Jacob’s Laddering

Tonight, I'm at the Cable Gap shelter at mile 159.4. It’s about 8:15 p.m., and I hiked just shy of 12 miles today. It’s safe to say that this was my most challenging day on the trail yet. That's the polite way of saying it sucked. They can’t all be good, can they?

I woke up this morning at around 6:30, and it was still snowing/raining a little bit. I think it was probably in the 20s at that point, because we were at a reasonably high elevation, so that equated to no effing way am I getting out of my tent for a while. As soon as it became light enough to see, I could tell that there was ice on the outside of my tent.

What made the morning particularly difficult was not just that it was so cold but that it was also really windy. And taking my tent down when it's really windy is kind of an act of futility, because it keeps wanting to blow away. Normally, I’d lay it on the ground and fold it and then roll it up neatly. This morning, I just jammed it into a stuff sack and hoped it would fit.

It did, but barely, and at that point, my fingers were freezing. Everyone at the campsite was running around, complaining about the cold. I packed up as quickly as I could and got moving. I didn't even eat breakfast, because it was just too cold.

The terrain today looked on paper like it was going to be pretty mild, but it turned out to be anything but. There's actually a pretty steep climb out of Locust Cove Gap. Here’s another obvious observation, perhaps, but there's always going to be a steep climb out of a gap. That's just kind of the way it works. Especially if there’s a steep decline into it. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Most of my hike today was concentrated on not freezing to death. The wind just would not stop, and a few times, I decided to yell at it, which was obviously very helpful. At a little over three miles, there was a road crossing and some pretty major construction. It looks like they’re trying to widen the highway by removing a big section of bedrock. So there was a lot of banging and construction noise. They’d rerouted the trail by a few hundred yards and created a little bit of a detour for us hikers.

I crossed the highway, went up into the woods a little bit, and decided it was time to have something to eat. So I ate an energy bar from this guy, Robert Irvine, who I think is a Food TV star or something. He's British and looks sort of comically muscular. He makes a damn good energy bar, I'll tell you that. I followed that up with a Moon Pie, which, unfortunately, was a lot like eating sand. But hey, I'll take what I can get.

I took a minute to look at the map before I got going again and noticed that there was this little note, almost like an asterisk, that I was about to climb Jacob's Ladder. A name like that isn't overly promising. So I look online, thinking, you know, “What is this thing?” And apparently, what it is is a half-mile section of trail that's basically straight up. No switchbacks, nothing.

So here I am, hiking straight up, it’s freezing, and I’m hungry because I haven't had enough to eat for the day, and about a quarter of the way up, I look back, and here comes this young guy, just charging up the hill. And in about three seconds, he’s managed to totally whiz by me, which was really great for the ego. But then he stopped, and we talked for a second. I think he’s from South Africa, judging from his accent. He’s hiked all the way from Florida and plans to hike all the way up to Canada, following the path of this well-known hiker, whose trail name is Nimblewill Nomad.

He wrote a book called Ten Million Steps, which I’ve read, and this young guy actually got to meet Nimblewill once. So I thought that was pretty interesting. But then he was off again and quickly disappeared up the hill.

The second half of the day was fairly uneventful. Lots of ups and downs and trying to not to freeze to death. Overall, I made good time and eventually made it to Cable Gap shelter and set up my tent. I got a pretty good pitch tonight. The Locust Cove Gap shelter, where I was last night, really didn't have very many flat spaces, and whenever you pitch a tent on an uneven surface, everything in the tent — including its occupant — gravitates toward the lowest point over the course of the night. I had to keep moving everything back up, only to have it slide down again, which didn’t make for a very restful night. Tonight should be much better.

I'm in my sleeping quilt now and feeling pretty toasty, which is a marked improvement over last night. So, a good end to a tough day. Tomorrow, I roll into Fontana Dam, and I'll be spending the night at the Hike Inn. And then it's on to the Smokies.