Day 11 Night Hike

Writing from my tent after night hiking and making it to camp an hour after sunset.


The weather today was awesome. It was almost too warm. The high was in the 70s and we had quite a bit of elevation gain and loss throughout the day. So we were working up a sweat in the heat. 


We left the NOC at around 10:15AM after eating a big breakfast in Bryson City and getting shuttled back to the trail. 



The ascent out of the NOC involves climbing from 1,800 feet of elevation up to over 5,000 feet over the course of 9 miles, to the summit of Cheoah Bald. We had a slow start, as my legs were cramping pretty bad for the first couple hours of the hike. After hydrating, stretching, and taking it slow the cramping finally stopped. The ascent was pretty gradual and we had lunch at the top. 





After Cheoah we went down to Stecoah Gap, a road crossing with awesome views on the hike up out of the gap. 




After Stecoah we hiked an incredibly vertical ascent up Jacob’s Ladder, a half mile stretch of trail where we ascended over 500 feet. My ankle and calf held up quite well. From Jacob’s ladder we still had about 4 miles left and it was basically sunset. It was pretty cool to hike as the sun was setting. 







We night hiked for about an hour, with headlamps. I haven’t done a lot of night hiking, so it was interesting to try it out. I was certainly relieved to make it to our camp site and eat dinner. And now I’m looking forward to sleep. 


Overall we hiked over 19 miles today, between 10AM and 8PM. We ascended over 7,000 feet  and descended over 4,000 feet over the course of the day. Tomorrow we will do shorter day, around 16 miles, and get a resupply from Fontana before heading into the Smokies. 


Goodnight


Walker 

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