carry our packs about a mile and a half to the East Fork Chattooga, pitch camp, then hike up the East Fork Trail later on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, we would follow the Chattooga upstream to Ellicott Rock before doubling back to break camp. The manager offered me a decent sum of money for the weekend's work.
By Tim Homan
A few years ago, an old hiking buddy and I reminisced about our backcountry camps in the Southern Appalachians, some of them shared. We were sitting around the warm and well-lit comfort of a campfire near Beech Creek's headwater springs in the Southern Nantahala Wilderness (North Carolina's northern half of the wilderness), and had plenty of time to remember. Before long, we had compartmentalized noteworthy camps into categories: most memorable, most scenic, hardest-to-reach bushwhack camps, coldest, wettest, worst ever, etc. As is the backpacker's penchant, we named our most memorable camps with short descriptors, then explained and expanded if necessary. The following is the long-form story of the winner in my most memorable camp category: Double Close Call, Double Copperhead.
Charles, David, Steve, and I took parts of three days to complete our hike along a beautiful living stretch of the Chattooga-all of it national wild and scenic river, all of it trout water.** We knew what to expect from our upcoming three-day weekend (early July, 2001) and the weather. We knew the hiking would be hot and sweat soaked; the river corridor would be crowded, and the predicted thunderstorms would provide flash-and-boom- fireworks.
We set the shuttle and began backpacking Section 3 of the Chattooga River Trail (1) under a threatening sky. I was pulling up the rear, pushing a bright, industrial-orange measuring wheel and frequently stopping to take notes (2).
Conditions, both external and internal, quickly imposed a spasmodic momentum: a start-and-stop rhythm alternating between three activities, only one of which moved us up the map. We were unable to mete out breaks by any measurement of our choosing, either minutes or miles hiked. Our breaks came often, unplanned, and at irregular intervals. The first reason for halting was meteorological. Southern Appalachian July sent wave after wave of entrained summer thunderstorms, bottoms bruised and dark blue, rushing overhead. The second, was physiological: our alarm-bell-strong need to cool off in cold water.
We trudged beneath a two-tiered canopy: white pines towering, pagodalike, above all the other trees-hardwoods, hemlock, and other conifers. After managing some segment of a mile, we took quick shelter under the lean-to of a tarp as the next fast-moving formation of storm-dark and water-fat clouds opened their bomb-bay doors right above us. The tarp came back down, our packs came back up, and the sun came back out. We slogged up the rain-sloppy track through a steaming landscape on slow simmer. The lush Southern Highland canopy held the humidity in like a giant green-roofed sauna. Trail banter bet that a snail or some other form of Mollusca would crawl up our legs, slimy with body grease and sweat drench, if we stood in one place too long.
We continued to hike until the smother of sun-bright heat and the fluid heaviness of humidity pressed upon our packs and sweat-sodden clothes, which didn't take long. Then the gathered green water of the Chattooga's pools-over-our-heads deep, soothing to both body and soul-pulled us over as reliably as the offer of free hundred-dollar bills. The four of us shucked down to shorts and swam in the Chattooga's cool water, the perfect antidote to the wilting weather and the week's work stress.
Refreshed and willing to walk again, we shouldered our packs and marched through the heat before ducking under the tarp again. We made day-one camp where the river had flattened the land to narrow floodplain a few tenths of a mile short of Lick Log Falls. Our first day's distance fell short of the minimum we had hoped for, but no matter, we had proceeded as the way opened. We had taken what the day had given us, and now we had a level camp and an entire evening to sit beside the Chattooga.
Close by, a narrow strip of beach offered an open look at a long pool tailing out into the quickening water of a rock-bedded riffle. All around camp and across the river, we were surrounded by the wonderfully diverse Mountain South forest, much of it the rich year-round green of mountain laurel, hemlock, American holly, doghobble, white pine, and rosebay rhododendron, whose corsage-sized flower clusters had already begun whitening the woods.
The next morning we broke camp as daylight spread down into the river bottom. The second day's progress stuttered along like the first's-storm-tarp, slackpack-sweat, shuck-swim-except our opportunities to cool off came at longer intervals where the treadway traversed the side-wall slopes of Rock Gorge. Down there, the small but widening wedge of our view ended at the closed-in horizon of the first ridgeline across the river. Down in the gorge, the dark and roiling storm clouds coasted suddenly overhead, giving us barely enough time to pull the tarp out of its stuff sack before the next short-lived fury of thunder and lightning and torrential rain began. We walked until the two-punch combination of low-nineties heat and super-saturated air slowed our pace to a sweat-soaked and listless plodding, then we jumped into whatever suitable water the route offered.
Where the CRT closely parallels the deeply entrenched river in Rock Gorge, it provides open views of cascades where they pour over high ledges into their plunge pools. The opposite bank is frequently bluffed and bouldered and barricaded with rhododendron. We swam below a 30-foot-long slab of bedrock funneling the stream's entire flow into a powerful, log-wedged chute less than 10 feet wide. David and I knew the river ran through more of these pinch-points, where logs shredded the Chattooga to white foam before letting it pass and pool green again, some even more cinched down and wasp-waisted than the one we had just seen.
The second night out our crew camped close to a wide run of clear glide-water a short distance upstream from Big Bend Falls. Steve staked out his tent; Charles hung his jungle hammock; David and I roped up nylon tarps as our only shelter. We ate our evening meal on shelving rock worn smooth by the long work of the river. Small rainbow trout and light rain occasionally dimpled ripple-rings into the current from opposite sides of the surface. After our simple suppers, we talked, sipped a few shots of ground softener, and watched the seaward slide of the night-darkened water.
David and I told the close-calls story of our canoe trip down "Section 0" (3) of the Chattooga as dusk dissolved the edges of the shadows. On that trip, far more than any other, we had butted our Blue Hole canoes right up against that highly permeable membrane between hardy adventure and foolhardy disaster. To our surprise, Steve picked up the thread and wove his own Section 0 story into ours when we finished.
He and two buddies had braved Rock Gorge and its unknown hazards with a two-man raft and an inflatable canoe a half-dozen years before our near-midnight-long day on the river. They embarked on their trip after the movie Deliverance (4) but before the Chattooga received national wild and scenic river designation, and regulations. After the movie, the Chattooga's swift current became a free-flowing seduction, a siren song beckoning adventurous young men down dangerous rapids. It was a high-death-toll time on the river.
Steve and his friends launched into the movie-famous river blind, sight unseen. They didn't know about Big Bend Falls a little less than 3 miles downstream; they didn't know about the dangerous cascades in Rock Gorge where the topomap's contour lines rise clustered and dark brown up from the river. All they knew for certain was their desire to run the Chattooga, to test their youth and strength and testosterone-laced daring against the primal energy and power of that gloriously wild and rippling river. That and how to squeal like a pig.
Their October paddling trip was progressing smoothly, their confidence rising through the quick water and the easy-to-read inverted Vs of Class 1 and 2 rapids, until … the Chattooga disappeared from sight. Sudden fear slapped them in the face as they focused on the huge bank-to-bank break in the river's horizon line. They could see nothing of the river's downstream run below the drop-off. No standing waves. Not even spray. Sight and sound screamed danger dead ahead: a major cascade or more likely the sharp plunge of an unknown waterfall. Closer now, the rumble muffled all other sounds except their voices, now loud with alarm, as the river swept them toward the brink just like in the adventure movies.
Steve and his bowman paddled with adrenaline's burst of strength and speed to reach dry land, but the Chattooga's grip was too strong and the raft too unwieldy. When it was clear they were going over, they kept their heads and made the best of it by straightening back out and seeking the heaviest water within easy reach. As the raft approached the lip of the first pitch, they saw the river and its rocks at an uncomfortably long angle below. Time slowed to a held breath, stood still to near stalling. Pulse rates jumped up; stomachs clenched to a tight knot of dread. The raft tilted onto the slanting slide of fast water just above the first short drop. Then time, accelerating with an almost audible snap, and nervous resignation flew over the high ledge. The bow rode thin air for a couple of pounding heartbeats before falling with the water's arc-a nosedive down the final descent, a nearly 15-foot drop all at once.
Bam! Sudden deceleration syndrome. The raft's impact slammed Steve into his paddling partner, his motorcycle-helmet headgear punching into the bowman's back. The raft threw them out as it flipped over, remained motionless for a few seconds, then floated downstream, leaving them behind-cold and dazed, but still buzzing with adrenaline-in the plunge pool below Big Bend Falls. Steve was shaken but otherwise uninjured; the bowman's elbow had slammed into rock when he hit the water.
The solo paddler had reached shore in time. He quickly carried around the falls, chased down the runaway raft, then waded it back to its traumatized riders, who had just been chucked into the toughest stretch of the trip.
The expedition regrouped and continued down the wild green river, mostly because there was no way to go back. The bowman's injured elbow left his left arm numb, limp, and useless. Working hard in the stern, Steve steered over short-drop ledges and between boulders as they ran a series of Rock Gorge rapids. The voyageurs regained a small measure of momentum and confidence as they moved downriver and remained upright. But less than a half hour later the Chattooga wiped all their psychological gains away. A curving line of quickening current carried the raft into a sweeper at the base of an outside-bend bluff. The deadfall sweeper caught and held the small raft. Steve and his paddling partner were pinned: rock to the right, sweeper in front, river to the left and below.
Everything happened fast. The river poured over the bow. The water's weight in the front and the current's push from the back drove the bow under. The bowman disappeared below the surface, gone from sight. The biochemical cavalry garrisoned in his adrenal gland charged for air and light. His working arm, the right one, found purchase on an above-water branch. Kicking underwater for all he was worth and hoisting with his one good hand, he pulled his head and shoulders above drowning and death-a real-life deliverance.
After resting and regrouping from their second close call, Steve and his companions continued down the Chattooga hyper-vigilant to the sounds and sights of potential peril. They heard the same dull roar of problematic rapids David and I had heard. They landed and scouted a series of Rock Gorge rapids. The most obvious and immediately dangerous one-the one I still remember vividly-was an absolute skull-and-crossbones suicide run: carry around or die. Rock squeezed the entire river into a 6-foot-wide drop with parts of dead trees wedged and crisscrossed just above waterline.
They made long and rough portages around the most dangerous whitewater-boulders, steep rock, and rhododendron always in the way. They worked their way through the gorge to much safer water and lower banks, but ran out of daylight. The dog-tired paddlers cached their watercraft close to dark, then bushwhacked straight up the steep and brush-tangled slope on river-right until they found an old logging road. The three of them followed the woods road for maybe an hour before seeing flashlight beams and hearing male voices on the single-track near its junction with Hwy 28.
They had found the dozen-strong search party making preparations to look for them. Earlier that morning, the young adventurers had helped make camp with their three girlfriends near Hwy 28. They told their girlfriends where they were putting in, Burrells Ford Road, before they drove toward their long and arduous day on the Chattooga. When their boyfriends had not appeared by dark, the young women became worried and called search and rescue. One of the would-be rescuers told Steve, "When we found out you three were attempting to paddle through Rock Gorge, we wondered if we should go back for body bags."
Next morning, while David and I were eating our morning mush, bloatmeal, we heard Charles call out, "there's two copperheads over here, and they're heading your way." We stood up, took a cautious step or two toward Charles, and looked in the direction he was pointing from the sag of his hammock. Sure enough, a brace of copperheads-both identically slender and a little less than 30 inches long-were weaving their unhurried way through the low vegetation toward the circle of black and bare soil surrounding the fire ring. Giving them leave to roam where they would, we stood by and admired the interlocking patterns of their hourglass-shaped, copper-brown crossbands. Their colors were particularly vibrant and glossy, like they had been freshly dipped in varnish, evidence they both had shed their old scuffed-up and scaly skins recently. The twin copperheads were aesthetically pleasing creatures, wet and glistening in the early morning sun, and not at all harmful from our safe and sensible distance.
Our unworried but watchful tracking of the pair's progress through camp, their sinuous movements a continuous and muscular flowing, suddenly switched to mild alarm. The lead pit viper had just ricocheted off the fire ring and was now crawling directly toward Steve's tent. A night owl far more familiar with midnight than early morning, Steve was somewhat awake and still inside. His front-door flap was down but unzipped. The snake's unwavering trajectory left no doubt its intent; it was going to take cover either under or inside the tent.
We told Steve a copperhead was slithering toward the front of his tent, but all we received in return was an incoherent mumble. He probably thought we were crying wolf to get him up and out of his fart sack. But it didn't matter, there wasn't anymore time for talking. I grabbed my close-to-hand hiking stick-basswood, light and long-then moved parallel to and past the venomous snake. Now set up somewhat like a hockey goalie a long stride outside the net, I leaned over and tapped an L-shaped configuration alongside the first foot of his body then in front of the ophidian's incoming head, gently deflecting the easily wrangled reptile around the tent.
The unaggressive copperhead never came to coil; it just changed course and continued its slow and legless low-crawl though camp. After its twin cleared the downstream edge of our encampment, Charles said he thought both of them had sought shelter from the night's rain under his hammock. He had wrapped his pack in a tarp and stowed it beneath his hammock for the night. And he had just pulled the tarp out from under the hammock when he first spotted the two pit vipers.
I quickly thought of the obvious what-if: what-if the copperheads had cozied up to David or me during the night. But without an actual close call, the what-if was weak and easily dismissed. Half a mile down the trail, what could have happened but didn't was largely forgotten, and what did happen was remembered with gratitude and good cheer. I had quickly come around to my normal way of thinking about nonthreatening venomous snakes.
Highland Dixie is a land tamed of its large carnivores, cougars and wolves. Omnivorous black bears and venomous snakes are remaining proof that we have not entirely neutered all threat and potential danger from the forest, that we have not brought the land to heel so thoroughly that the only remaining danger is falling on our faces.
Like rain and rhododendron, whitewater rivers and brook trout, bears and wildflowers and big trees, rattlesnakes and copperheads come with the country. They are essential components, living symbols, of the Earth's ancient wilderness. They still live largely secret lives beyond our ken and control.
Seen from a safe distance, pit vipers pep up a hike with their beauty and novelty, their potential danger and big-stick physical presence. Their slithering glide makes what is left of the eastern wilderness wilder. They force you to realize that the Southern Appalachian forest still has a few fangs. They make you more alert, more awake.
Notes
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act became Public Law 90-542 on October 2, 1968. In addition to the "instant eight" rivers designated by the act, the U.S. Congress listed the Chattooga and twenty-six other rivers to be studied for possible inclusion in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. The U.S. Forest Service study recommended the river for membership in the system. On May 10, 1974, Public Law 93-279 designated approximately 57 miles of the Chattooga and the West Fork of the Chattooga as a National Wild and Scenic River. A blue-blazed corridor of approximately 15,432 acres helps protect the river. The Chattooga's selection was the first of its kind in the South, and the first addition to the system after the original act.
**Steve is Steve Craven and David is David Brown.
(1) Section 3 of the Chattooga River Trail, 12.8 miles long, roughly parallels its namesake stream on the South Carolina side from Highway 28 near Russell Bridge to Burrells Ford Road (Oconee County, Sumter National Forest, approximately 368,000 acres over three disjunct ranger districts).
(2) Hiking Trails of the Southern Nantahala Wilderness Ellicott Rock Wilderness Chattooga National Wild and Scenic River
(3) Our Section 0 of the Chattooga flowed down the watershed from Burrells Ford Road just south of the Ellicott Rock Wilderness to Russell Bridge (Hwy 28) along the Georgia-South Carolina line. Boating that section was strictly against the rules when David and I paddled and portaged our Blue Hole canoes through Rock Gorge all those years ago. We knew that nearly 11-mile stretch of the Chattooga is dangerous, but like others before and after us, we were young and easily lured by that wild run of forbidden river.
(4) The movie Deliverance, starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds, came to life on the big screens in the summer of 1972. The movie was based upon the James Dickey novel (1970) with the same title. Most of the movie's calmer canoeing scenes were filmed on the Chattooga River.
by Tim Homan
During the summer of 2011 I was finishing the manuscript for my Shining Rock and Middle Prong Wildernesses hiking guide. One of the last items on the field-work list was to find Beech Spring, just south of Beech Spring Gap on the upper-elevation segment of the Old Butt Knob Trail. Clearly marked with the customary tiny blue-line circle on the Shining Rock quad sheet, the spring looked prominent and permanent, the kind all you had to do was follow the footworn path to the cold water.
But that had not been the case the first time I went looking for the blue dot. After mapping out the confusing trail junctions in Shining Rock Gap with measuring wheel distances, GPS coordinates, and compass headings, I followed Old Butt across the southeastern shoulder of Shining Rock before descending to Beech Spring Gap. I paced a compass heading toward the blue circle, but found neither beaten path nor an obvious and easily accessible spring within easy reach. It looked so simple on the map. The lack of a recently used fire ring in the gap's clearing suggested the spring was intermittent.
by Tim Homan
Middle of February, 2003, rural Madison County in Georgia's Piedmont. I stepped out onto our back deck at about ten-thirty in the morning to look at Brushy Creek, to check its depth and speed and color down the sunset slope from our home. The green under gray slope -- mountain laurel beneath winter-stripped oaks, white and northern red -- is steep for Piedmont topography. I stood at the back railing and watched as the South Fork Broad River tributary ran full and fast and red clay orange-brown from last night's heavy rainfall. No chance of spotting a gaudy male Wood Duck cruise by today.
by Tim Homan
Spring 1975, my first canoe trip in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. I had signed up for a Sierra Club trip to the swamp, an introductory one-nighter from Steven C. Foster State Park to the designated campsite on Cravens Hammock. Our group of five would begin paddling at the park well within the western boundary of the refuge. Our three canoes would glide half the length of Billys Lake, follow the Suwannee River to the dredged canal butted up beside the Suwannee River Sill, a long and low earthen dam. We would turn right onto the canal and head north beside the sill, then follow the North Fork Suwannee River to Cravens Hammock. Ten and a half miles out, the same distance right back in: simple, nearly impossible to become lost, the swamp water deep and tea dark all the way.
by Tim Homan
The forecast for the following two days called for cold and rain, with a chance of sleet or snow showers in the mountains. By the time the next decent day rolled around, I was sick with a sore throat and severe cold. I didn't hike again until mid-December. I read the weather forecasts in the newspaper every day, watched the weather on TV every evening. The mountains were becoming colder and receiving steady precipitation, a bad combination.
Rain fell off and on for two days just before I was well enough for hard hiking, so I opted to walk and work the first half of Section 2 of the Bartram Trail-the segment from Rabun County's Warwoman Road to Sandy Ford Road-rather than risk West Fork's ford at higher water. I left home under starlight, fully expecting to walk nearly 14 miles of empty trail and lonely road. I pulled onto the shoulder of Warwoman Road and started walking in the soft gray and gauzy light of early dawn. Rhododendron leaves drooped down and curled inward against the cold and frost flowers crunched underfoot as I passed through the Warwoman Dell Recreation Area.
(Continued from Part 2)
A few minutes after James' mac and cheese began to boil, a medium-sized man who looked a few years shy of forty entered the shelter, glanced around with contempt, then slung his heavy pack against the wall closest to the sidepath. He didn't bother to return our heys and hellos and started unpacking without a word. James nodded yes to our silent inquiry.
The next morning, our fourth day began with a slow ascent up to and over a Mt. Guyot spur. At Deer Creek Gap, Page heard then pointed out a male Blackburnian Warbler, his orange breast pulsing like a wind-blown ember when he turned toward the mid-morning sun. As the day warmed, a slow drift of white, fair-weather clouds floated single file over the Little Pigeon River drainage to the northwest. Near Ross Knob a Broad-winged Hawk whistled its piercing, high-pitched call while barely tilting a wing as it wheeled higher and higher on the rising, warm-air cushion of a thermal.
Late in the afternoon we turned onto the sidepath leading to Cosby Knob Shelter, home of the "huge bear." As we approached camp we noticed two fresh and highly conspicuous bear scats, exceptionally large bore and less than a hiking stick's length apart. The nearest one, super-sized and heaped high enough to trip small children, was larger than any we had ever seen. The second-piled to the size of a small cairn, enough to fill a child's beach pail-was larger still.
We assumed the crap cairns were the work of one really big bear doubling down on his territorial calling card. They were posted, easy-to-read, no-trespassing signs that said: "This is my territory, this is my shelter. All rights and privileges associated with said territory and shelter, including any and all foods or foodstuffs, are hereby reserved for the sole and exclusive hunger of the proprietor-the one and only mighty maker of these two plop piles. This visual and olfactory document is signed, notary-sealed, and enforced by the megafauna dimensions of these droppings and a size Pleistocene paw upside your head. Get lost or get bloody."
We shrugged our packs off in front of the shelter. As we turned to inspect its cleanliness, we noticed paper scrolled to fit a slot of fence link to the right of the door latch. "WATCH OUT FOR THE BEAR" was boldly printed at the top of the first of three large pages. We retrieved our packs, carried them inside and began to read. A young Texan named Daniel had spent the previous night alone at Cosby. Early in the evening, he hauled his pack with all his food and cooking gear down the open slope in front of the lean-to. He cooked a simple, one-pot supper and enjoyed the low slant of sunshine still clearing the trees. A few moments after he set his pot aside to cool, an "incredibly huge bear" swaggered slowly downslope, woofing and tooth popping, blocking the rookie backpacker's straight-line retreat to safety. The young man made a short, adrenaline-fired run around the bear and back uphill to the shelter. He neglected to grab his pack before the half-circle sprint.
His meal had obviously cooled enough for the "500-pound thief"; the bear wolfed it all down and licked the pot a good 20 feet further downhill. The beans-and-rice dish tasted like more. The bruin immediately turned his appetite to the pack, sniffing and clawing, biting and ripping and rifling until he had devoured all the remaining grub including five big Snickers bars wrappers and all. After both food and bear were gone, Daniel reclaimed his ruined pack and returned to "Fort Cosby." That night the marauder padded back and forth beside the shelter's fenced front at least a half dozen different times, sniffing and pacing and all but growling "more Snickers."
The self-described novice backpacker had planned to hike the AT for another three or four days after exiting the park. But now, with his food supply gone down the bear's gullet, his pack trashed, and his spirits lower than his boot liners, he would walk to Davenport Gap with a light pack and empty stomach … and head home.
By the next morning, his youth had distilled the previous day's ignominy and anger to optimistic reflection. The last two lines of his lengthy post script read: I'll be back next year, smarter and stronger. Daniel L., Beaumont, Texas.
We investigated the crime scene. All that remained were a few scuff marks, some gooey-looking shreds of Snickers wrappers, and a couple of half-chomped baby carrots. We walked back to the bunker, keeping the door open for dignity's sake, and read the shelter journal to gain whatever advantage we could from the bear's habits and temperament. An unlikely pattern quickly emerged. The beast, always alone and very big, "was one seriously bipolar bear." Nearly every day before signing their trail names-Zen Bootist, Heyduke, Hemlock Hank, Hot (herd of turtles), Limp-along Cassidy, and the like-the AT backpackers described the bear they came to call Fat Albert one day, Cosby the next. Fat Albert was always characterized as "big but tentative, unaggressive, nervous, a mild-mannered beggar, an easily run off loiterer." Cosby was consistently described as "a huge King Kong bear, monster-beast bear, mega-beast bear, the biggest bear I've ever seen, a bad-ass alpha male on steroids, 450 to 500 pounds and every ounce a bully, etc."
On Cosby days, which received the lion's share of the ink, the bear was a woofing, false-charging, jaw-popping intimidator, who would quickly misappropriate all unfenced food for his immediate use. No journal writers boasted of driving the Cosby-day bear completely off, not even one of the rock throwers. He left when he was good and ready, after all the food had been forted up for the night behind the chain-link fence. On Fat Albert days, however, loud yells and clanging pots and pans were all that was required to run the big but skittish bear down to the edge of the clearing.
The swinging pendulum good bear-bad bear routine had begun in April. Throughout all of the entries, there was but one bear-alternately docile or demon, one night mousy, the next night mean. The bipolar bear theme occurred so regularly that a few of the contributors began a small war of potshot words, accusation followed by escalating rebuttal. One gadfly upped the ante by suggesting that Cosby nights were caused by Fat Albert campers.
After finishing our day's ration of gorp, we headed down to the nearby spring to filter a gallon of cold cooking and drinking water. Three-quarters through our fourth and final Nalgene bottle, Page grabbed my pump arm and said, "bear" in a voice low but tense. An impressively large male bear stood at the bottom of the clearing-silently watching, head slightly raised, nose working the air. I glanced back at our packs inside the shelter; Page had closed and latched the door on her way out. Good move.
Brown muzzle, skull flat on top between his cupped ears, the bear looked to his right toward the other side of the opening for a second, then quickly returned his gaze to us. His impassive brown eyes, seemingly too small for his bucket-sized head, gave nothing away like a good poker player. But the tilt of his round face and his tensed body and his mind behind those inscrutable eyes were all alert. I stopped pumping and studied our visitor, tried to read his body language for clues to his identity, Cosby or Fat Albert.
"What do you think, Cosby or Fat Albert?"
"That's a big bear," I said, "but he looks a little nervous and tentative to me. I think our mooch for the night might be mousy bear Fat Albert."
"Yeah, I think so too."
The black bear advanced a couple of yards, stopped, looked over his shoulder, tested the breeze again. Eyes firmly fixed on the imposing bear, I finished pumping while Page gathered up the filter bag and full bottles. We decided to postpone supper for half an hour, enough time, we hoped, for him to leave. The bruin we wanted to be Fat Albert shambled forward, but did not closely approach the shelter, and did not pace back and forth in front of the fence demanding power bars in exchange for peace and quiet. If we were reading him right, our bear du jour was Doctor Jekyll, meek and mild and easily run off.
I watched as Al slipped away like a large puff of black smoke blown through dense foliage and dark shadow. We took a half-hour snooze as planned. The bear was still out of sight when we arose from our rest. Less than a minute after we started supper, a large male bear reappeared at the bottom of the clearing, just to the right of center. At first he just stood there, head raised and hesitant, looking about uneasily, drawing large drafts of air through his moist black nostrils. Trying to see what was for supper with his sense of smell. Before we verbalized our thoughts, that our beggar was still mild-mannered Fat Albert, he abruptly scooted to his left along the lower edge of the opening without apparent cause for his skittishness.
We scanned the woods. Down and to the left, still 10 feet in the forest, the shelter's secret loomed large in the double circle-single image of our binoculars. An older male bear-longer, heavier, and higher at the shoulder than the first-shuffled toward the opening and bear number one. He was well upholstered and huge for a Southern Highlands bear, big and burly and black as an obsidian boulder. We didn't need binoculars to read his mood; it was as unequivocal as a cocked pistol. He entered the opening with a slow muscular strut. The exaggerated roll of his shoulders and sway of his massive head declared that he was the real deal, the dominant bear. His size and demeanor guaranteed us he was about to drive off beta bear and take charge of all holdups and handouts the shelter offered. We now knew the source of Fat Albert's uneasiness. It was the journal's "monster-beast" Mr. Hyde, Cosby. He was a physical force. He made us grateful for strong steel.
The two black bears engaged in a territorial skirmish along the bottom of the opening only 25 to 30 paces in front of our see-through shield. They were fighting for the right to ransack our packs if given the split-second chance. We felt like we were participants in one of those public television nature shows: two spawning-run salmon anxiously watching two Kodiaks fight for sole possession of their pool. Winner take all.
The ultimate outcome was never in doubt. Alpha bear's bulk and his slow, cocksure physicality convinced us he would quickly rout beta. But to our surprise, Fat Albert held his ground, unwilling to yield any more turf a second sooner than necessary. Head lowered and swaying in rhythm with his slow, flat-footed strides, Cos narrowed the distance. Albert's feet remained motionless, but his head and heart weren't ready for battle. His body began a sideways wince. Making a great show of woofing, grunting, and jaw chopping-all bluff and bluster-Cosby closed the gap to a little more than his length, then paused, providing Al ample time to play his part in their dance of known dominance. Beta blinked, submitted. He cowered down and further sideways, muscles tightly bunched, ready to spin halfway around and sprint. Alpha male false charged, hurling his bulk and mock ferocity toward the empty space where Fat Albert had been, stopping with little hops on his front paws.
Heavyweight bear number one disappeared into the long darkening shadows of the sheltering forest. Sumo-weight bear number two turned his back on the subordinate bear, possibly an ursine insult, and rumbled back into the middle of the ring, claiming victory for the fatherland of his incessant hunger. And waited to see if he had won a white-towel TKO. But when he finally swiveled around to check the continuance of his success, the contender was back in the lower right corner of the clearing, in the exact same spot as before. Round two. Cosby lowered his head and locked eyes onto his opponent the way a bull signals a charge. He moved in much faster this time and false charged with a laborious gallop as soon as he closed. Al cringed down and sideways again, clearly showing submission and his intent to scram, which he accomplished with an astonishing speed and agility that belied his usual lumbering gait.
King Cos suddenly funneled his anger and frustration into a classic display of displaced aggression: a hard-wired explosion of red-hot ferocity intended to intimidate without actual combat or injury, at least to bears. The dominant male wheeled and charged in quick bursts of fury. He whirled and whacked all the target-appropriate vegetation within range in a stunning exhibition of speed, agility, and big-stick power. He popped shrubs and small saplings like they were speed bags, hammered larger saplings like they were heavy bags. He battered them all into bent or broken submission with surprisingly fast blows thrown in combination from both of his long-clawed front paws. His combustive rage, an innate choreography rehearsed and honed over geologic time, was quickly spent.
Cosby did not strut back to the middle of the ring immediately after his show. This time he stood near the forest's edge, blowing hard from his exertion and staring in Albert's direction. Aggressive mega-beast glared at what we assumed was mild mega-beast for a long moment before slowly moving back to the middle of the lower part of the clearing, once again claiming the shelter and its attendant rights to all the grub he could beg or bully.
Fat Albert had to thumb his nose one last time for dignity's sake; after all, how hard could it be to slap some flimsy and defenseless foliage around. But he fooled no one. He had probably witnessed the same spectacle: an awesome flaunting of assault-weapon firepower. Round three would lead to ripped flesh and blood if Cosby caught him, and he with all his old black bear culture and knowledge knew it.
The challenger nonchalantly shuffled back out into the opening, but not as far out as before. The champion tensed with promised violence. He was through with all courtesies: all tooth-popping posturings, false charges, martial arts attacks against supple flora. He rocked back slightly and took off, legs pumping, without bluff or sound. Fat Albert didn't bother with cringing submission; he hauled freight to save his hide, a rushing black blur, front legs stretching out low to the ground like a chased cat's. Cosby pursued him through the forest's parting green curtain and out of sight. The alpha male's speed reinforced unsettling knowledge: bears are easy to underestimate, impossible to outrun or outfight if one really wants you, an unarmed human, for an easy meal.
After several minutes the victor was back in the lower part of the opening, suddenly appearing-as even large animals so often do-as if he had popped up from the Earth. I tied the horseshoe-shaped latch down with a rope so he couldn't knock it back up, inadvertently or otherwise. He approached the shelter. Our trust in the strength of the wire weakened as he advanced. Bad boy Cos stopped 6 feet from the fence. The reverse zoo effect was now overwhelming. He stood there, a silent and watchful wall of muscle, his emotionless brown eyes concealing his cunning and stealth and proprietary willfulness. He looked right at the cold supper between us, sucked in its bland scent, then turned and walked away, familiar with the futility of the fence.
Up close, King Ursid of Cosby Knob Shelter appeared as big and bulky as the journal accounts claimed. Already familiar with black bear weights provided in various mammal guides, and familiar with fear's exaggeration, my guess was lower than most in the shelter journal. I guessed he weighed between 450 and 475 pounds. But it was just a guess and it was just June. A fall-fat Cos could easily weigh well over 500 pounds by October if the year's berry and hard mast crop were plentiful.
The night now officially belonged to Cosby. Our new larger and far more aggressive raider rumbled into the shadows, but remained in sight. When we looked up from our meal a minute later, he was gone. No movement, no sound. The forest had closed the door behind him. We relaxed, but only slightly. We figured he was still down there in front of us, his nose on high alert and scenting for the slightest hints of new food. But for all we knew, he could be behind us, waiting to bluff the mobile buffets off the backs of late arrivals.
A little before seven, a tall, slender young man pulled up to the shelter and unshouldered his pack. We told him everything he needed to know: the Texan, the journal accounts of the bipolar bear, the territorial dispute. His calm questions and thoughtful comments betrayed only a slight concern, not much more than a realization that his cooking and movements had to be tempered with good judgment.
James, who was section-hiking the AT two weeks per year, told us he had skipped Tricorner Knob Shelter and had passed a heavily loaded northbound hiker-a middle-aged man, immediately unfriendly-about 3 miles back. He asked if the man had stayed with us at Tricorner Knob the night before. We told him everyone we had met, both northbound and southbound, had been friendly, and that we hadn't seen the man he described. The three of us now knew one thing about the surly man: he either came up a sidetrail or was making bootleg camps in the woods along the AT.
(Continued next week)
by Tim Homan
In June of 1989 Page and I took a belated and shortened honeymoon-a four-night backpacking trip in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park*. Because of her father's death and our subsequent care of her mother, we hadn't backpacked-or done much of anything-for over a year. We reserved shelters for the 31.0-mile stretch of the AT from Newfound Gap to Davenport Gap. The night before I printed, "Just married: Need Ride to the Appalachian Trail at Newfound Gap" on a large piece of cardboard.
We drove without pit stop or pause through the mid-June morning to Davenport Gap. We strapped on our heavy packs and began walking the dirt-gravel road, hoisting our hitchhiker thumbs and boldly lettered sign at approaching vehicles. Our message worked almost as good as a shuttle car; sightseers hit their brakes and backed up to give us lifts, always asking where and how far we were hiking. One woman in a bus-sized Winnebago asked, "Aren't you afraid of bears? I know I would be." Our fourth ride dropped us off at Newfound Gap, where the AT crosses US 441 at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line, late in the morning.
(Continued next week)
by Tim Homan
In the years 2000 and 2001, when I researched and wrote a hiking guide that included the Southern Nantahala Wilderness, I frequently postponed the real work of writing by studying the wilderness map. For a relatively small area the two-state wilderness (1) is unusually rich with place names, boundaries, a well-known ridge, a major hydrologic divide, our country's first long-distance trail, 5,000-foot peaks, even a reference to the prominent honker of a Revolutionary War general: Pickens Nose. There was much to make a willing mind wander. Over and over again, I procrastinated by reading the rugged land's contours, tracing the trails and long ridges, following the blue-line flow of the high headwater rills down to their respective rivers, or fantasizing about bushwhack routes, my imagination eagerly striding the land with no thought of dark green and glossy discouragements of rhododendron.
This pocket-sized parcel of the Southern Highlands, approximately 23,365 acres and still puny, is steeped in evocative place names reflecting the weave of natural and human history: the rugged Appalachian landforms, the abundant wildlife and the magnificent forests that once animated the mountains, the rough and hard-labor lives of the early European settlers. A reminder that these ancient and eroded mountains are still a formidable geography, still plenty big and tough going for a person afoot on untrailed slopes.
Here the Appalachian Trail closely follows the equally famous crest of a multi-state long and winding ridge, the Blue Ridge, as the heavily trod treadway threads its white-blazed way alongside and through the wilderness. And here in this small protected sanctuary of the Mountain South, where congress has granted the land a provisional deed to its own life, the Blue Ridge serves double duty as the Tennessee Valley Divide, which dramatically changes the destinations of the drainages to the south and north of its narrow crest.
A careful scan of the wilderness map leads to another fact: all four of the Southern Nantahala's highest peaks raise the horizon to over 5,000 feet in North Carolina's northern and higher-elevation half of the two-state wilderness. These four mountains-Standing Indian, Big Scaly, Ridgepole Mountain, Little Bald-stand over or close to a mile high as the southernmost 5,000-footers in the Appalachian cordillera, which automatically qualifies them as the southernmost mountains of that height in eastern North America. Standing Indian, the site of a former firetower, is the tallest of the four; its final touch of sky rears up to 5,499 feet. The lowest 5k peak by the slim margin of only 10 to 20 feet, Little Bald's highest thrust of ancient orogeny, approximately 5,045 to 5,050 feet, is just over 0.4 mile above the Georgia border. The bald's southernmost 5,000-foot contour line is only 0.25 mile north of the Georgia-Carolina line, giving it clear title to the southernmost terrain over 5,000 feet in height of any mountain, knob, bald, ridgepole, or Standing Indian in eastern North America.
After all the idle hours of map study, I decided to hike off trail, bushwhack, in the Southern Nantahala Wilderness someday soon before I became too decrepit. I also decided to climb Little Bald on my first backpack trek. The other three five-grand peaks all had trails leading right to or closely approaching their highpoints. Little Bald was the only one that offered the challenge of hard off-trail hiking.
In the spring of 2005 I asked hiking buddy Roger if he wanted to join the ascent of Little Bald. (Roger is Roger Nielsen, a former, and hopefully future, rambler.) I showed him how our route stepped up in pitched rises of contour lines pinched tight and dark on the wilderness map. I told him we should work our way up to Dicks Knob-a very high peak for Georgia, one that few people have planted their boots on-along the line of march to Bear Gap and Little Bald. I guaranteed him strenuous hiking up a wild reach of rough country, wildland walking that would test the want to of our wills. I also guaranteed wildflowers, total solitude for our group of two, a heightened sense of adventure and discovery, and bear-clawed logs at the very least.
I called the Chattahoochee National Forest's work center in Clayton, Georgia, and talked to an old timer. I told the woodsman what we wanted to do and asked him about the thin dashed line on the quad map: the one leading from the parking-area end of FS 54 up to the Appalachian Trail at Coleman Gap. He told me the line was an old single-track that had not been legally used by motorized vehicles since the area received wilderness designation back in 1984. The former road, at least for the first mile or more, was still open enough to walk if you didn't mind the sun-gap saplings and the unknown but growing number of deadfalls.
He also told me how we could begin our trek. We could follow the woods road for maybe a mile to a small stream, a Coleman River feeder clearly shown on the topo map, and a former wildlife opening before turning to the left just before the branch. Then we could follow an old logging road, probably grown over, for perhaps a quarter mile to the high end of a former timber sale where the road petered out. After that we would be on our own, have all the bushwhacking we could want or stand.
Since he had helped me and worked for the federal government, he felt compelled to offer a short CYA disclaimer. "I hunted up there when I was a boy and worked up there for the forest service. That's rough country up there where you're going, a fair amount of rock in places, cursed with rhododendron in others. That rhododendron will snatch the hat off your head, damn near pick your pocket. Easy to get lost, hard to get found again."
Someday came on May 21 and 22, a weekend so we wouldn't have to take off work. Roger and I drove north on US 441 beneath an overcast sky, the ceiling low and completely closed with the medium gray of socked-in cloud cover. The weather forecast had called for gradual clearing, but as the two of us traveled west on US 76 from Clayton, we drove through light rain. At the empty parking-area end of dirt-gravel FS 54 (2,860 feet), the clouds floated higher and lighter gray, giving us hope the called-for clearing was on the way.
The low-elevation forest was lush and shady, full of small buzzings and birdsong. The extra-large leaves of the deciduous saplings invading the edges of the former road's light gap were wet and dripping from the recent rain. Roger and I followed the former single-track as it entered the zoned wilderness and ranged north on mostly easy uphill grades. Dense vegetation crowded our frequently curving line of least resistance in places and occasional deadfalls blocked easy passage as expected, but overall the road was still remarkably open for one closed to vehicular traffic twenty-one years before.
Early on, we had quick looks at two colorfully feathered wood warblers-hooded and black-throated blue-and heard the insistent song teach teach teach of a third, the Ovenbird. The two of us heard the loud and fiercely ringing Tarzan tremolo of the crow-sized Pileated Woodpecker, one of the wildest voices left in the Southern Mountains, twice before our first pack-drop break. A single showy orchis bloomed beside the track, its bicolored orchid flowers a deep pink hood over a white landing-strip lip.
We turned left off the woods road at the small branch and former opening. The autumn olive shrubs planted for wildlife were still growing beneath the gathering shade of the 6-inch-diameter tuliptrees quickly reclaiming the clearing. After some scouting and thrashing around, we found the old logging road, grown over to a faint path through the monocultural recovery of more tuliptrees.
Roger and I passed through the young stand into a much older and far more diverse forest of mixed mesophytic hardwoods, not a conifer in sight. Now there was no single-track, no cleared and beaten path bisecting the forest into right side and left side. The sun-seeking grace and ancient symmetries of the forest surrounded us on all sides, making us feel swallowed up and small on the mountainside. The novelty of increased difficulty and danger intensified our focus, added a kind of excitement missing when a footpath tells you where to go and where to place your feet to get there.
We were no longer on the map's landscape of contour lines and imagination. We were now cross-country backpacking, traveling trail-less through sharply slanted mountainous terrain with only maps and compasses, looking for the easiest seams through the forest along our desired route. Our sense of entering a wilder and more challenging phase of the trip was palpable.
The clouds brightened even more, gave us expectations of blue-sky gaps soon. We were both in bouyant moods, happy to be out in the big untrailed woods, our senses ratcheting up to meet the demands of tough hiking. Roger and I decided to gain a few-hundred feet of elevation by climbing up the steep hardwood slope to the west-southwest before bending our ascent toward the notch of a hollow. We stopped for a breather beside a rotting log ripped apart in places by the long claws of a black bear, the deeply incised parallel lines signs of the wildness we were seeking.
The sky cleared; we could now see blue and brighter white through the canopy gaps in the forest. We plodded up the formidable sweep of the green mountainside, steering around the dark and dense barriers of rhododendron. Roger and I entered a scattered colony of flowering flame azalea, then turned so we could contour toward the hollow's ravine. As we curled around the head of the hollow, we flushed a tall doe out of her day bed. She took off with a loud snort and bounded down the slope, her tail flipping up to full white flag, waving goodbye with every leap.
We passed through that rising sweet spot in spring's surge up the slope. Higher up, the leaves of the trees were still unfolding, not yet fully grown. Down below, the leaves were already grown and darkened, already marred from caterpillar munching. But we were now walking through that ephemeral and upwardly mobile band of freshly unfurled foliage, spring's first full blush of pastel green, newborn and pristine.
Around the hollow we changed course so we would strike the spur we wanted where the top of its fold was narrow enough to form an obvious ridge. The two of us crested the ridgetop and angled toward a higher and more prominent spur. We gained elevation atop the slick footing of wet, moss-covered rock and roughed our way through a tightly knit snarl of rhododendron to a reward: another bear-raked bole, the gap between claw marks wider than the one before. We found the ridgecrest we wanted where our spur met another to form a single well-defined keel rising toward Dicks Knob. The ridgeline led us up into cloud mist, the dim and gauzy gray half-light making the crosshatched mesh of the heath-shrub hells appear even darker.
We followed a narrow game path past several small patches of pulverized soil, the roto-tilling work of feral hogs. (2) We flushed a rabbit and spooked a Red-tailed Hawk into flight in quick succession. The fronds of finely wrought New York and hay-scented ferns offered welcome easy walking where the contour lines spread further apart.
Roger and I climbed the final 400 feet of the calf-buster grunt up the knob's sunrise slope: no trail, no trash, no game path, just the sharp green rise of rarely trod land. We zigzagged up short switchbacks of our own design to lessen the difficulty of the pitch and to avoid slabs of wet rock. Below seeps we waded nearly knee high through the exuberant growth of herbaceous plants. Near the end of our slow ascent, we noticed the curling, yellowish-silver bark of a yellow birch, a cold-adapted northern hardwood, a sure sign we had entered the Mountain South highcountry.
We shared the knob's tiny topknot (4,630 feet using the newest topo), our first major waypoint, with a colony of Catesby's trillium, their three-petaled flowers having already turned a darker pinkish red with age. Using our packs for pillows, we lay down in the thatch of last year's leaves and rested for half an hour, a great luxury of peace and pleasing fatigue.
Break over, our bushwhack continued down the easy gradient atop the main ridgecrest barely east of north. That high fold stretched north-south across our small squares of laminated topo map and connected Steeltrap Knob to the south with Dicks Knob and Bear Gap and Little Bald to the north. A few hundred yards downridge from the mountaintop, Roger and I heard a large animal tear off from us at close range, just the other side of the circular wall of opaque mist murk. The animal made far too much racket smashing through the shrubs for it to have been a long-legged and graceful deer. No, the critter we walked up on and spooked to sudden panic was thick and powerful and built low to the ground, probably a feral hog.
The distance from the knob's highpoint to the middle of the saddle was only 0.4 mile on the flat map, and the wide spaces between the 40-foot contour lines told us our downgrade to Bear Gap might be relatively effortless. But after an easy beginning, the interlaced limbs of rhododendron kept jungling together at the leading edge of our portable round of visibility. Parts of the keel were so completely cordoned off with impediments we thought we were fighting our way through a partial heath bald. The latticed braches of the tall shrubs snatched the hats off our heads repeatedly.
Our almost-over-the-hill team gradually ramped down from the mist-shrouded mountain to the lowest sag of the gap, 4,420 feet and only 0.1 mile on the map from the North Carolina border. Roger and I rigged up A-frame, lean-to tarps for lightweight shelters, snacked and rested on our ground cloths. And waited for the mist to clear.
To be continued next week.
Notes
(1) North
Carolina, Nantahala National Forest, approximately 11,732 acres;
Georgia, Chattahoochee National Forest, approximately11,633 acres. The
Nantahala N.F. holds title to approximately 594,456 acres.
(2) Since my first Southern Nantahala hike in 1985, I have seen only
four free-running swine-a pair and two solos-in the wilderness. All
four lacked humps, had very short black hair, and possessed the
keg-on-short-legs, porky pig build of feral hogs. None of the hikers I
have chatted with over the years had observed wild boar phenotype swine
in the wilderness.
by Tim Homan
Later, the sky promising with large patches of blue, we decided to complete the ridgecrest climb to Little Bald's crown only 0.6 mile away as we would walk it and a little over 600 feet higher in elevation. We carried only water, snacks, fanny packs, and overconfidence, dressed only in shorts, gaiters, and T-shirts. We did not pack any survival gear: no headlights, no warm shirts, no space blankets, and no ponchos or rain jackets. Both of us probably had a lighter or two in our fanny packs.
A short distance above camp, we noticed a large-dollop plop of place-name apropos scat deposited close beside a faded Budweiser can (the only human spoor along the bushwhack segment of our hike) with two small-caliber bullet holes, probably from a .22. The scene looked choreographed, like the bear had marked his territory next to the littered beer can, one signpost of passage beside the other. Less than 30 yards further, we walked past a small colony of Catesby's trillium blooming close to a fairly thin, flat-sided rock the size of a large platter. The rock had recently been turned over by the incessant hunger of a foraging bear, leaving its sunken imprint right beside its new position. Two sets of easily remembered pairings-bear scat and beer can, trillium colony and bear-flipped rock-would signal our return to shelter and supper.
We made steady progress and quickly crossed North Carolina's unmarked boundary. An animal path bisected the length of the ridgeline like on the other prominent crests we had trekked earlier in the day. The new leaves of the oaks, which were not fully grown in Bear Gap, became even smaller-small as mouse ears-as we ascended the upper slopes of Little Bald.
The two of us gradually curved to the west without knowing we had done so and were soon on top of the former bald without taking any compass headings as planned. Highcountry-hardy broadleafs and evergreen heath shrubs had reforested the mountaintop since it was last used as a summer-range pasture. Small scattered areas of the summit were tufted with doghair stands of deciduous saplings: a jailbreak of early succession growth filling in the former opening's light gap. The nearly level highpoint had no cairn, no rock outcrop, no view, not even an old fire ring. We sat down and tanked up on water and snacks. The sky sagged down and smothered us in cloud-belly mist before we began our backtrack.
Roger and I waited to determine if the mist-wrapped mountain was the result of a single cloud cutting an upside-down furrow across the bald's pate. It wasn't. We followed a compass heading east before turning to the right and south onto what we hoped was the right ridge. Nothing looked familiar. The thick gray fog whittled down our visibility to a small moving bubble, blotted out all landmarks: ridges, slopes, hollows, everything. Our sightlines were pitifully short. We followed the top of the fold down into the forested mist. Somewhere, while making end runs around the usual hindrances, we slid off the ridgeline and slanted onto upper slope. We were now trudging east-southeast almost diagonally across the contours of a sharply canted mountainside.
We stopped to study our small squares of laminated map. We talked out our problem. If we had dropped off the left side of the right ridge, the one leading to Bear Gap, a bushwhack west would take us back to its crest and camp. But if we had taken the wrong ridgeline, the wide and less distinct one running nearly southwest away from the bald, we would need to travel east or southeast to regain the correct ridgecrest.
We studied the grain and gradients of the respective sidehills. We decided to keep descending the veiled pitch of the slope toward what we hoped was the bottom-most notch of a hollow. Roger was wearing a watch; we knew there wasn't time for befuddling circles or even a single faulty decision. We traversed a slope mined with heath shrub skirmishers and seepage-slick rocks. I thought about what the forest service man had told me, but kept his warning to myself. We slipped and slided to slow-motion falls, but kept popping up and angling down into a forest gone darker gray. Fatigue and the first clench of dread, kissing cousin to fear, sapped our strength and focus.
The two of us frequently huddled around map and compass, steadying ourselves with calm consultations. We tried to right ourselves with first one plan then another, but all of our plans fell flat on the fact that we were temporarily misplaced, that we really didn't know where we were with a 100 percent certainty. Our compasses and maps and guts were telling us we were west of the Bear Gap crest, but we were unwilling to bet a cold and hungry and wet night out in the unsheltered woods without absolute confirmation. Not yet, anyway.
The lay of the land remained a cloud-buried mystery. But we did have one arrow left in our quiver: a spring-born rivulet, a high headwater rill of the "Creek" (3) labelled on the left side of our maps, began in the hollow just across the Georgia line on the west side of the crest we wanted. The east side did not show a stream, and it did not show a high hollow that might give rise to a spring. We decided to work our moveable eye in the mist down to the beginning branch and take a compass heading on its flow. Both of us wanted the clincher, we wanted to right ourselves on the map before spending the last of our light and energy climbing up the steep slope to a ridgeline.
We didn't panic. But the two us were increasingly concerned and determined not to make another disorienteering mistake. Roger was worried, but he remained outwardly calm, perhaps steeling himself for a long and uncomfortably cold night. We zigzagged down the sidehill generally to the southeast, so that we would strike the strongly tilted bottom of the hollow we hoped was down there in the gray void closer to Bear Gap.
Daylight kept draining away, dimming to an early and ever darker dusk. I noticed my tongue was sticking to the roof of my dry mouth and that it was difficult to swallow. My scant saliva had the odd metallic taste of a copper penny, primitive fear now the taste on my tongue. I pinched my forearm hard and told myself, once again, that I had to get Roger out of this mist-bedeviled mess. We needed to find our bullet-hole and bear-scat ridge with unerring accuracy, and we needed to start climbing toward that ridge within ten minutes or it would be a very long night.
We struck the bottom of the hollow's furrow; it descended south-southwest, about 210 degrees. That heading matched the map. Good, really good. Hot meal good. Now we needed to know if the hollow gave rise to the rivulet on our map. Our almost-whipped team shadowed the sharply falling notch. If we were right, we would be traveling in the correct direction, parallel and to the west of our tarp-strung camp. The bushwhacking was rough-steep, rocky, and wet-rhododendron alternately friend or foe, handhold or shackle. Increasing exhaustion and resignation made us clumsy. We thrashed through the vegetation down and down until we found a yellow Georgia Wildlife Management Area sign facing north. We were standing on the state line. That fact gave us a boost; we were in the ballpark, had a chance for a dry camp and the welcome warmth of sleeping bags.
Roger and I stumbled down the hollow a little faster, the darkening sky a ticking time bomb of "if-only" recriminations and grim prospects. We found the spring and tracked its outflow just far enough to get a reliable compass reading. The trickling run of the rivulet matched the thin black line on our maps: south-southwest and seaward, close to 210 degrees. We had our proof. We had finally deciphered the landscape; we had finally fixed ourselves on the map. Now it was time to move with all the resolve we could muster. I made a quarter turn to the left and climbed up the slope a vegetation-altered version of east. Roger called out for me to remain within easy shouting distance, a reasonable request. I hollered OK and pushed on as hard as I could, stopping only for standing eight counts. I heard Roger engaged in the contact sport of rhodo wrestling below me in the fast-fading light.
Reinvigorated, we crossed over the rocky ledges of a short spur and continued up and generally a little south of east. We hooted and hollered to stay in voice contact with each other. I turned more to my right so the hiking would be easier, and the ridgecrest would come down to meet me. Less than 200 yards after changing direction, I topped a ridge descending south through a small pocket of open hardwoods like the one we had passed through just after setting off for Little Bald.
I quickly found a familiar sight: the small colony of flowering Catesby's trillium next to the recently flipped-over rock. I trotted down the backbone of the ridge to find the clincher: the bullet-holed beer can beside the big pile of bear plop. I let out a loud celebratory whoop, hurried back up the easy rise of the ridge and told Roger we were back at camp. We stepped under our tarps safe from a miserable night with less than ten minutes of increasingly marginal light left.
We celebrated our deliverance with supper-desiccated dinners-and kept up a cheerful banter, stress leaving our bodies with every laugh. I told him about the metallic coppery taste that had taken up residence in my mouth, dread and fear come to say hello. He told me about the constricted feeling in his throat that had tightened as the minutes ticked toward last light. I told him I was glad he had held his emotions in check, that he had passed the bushwhacker's stress test. I also assured him, if he wanted to go again, that we would not make another mistake the rest of the summer.
Dusk darkened to cloud-cover night while we waited for our freeze-dried feedsacks to rehydrate. We could see the minute droplets of the heavy mist in our headlights. A light rain pattered on our tarps after we had slipped into our sleeping bags.
As I lay in my fart muffler safe and warm, I had a powerful feeling that Roger and I were the only backpackers for miles around. The black sky and the silence, no sounds save the occasional rain tapping on the tarps, buttressed the strong sense of our far-reaching isolation. All our effort to reach Bear Gap the first time, and all our struggle and stress to find it again before nightfall further bolstered that feeling of an expansive isolation. I knew the reality of our location. But I also knew the psychological distance felt much further, spanned miles and miles further in all directions.
We slept the sleep of the just, the just done-in and dog-tired. Late that night, some time on the morning side of midnight, coyotes startled us with a loud yipping alarm-their singing high pitched and piercing, close and quickly over. They had been working the ridgeline on the hunt, padding down toward the saddle from the north, when they had run right into the sounds and sweat-drenched scents of our camp. The coyotes had hit the brakes and sounded the alarm, their music a welcome wildness to the night.
The coyotes kept us awake long enough to notice that our breaths now plumed smoke, a visual to accompany the audio of our snores. The night was now cold and wet enough for us to know. …
Notes
"the Tennessee Valley Divide, which dramatically changes the destinations of the drainages to the south and north of its narrow crest." South of the divide, the Tallulah River's clear and cold water makes its short and dam-stoppered way to the Atlantic Ocean at the seaport city of Savannah.
North of Standing Indian, the Nantahala River's fast moving freight begins its long-expedition journey from grits to gumbo. Pushed and pulled along by the Earth's one-way water shepherd, the Nantahala's contribution glides down the Tennessee and the Ohio before mingling its mountain water with the Mississippi. After sweeping its meandering, mile-wide way far to the south, the Mississippi gains its lowest and final level where it ends at the Gulf of Mexico below New Orleans. There the mighty river loses its name, loses its linear traveling life, and loses its sweet water to the salty sea.
Place names from the Southern Nantahala Wilderness: Sugar Cove, Cherry Cove, Burnt Cabin Cove, Milksick Cove, Stillhouse Cove. Milk sickness came from a rhizomatous perennial known as white snakeroot (Eupatorium rugosum). This native Aster family plant is poisonous, and milk from cows that grazed this wildflower will cause milk sickness in humans, an especially serious affliction for young children. During periods of the nineteenth century, milk sickness was the leading cause of death in the nation.
Mayapple Knob, Little Nell Knob, Newt Knob, Deadening Knob, Rattlesnake Knob. When Southern Appalachian settlers found land flat and fertile enough to farm, their first step in the laborious process was girdling all the trees, killing them to let in the light. These girdled-tree areas were known as deadenings.
Whiteoak Stamp. Stamps and stomps, former sites of corralled livestock, are occasional to uncommon place names throughout much of the Mountain South, especially in the high land of former summer pastures.
(3) The spring that gave rise to the rivulet we followed to verify our bearing is the highest headwater source of Mill Creek, a tributary of the Tallulah River.
by
Tim Homan
Summer 1988, Canyonlands National Park*, southern Utah's redrock and hoodoo country. Wingate Sandstone, Chinle Formation, Moenkopi Formation, White Rim Sandstone: a geologic layer cake from the Permian, the Triassic, and the Jurassic, each band with a distinct composition, age profile, and color that changes with the light.
Page and I arrived at the small primitive campground (Willow Flat in the park's Island in the Sky district) late in the afternoon, the day cloudy and surprisingly cool, and staked out our tent, a dinky two-person dome. We are both in the tent, resting from the three-day drive. I am flat on my back and moaning intermittently from unaccustomed chest pains: a fast pulse with some sort of arrhythmia, painful and thudding, at a ratio of one squirrely misfire every five or six quick beats. The pain is not heart-attack severe, not excruciating, but damned inconvenient and disconcerting nevertheless.
by
Tim Homan
In the mid-to-late 1970s, when I began exploring the mountains of North Georgia, written directions to trailheads were often short, cryptic, and inaccurate. In general, directions, trailhead signage, and parking areas were all primitive by today's standards. Back then, a trail was often more difficult to find than to follow. In part, those problems led to my decision to write a guide that would include easily understood and accurate directions to the trailheads.