Day 32-Guess What We Saw!

April 19-10.6 miles-Bald Mtn Shelter to No Business Knob Shelter-AT mile 338.0

At precisely mile 328.2, Sure Foot stopped and pointed. It was a BEAR! It was about .1 mile ahead. It was moving so fast that neither of us could get a photo, but here is where it went across the trail. 

From where I’m standing, up to Sure Foot is where the bear crossed the trail. It was a good looking black bear, nice rich black coat. 

It’s funny...last night we saw a deer, and one walked through camp in the middle of the night (we saw the tracks this morning), then today we see the bear. We haven’t seen any wildlife up until now. Hopefully, we’ll see more. 

Today’s scenic blue blaze was up High Rock. It was a .1 mile trail up to the top of the rock. As usual, we dropped our packs at the bottom. 



The rock that is known as High. 

It was still a little chilly, but the wind wasn’t blowing on top. 

Flat Will on the precipice of death. 

Going back down, it was a bit narrow. Glad we didn’t have our packs on. 

After we came back down, we proceeded to walk around the base of High Rock. 



We were up there. 

Today was a mix of up and down, but some of the down was pretty sketchy. It makes for slow going on my part. Lots of roots, especially, and rock “stairs”. 

It might be hard to tell, but that is a steep downhill that Sure Foot is starting. 

There was also some easy fast downhill too. On one part there were to successive log bridges. 

The first one is about three feet above the stream. As I started to cross the first one, my foot slipped into the crack between the two logs. I started to fall to the left, but was quickly able to jump down to the rocks and land on my feet without falling. Whew! I said to myself, “Let’s try this again...this time stay on the logs!” When I told Sure Foot about it, he said, “So, you stuck the landing.” Indeed I did!

In the last couple of miles, we had some good views of the hillsides coming up from the ravines. It looked like it was Fall and the leaves were changing. 

The photo doesn’t really do it justice. 

We had to get our water .2 miles before the shelter. We also took the opportunity to flush our filters. The water yesterday was a little silty. 

The name of the shelter is No Business Knob. I think that is a funny name. Of course there is No Business Knob which I think we finish climbing first thing in the morning. 

Tomorrow is an early start so we can get into Erwin, TN. We are still bouncing back and forth between North Carolina and Tennessee. We prefer Tennessee because, at least Erwin is not shut down. We are going to stay at the Super 8 to resupply, shower, sleep in beds, and do laundry. But, we are not taking a zero. We’ll be back on trail the next day. Looking forward to clean clothes and some non trail food. 








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