JJJ
05-25-2009, 22:46
May 22-24, 2009
Buzzard Rock, AT
This past week I finally got the dragon oven (http://jjjessee.blogspot.com/2009/05/breadzillas-first-fire.html) far enough along to start building some small fires in it to “cure” it of lingering dampness. The clay inside was still surprisingly wet considering I applied it about 6 weeks earlier and had pulled out the sand mold 2-3 weeks ago. The firings were only 1-3 hours each and we did cook a chicken in a dutch oven, but nothing of a bread nature.
My main task has been to help Bonnie get few things ready around the house for a group of her lady friends who would be spending the weekend for their annual retreat. And since I had been politely asked to make myself scarce, the thought a weekend on a trail was really a little reward for me. At first I thought about paddling down S. Holston Lake and walking across the mountain to the Blue Hole, but my kayaking gear was not in order, so I decided on something more familiar for which prep was more of a second nature.
I’m trying to keep my little Go-Lite Lite-Speed pack more or less ready to go anytime. So really food and clothing are about all I have to customize for the weather and trip duration. My hiking shorts, kilt, a couple short-sleeved tech shirts and a l/s fleece, a pair of sandals and socks, and Five Fingers shoes seemed plenty adequate for Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning. There was a beautiful weekend forecast given for Whitetop, VA and I was determined to be there.
I usually like to experiment a little with camp cooking, but pressed for time, I just loaded a stuff sack with a packet of Kashi 7-grains, 3 apples, a couple of wraps and about 4 oz of cheese. Also, I mixed up half pound of an easy, impromptu gorp out of the family nut and dried fruit bowl. That sounded a little light on calories since I want to do 2 short runs on Saturday and about 5 miles sometime Sunday. But I had a pair of ProBars(375 cal each), a couple of espresso gels, and I thought I had some couscous and olive oil stored in my cooking kit. I didn’t really check, but since I was getting such a late start and there was really only 4 meals to cover, not including a chow-stop going and coming though Damascus, I didn’t worry about it.
Since next week is the some-teenth annual St John Bicycle Trip, I thought a little road test with a load wouldn’t hurt. So I bungied my pack onto the bike’s luggage carrier and headed over the hill to the Creeper Trail about 4:30pm. The day had been warm and pleasant with a nice little breeze from the east. Lots of folks were out on the trail getting a jump on a long spring weekend. Having replaced my warped back rim makes the 9 miles into Damascus well under an hour even with a 20lb pack in tow. I thought about skipping a chow stop at Fattie’s going out of town, but I had plenty of time, and the siren smell of burgers and fries was more than I could pass. They were doing a good business, but I compromised with a veggie quesadilla and a cold Dos Equis and was back on the trail in half an hour or so.
A few miles up, Big Rock Falls was still running seasonally heavy, but was down from prior weeks. The traffic has thinned, but a half mile latter a stout guy on a hungry looking mountain bike breezes past me from behind and says two more are following. Not 500’ around the next bend, I see he has stopped –probably to wait on his pals. When I pull up he said he had just scared a bear off the trail. It had disappeared over the stream bank into the laurel about 50 yds off into the woods. I’ve only seen one bear in the wild, but I wasn’t curious enough to follow this one, especially with the scent of fast food on me.
I hit the AT at Creek Junction and left the bike locked up at the provided rack. It was only 7:30, and knew I could do a few miles, but had no hopes of making 7 miles to Buzzard Rock before dark. My pack felt noticeably lighter than my trip last month, still, but that's not something to complain about. Its only about a mile and a half of easy trail up to the shelter on the flats of Lost Mountain but up is still "up" especially at the end of a day. There was still good daylight when I got there -a few tents around but no one in the shelter. A hiker directed me to the spring, which I wanted to check out for future running rambles. It was only 2.5 miles further to the SR-603 crossing. Last time I was there, was with Meltzer, his crew, Woodstock and PolkaDot, and Lone Wolf. LW had shown us the spring there, which I’d not scouted either. The twilight was almost deep enough to call dark, so I decided to camp at an easy spot rather than risk my quesadilla going flat on me half way up Beech Mountain. Campsites are not plentiful after the first mile and hard to find in the dark even with a headlight. I started pulling the innards out of my pack and discovered why it felt lighter -it was lighter –exactly one weekend food sack lighter. The last time I’d seen it was on my kitchen counter. That’s probably close to where it still was.
I wrapped one end of my tarp around a big healthy black walnut tree still in bloom and staked the other end down in the grass. I fell asleep counting the calories I had brought instead of sheep. I couldn’t make it much past 1000, before the sound of wind sweeping the treetops scrubbed my mind of all thought.
In the morning, I considered walking or jogging to Whitetop Grocery, but I couldn’t decide if it would be 3 miles or 6 miles each way. And of course I didn’t have a map –why spoil an adventure with a map -right? I could probably hitch a ride once I got to pavement, but was that 1 or 2 miles? Either way it sounded like too much of the day to waste on just a couple of thousand calories. So I fired up my alchy stove, cooked about ¾ cup of couscous and crumbled in some Probar, since there was no olive oil either.
In the past few years, I’ve been up and down Beech Mt enough to sort of know the trail. The first time, in late summer, I remember it as tough. The nettles were tall and sassy and acted like they hadn’t eaten bare leg of hiker in months. But every time since, it has gotten a little easier. Still, if the wild flowers don’t take your breath, the hill will. There are all the usually suspects blooming today: trillium, wood anemone, false solomon seal, jack-in-the-pulpit, yellow pimpernel, and white baneberry which I don’t see so often. Later in summer it appears turk’s cap lilies and angelica will be the main fireworks.
But today, it was the young nettles that were looking vulnerable and tasty to me. My grandmother said she’d eaten them. I might have picked a mess had I some butter and vinegar to tame them after a parboiling. Within an hour and a half I’d made it to the rock and along the way, munched on enough violet’s leaf and flower to squelch an appetite. The sun and wind had made short work of a thin haze of fog leaving the shamrock green valleys and hills for easy view 30 miles into the edge of blueness. With not a lot on my agenda for the day, or enough fuel anyways, I meander around Buzzard Rock. I found the Buzzard benchmark (set in 1979 and checked in 1991), talked to several hikers, some sectioning, some thrus. Most were thrilled with the view, as the spring has been extra moist and the mountain tops fog prone. I found an unbelievably good camping spot down near the eastern edge of the knoll. By some physics of wind and rock there was a dead spot in the draft though the place appears exposed. A pair of towhees took slight offense at my presence and left without being sociable, as did a pair of ravens tacking into the nippy east wind.
After the rest, I thought I might as well head on over to the spring on other corner of Whitetop’s south face. It’s an easy mile’s walk through a gnarled low woods. There was a group of half dozen strapping young men watering at the gushing piped spring. They had been shuttled up to Fox Creek to head southbound for Damascus. Sounded like they had had a little more climb and rocks than they had bargained for but were enjoying the trip. We were talking about camp spots, hiking stuff and I said something like, “Back in ’79, some friends drop my new bride and me off over at Elk Garden and we….blah…blah…blah......blah...blah....blah”. They were quiet for a few seconds and one of them finally said, “Man, how old are you anyway?” I wished them luck and told them to check out Fattie’s Diner when they made it town.
By now I felt like getting in my running allotment of three miles for the morning, so I stashed my pack down in a little beech thick and headed down the FS road. The Garmin said it was only 1.82 miles from the gate to pavement, but I remembered it more like 2.5. But continuing with a left turn, 3 miles total put me just shy of the AT crossing at Elk Garden parking. After a short rest, I walked the AT back up to the spring, got my pack and, headed back over to the Rock for the remainder of the afternoon.
Lounging around, nibbling on a Probar, did nothing to replenish my energy so I nixed a second run. I watched several family groups that made the trip from the parking lot near the mountain top down to the rock and back, most of the distance hikers seemed to have made it through in the morning. I pitched the tarp as a single-plane slab with about 18” of headspace in the quiet spot I'd found and enjoyed the sun, rest, and view. Even the significant fly-buzz had a certain idyllic charm.
My belly made it to 5:30 before firing up the stove, but just barely. At least I had my spice rack with me, so I doused the final cup of couscous liberally with curry, a little salt, and a couple of bird’s eye peppers to keep me warm for the evening. It was more than delicious -it was almost pyrotechnic.
The rest of the afternoon slid slowly under waves of fog drifting from the east, easing down the mountain’s top into my little apse at the south end of the meadow. I expected a clammy coolness to come with it, but with the evenings laying by of the wind, the temperature and dryness held up well. I fell into an easy restful sleep, and except for some minor tussles between the tarp and the wind, heard nothing until an hour or so before dawn.
It sounded as if someone was driving a tent stake into the ground just down the hill from me. As strange as that may be before dawn, it seemed even more odd since there were really only rocks below me –not much of a place to camp except for penitents. But I heard a distinct metallic pounding in a few series of 3 or 4 strike and fairly close by as plain as day -even though it was night. When daylight was barely certain, I crawled out to investigate my new neighbors, though I was pretty sure I mistaken, but still it was worth a check. It sure enough sounded like some one or something hitting a tent stake with a rock, but no one was there.
I ate my last tiny morsel of real food and decided to dole out the espresso gels on the trail as needed. Being in hunger, I was getting an earlier start today. As I got ready to take down the tarp, I noticed one of the loops had pulled off its stake. Before taking down the rest of the tarp, I pulled the empty loop over every possible place it could reach and still couldn’t find a thing. I scoured the ground with eyes, fingers and toes, several times, and still couldn’t turn up the errant stake. Suddenly, it became obvious to me that it had been stolen.
At first I thought the towhees were the culprits. But a towhee is not much larger than a tent stake, and neither of the two I saw looked particularly strong. Perhaps the wind had loosened the stake and the two of them together, one on each end, had gotten it to the edge of the bluff and dropped it over. Even that seemed somewhat far-fetched for a pair of malicious towhees. The pair I’d seen were not especially friendly but nothing really suggested maliciousness.
Corvids. Crows, ravens, and some of their kin are decided pranksters in legend if not fact. They are big enough to carry a tent stake unassisted, attracted to shiny objects, and ravens were seen, by me, were in the vicinity only hours earlier. In Virginia, with a soured jury, that much evidence could land you in the Pen with a long sentence. So, suspicion falls on the Whitetop Corvid Gang.
I lamented my lose, but was too hunger to file a complaint with the Audubon Society or whoever would have jurisdiction in such a matter. As I headed off the mountain the fog began to lift along with my spirit. It was only seven miles back to my bike and then only 45 minutes to the nearest hot skillet for hire. I walked the few up hills, the technical patches, and some of the flat, but had a good 5 miles or more of easy downhill jogging mingled in. When I got to the bike I washed off in the creek, took the coffee gel, and I was in Damascus eating scrambled eggs, quicker than a raven could fence a hot tent stake.
So, keep an eye on your tent stakes when you're camping at Buzzard Rock.
jjj
*
*
*
Buzzard Rock, AT
This past week I finally got the dragon oven (http://jjjessee.blogspot.com/2009/05/breadzillas-first-fire.html) far enough along to start building some small fires in it to “cure” it of lingering dampness. The clay inside was still surprisingly wet considering I applied it about 6 weeks earlier and had pulled out the sand mold 2-3 weeks ago. The firings were only 1-3 hours each and we did cook a chicken in a dutch oven, but nothing of a bread nature.
My main task has been to help Bonnie get few things ready around the house for a group of her lady friends who would be spending the weekend for their annual retreat. And since I had been politely asked to make myself scarce, the thought a weekend on a trail was really a little reward for me. At first I thought about paddling down S. Holston Lake and walking across the mountain to the Blue Hole, but my kayaking gear was not in order, so I decided on something more familiar for which prep was more of a second nature.
I’m trying to keep my little Go-Lite Lite-Speed pack more or less ready to go anytime. So really food and clothing are about all I have to customize for the weather and trip duration. My hiking shorts, kilt, a couple short-sleeved tech shirts and a l/s fleece, a pair of sandals and socks, and Five Fingers shoes seemed plenty adequate for Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning. There was a beautiful weekend forecast given for Whitetop, VA and I was determined to be there.
I usually like to experiment a little with camp cooking, but pressed for time, I just loaded a stuff sack with a packet of Kashi 7-grains, 3 apples, a couple of wraps and about 4 oz of cheese. Also, I mixed up half pound of an easy, impromptu gorp out of the family nut and dried fruit bowl. That sounded a little light on calories since I want to do 2 short runs on Saturday and about 5 miles sometime Sunday. But I had a pair of ProBars(375 cal each), a couple of espresso gels, and I thought I had some couscous and olive oil stored in my cooking kit. I didn’t really check, but since I was getting such a late start and there was really only 4 meals to cover, not including a chow-stop going and coming though Damascus, I didn’t worry about it.
Since next week is the some-teenth annual St John Bicycle Trip, I thought a little road test with a load wouldn’t hurt. So I bungied my pack onto the bike’s luggage carrier and headed over the hill to the Creeper Trail about 4:30pm. The day had been warm and pleasant with a nice little breeze from the east. Lots of folks were out on the trail getting a jump on a long spring weekend. Having replaced my warped back rim makes the 9 miles into Damascus well under an hour even with a 20lb pack in tow. I thought about skipping a chow stop at Fattie’s going out of town, but I had plenty of time, and the siren smell of burgers and fries was more than I could pass. They were doing a good business, but I compromised with a veggie quesadilla and a cold Dos Equis and was back on the trail in half an hour or so.
A few miles up, Big Rock Falls was still running seasonally heavy, but was down from prior weeks. The traffic has thinned, but a half mile latter a stout guy on a hungry looking mountain bike breezes past me from behind and says two more are following. Not 500’ around the next bend, I see he has stopped –probably to wait on his pals. When I pull up he said he had just scared a bear off the trail. It had disappeared over the stream bank into the laurel about 50 yds off into the woods. I’ve only seen one bear in the wild, but I wasn’t curious enough to follow this one, especially with the scent of fast food on me.
I hit the AT at Creek Junction and left the bike locked up at the provided rack. It was only 7:30, and knew I could do a few miles, but had no hopes of making 7 miles to Buzzard Rock before dark. My pack felt noticeably lighter than my trip last month, still, but that's not something to complain about. Its only about a mile and a half of easy trail up to the shelter on the flats of Lost Mountain but up is still "up" especially at the end of a day. There was still good daylight when I got there -a few tents around but no one in the shelter. A hiker directed me to the spring, which I wanted to check out for future running rambles. It was only 2.5 miles further to the SR-603 crossing. Last time I was there, was with Meltzer, his crew, Woodstock and PolkaDot, and Lone Wolf. LW had shown us the spring there, which I’d not scouted either. The twilight was almost deep enough to call dark, so I decided to camp at an easy spot rather than risk my quesadilla going flat on me half way up Beech Mountain. Campsites are not plentiful after the first mile and hard to find in the dark even with a headlight. I started pulling the innards out of my pack and discovered why it felt lighter -it was lighter –exactly one weekend food sack lighter. The last time I’d seen it was on my kitchen counter. That’s probably close to where it still was.
I wrapped one end of my tarp around a big healthy black walnut tree still in bloom and staked the other end down in the grass. I fell asleep counting the calories I had brought instead of sheep. I couldn’t make it much past 1000, before the sound of wind sweeping the treetops scrubbed my mind of all thought.
In the morning, I considered walking or jogging to Whitetop Grocery, but I couldn’t decide if it would be 3 miles or 6 miles each way. And of course I didn’t have a map –why spoil an adventure with a map -right? I could probably hitch a ride once I got to pavement, but was that 1 or 2 miles? Either way it sounded like too much of the day to waste on just a couple of thousand calories. So I fired up my alchy stove, cooked about ¾ cup of couscous and crumbled in some Probar, since there was no olive oil either.
In the past few years, I’ve been up and down Beech Mt enough to sort of know the trail. The first time, in late summer, I remember it as tough. The nettles were tall and sassy and acted like they hadn’t eaten bare leg of hiker in months. But every time since, it has gotten a little easier. Still, if the wild flowers don’t take your breath, the hill will. There are all the usually suspects blooming today: trillium, wood anemone, false solomon seal, jack-in-the-pulpit, yellow pimpernel, and white baneberry which I don’t see so often. Later in summer it appears turk’s cap lilies and angelica will be the main fireworks.
But today, it was the young nettles that were looking vulnerable and tasty to me. My grandmother said she’d eaten them. I might have picked a mess had I some butter and vinegar to tame them after a parboiling. Within an hour and a half I’d made it to the rock and along the way, munched on enough violet’s leaf and flower to squelch an appetite. The sun and wind had made short work of a thin haze of fog leaving the shamrock green valleys and hills for easy view 30 miles into the edge of blueness. With not a lot on my agenda for the day, or enough fuel anyways, I meander around Buzzard Rock. I found the Buzzard benchmark (set in 1979 and checked in 1991), talked to several hikers, some sectioning, some thrus. Most were thrilled with the view, as the spring has been extra moist and the mountain tops fog prone. I found an unbelievably good camping spot down near the eastern edge of the knoll. By some physics of wind and rock there was a dead spot in the draft though the place appears exposed. A pair of towhees took slight offense at my presence and left without being sociable, as did a pair of ravens tacking into the nippy east wind.
After the rest, I thought I might as well head on over to the spring on other corner of Whitetop’s south face. It’s an easy mile’s walk through a gnarled low woods. There was a group of half dozen strapping young men watering at the gushing piped spring. They had been shuttled up to Fox Creek to head southbound for Damascus. Sounded like they had had a little more climb and rocks than they had bargained for but were enjoying the trip. We were talking about camp spots, hiking stuff and I said something like, “Back in ’79, some friends drop my new bride and me off over at Elk Garden and we….blah…blah…blah......blah...blah....blah”. They were quiet for a few seconds and one of them finally said, “Man, how old are you anyway?” I wished them luck and told them to check out Fattie’s Diner when they made it town.
By now I felt like getting in my running allotment of three miles for the morning, so I stashed my pack down in a little beech thick and headed down the FS road. The Garmin said it was only 1.82 miles from the gate to pavement, but I remembered it more like 2.5. But continuing with a left turn, 3 miles total put me just shy of the AT crossing at Elk Garden parking. After a short rest, I walked the AT back up to the spring, got my pack and, headed back over to the Rock for the remainder of the afternoon.
Lounging around, nibbling on a Probar, did nothing to replenish my energy so I nixed a second run. I watched several family groups that made the trip from the parking lot near the mountain top down to the rock and back, most of the distance hikers seemed to have made it through in the morning. I pitched the tarp as a single-plane slab with about 18” of headspace in the quiet spot I'd found and enjoyed the sun, rest, and view. Even the significant fly-buzz had a certain idyllic charm.
My belly made it to 5:30 before firing up the stove, but just barely. At least I had my spice rack with me, so I doused the final cup of couscous liberally with curry, a little salt, and a couple of bird’s eye peppers to keep me warm for the evening. It was more than delicious -it was almost pyrotechnic.
The rest of the afternoon slid slowly under waves of fog drifting from the east, easing down the mountain’s top into my little apse at the south end of the meadow. I expected a clammy coolness to come with it, but with the evenings laying by of the wind, the temperature and dryness held up well. I fell into an easy restful sleep, and except for some minor tussles between the tarp and the wind, heard nothing until an hour or so before dawn.
It sounded as if someone was driving a tent stake into the ground just down the hill from me. As strange as that may be before dawn, it seemed even more odd since there were really only rocks below me –not much of a place to camp except for penitents. But I heard a distinct metallic pounding in a few series of 3 or 4 strike and fairly close by as plain as day -even though it was night. When daylight was barely certain, I crawled out to investigate my new neighbors, though I was pretty sure I mistaken, but still it was worth a check. It sure enough sounded like some one or something hitting a tent stake with a rock, but no one was there.
I ate my last tiny morsel of real food and decided to dole out the espresso gels on the trail as needed. Being in hunger, I was getting an earlier start today. As I got ready to take down the tarp, I noticed one of the loops had pulled off its stake. Before taking down the rest of the tarp, I pulled the empty loop over every possible place it could reach and still couldn’t find a thing. I scoured the ground with eyes, fingers and toes, several times, and still couldn’t turn up the errant stake. Suddenly, it became obvious to me that it had been stolen.
At first I thought the towhees were the culprits. But a towhee is not much larger than a tent stake, and neither of the two I saw looked particularly strong. Perhaps the wind had loosened the stake and the two of them together, one on each end, had gotten it to the edge of the bluff and dropped it over. Even that seemed somewhat far-fetched for a pair of malicious towhees. The pair I’d seen were not especially friendly but nothing really suggested maliciousness.
Corvids. Crows, ravens, and some of their kin are decided pranksters in legend if not fact. They are big enough to carry a tent stake unassisted, attracted to shiny objects, and ravens were seen, by me, were in the vicinity only hours earlier. In Virginia, with a soured jury, that much evidence could land you in the Pen with a long sentence. So, suspicion falls on the Whitetop Corvid Gang.
I lamented my lose, but was too hunger to file a complaint with the Audubon Society or whoever would have jurisdiction in such a matter. As I headed off the mountain the fog began to lift along with my spirit. It was only seven miles back to my bike and then only 45 minutes to the nearest hot skillet for hire. I walked the few up hills, the technical patches, and some of the flat, but had a good 5 miles or more of easy downhill jogging mingled in. When I got to the bike I washed off in the creek, took the coffee gel, and I was in Damascus eating scrambled eggs, quicker than a raven could fence a hot tent stake.
So, keep an eye on your tent stakes when you're camping at Buzzard Rock.
jjj
*
*
*