Wrapping Up the Bartram Trail

I needed a little solitude as the holidays came nearer. My constantly mixing feelings of 2020 and where my life should go after have left my mind in a mess, and, besides, I hadn’t hiked a new long-distance trail in its entirety this year. That just wouldn’t do.

Enter the Bartram Trail

Paralleling the Appalachian Trail for over 100 miles, the Bartram seemed like a great way to recreate elements of my AT experience while still being able to hike every step of a long trail. I began in October with my best friend in Georgia. This was his first real backpacking experience, and the more I try to introduce people to the world of backpacking the more I’m starting to think that beginning in the Appalachians isn’t for everyone. It’s always wet, it’s very rugged, and sometimes you spend days on end buried in the green tunnel with little to nothing to look at. I received more than one “why do you enjoy this?” … Probably because I enjoy the suck. My suck that is. The suck of rolling my ankle for the tenth time on that small valley side pig trail that slopes too far to the right, or having my feet slosh in my rain-soaked boots for days on end, or even the suck of hiking in rolling mountains where every next peak looks like “the top” (hint: it almost never is. Stop thinking about the top and just keep hiking).

Anyways, we did Georgia together and then headed home for pizza and beers. Pizza and beer might as well be a global thru-hiker tradition these days. It always tastes better when you’re deep in a caloric deficit.

Solo Hike in NC

Like I was saying, I was craving some solo time on trail, and so wrapping up the Bartram just seemed like a natural course of action. The weather forecast read low 40s with 4 inches of rain followed by temps in the teens and twenties. Suck enough? Hell yeah! I put my kit back together, trading my inflatable sleeping pad for a warmer bottom quilt and swapping my 55-liter Zpacks Arc Blast for their 30-liter Sub-Nero, a pack size that I’d previously imagined only worked for the true UL folks.

My pack weight with food and water was 17 pounds and that sounded amazing to me considering the gloves, hand warmer, and extra insulation I had packed. It was small and light, and I was ready to go fast.

Day One

I left at noon with 80-miles standing between me and Christmas. My plan was to hike for three days at a working pace with plenty of time for sleeping and breaks throughout the day where I would sit down and breathe in the Winter views. Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen.

It only took one text to reshape my whole plan. An AT thru-hiker I had trekked with up Cheoah Bald earlier this year responded “you know we could do that 70 in 2 days.” I should note here that the 70-miles are true Bartram Trail miles, but there’s the 8-mile descent off Cheoah Bald back down to the road, so the hike is essentially 80-miles in total. My reaction was likely the exact sort of thing he expected from me. Some internal trigger was pulled and my plan to hike an enjoyable number of miles per day was shot in the face. I guess it was time to throw some big miles again!

I took off from the parking area at an aggressive pace wanting to score as many miles as I could before headlamp time. Osage Mountain came and went, the iconic Bartram Trail bus-shelter came and went, and before I knew it I was sitting down at the start of the road walk right as night fell.

Road walks are dumb. I cannot understate the degree to which I hate walking on asphalt with my trekking poles swinging behind me like useless decorations. But it’s miles on the path, so it’s miles that must be walked.

In all honesty, this road walk wasn’t that bad. I had plenty of starlight to gaze up at as I made my way around the countryside of Franklin, NC, and there was even a Zaxby’s along the way! Hot food always makes the day better.

All in all my first day was pretty uneventful. I wrapped up the road walk full of chicken and sweet tea then set up camp at the road’s end feeling tired but strong. The next day was the one I had to get ready for.

Day Two

I liken the second morning to climbing atop the back of some large rock serpent. The rolling ridgeline rose and fell like the spinal column of some great beast so large it wouldn’t have even noticed me crawling atop its back. I would climb up one section of the ridge and then fall steeply onto the backside where I would have another section of ridge to climb. It went on like this all morning. The city shrank as I moved further away and thousands of feet higher above it, and I thought often about how amazing the ruggedness of Appalachia is. Practically all my hiking experience lies in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so it’s no wonder where my love for it comes from, but indulge me for a moment and step into my eyes:

Here I am dripping with sweat, the only sounds in the world are my heavy breathing and the wind dancing through the mountains swirling up and over the crested ridge I’m standing on. Through the trees below I can see mountains on the other side of the valley encircling town and stretching out into the horizon as far as I can see. There lies a network of logging roads, old and abandoned, waiting for time itself to produce enough foliage to rid them of existence or to be given a new purpose in a generation removed from our past. The forest was once a source of prosperity for us, and the logging industry gave something to folks who had nothing. Often it wasn’t very much, but it was an opportunity for Appalachians to provide for their families.

They would go up into the mountains and rape them for their wood. Cutting trees that had stood since before Europeans even came to America. Trees that made the mountaintops look lavish and full, growing atop the oldest mountains on planet Earth. The forest was once ancient and full, and then the need for growth meant we chopped and burned them. We made them small. Here I am standing atop a mountain, hundreds of years removed from our founding, looking down at the scars we produced, but the world is reclaiming those spaces. Given enough time they will feel ancient again, they would regain their poise in spite, or maybe with disregard, for the wounds we have inflicted. The entire range is healing and changing, and when my kids look at these mountains they will seem different. When my grandkids look at these mountains they will seem different. They are shaped with the turning pages of history, and I get to think about my chapter in that history book every single time I look out into the world I’m blessed to live in.

So back to the hike. I’m making breakfast some 8-miles into climbing that rock serpent, sitting down and daydreaming about hot coffee, dry clothes, and the beauty of these mountains I live in, and then a pack of dogs comes by. I’ve seen plenty of hunting dogs before, and out of respect for their owners I often pay them no mind. Apparently, these pups thought my breakfast smelt good though, and they came to take it from me. They came to me prancing and friendly, getting in close before nipping at my bag. My camp stove was knocked to the ground with the flames still spitting out the side. I addressed this first as to prevent the fire from spreading, and as I chased after the canister the dogs went after my food bag. Loose nuts, cheese, and summer sausage went spreading around the camp as their owners began calling them. I could see the trackers on their collars lighting up and they left me to clean up the mess now one meal short and ready to give their owners a piece of my mind. If there’s one piece of advice I can give my readers, it’s don’t mess with a hiker’s food. They don’t have a ton of it, and it’s one of the things they get to look forward to most while on trail.

As frustrated as I was I didn’t let the dogs ruin my morning. I don’t get to eat now? Fine. I still have the Wayah Bald Fire Tower to look forward to, and, unlike when I was at Wayah on my AT hike, I wasn’t going to be buried in fog and miss out on the view.

I moved slower now without my breakfast to fuel me those last few miles, but I did make it in good time. Sections of the mountain that had been scarred by the 2016 wildfires came and went as I rose up the ridgeline to the base of the tower. Trees were white and without bark, contrasted by the burnt-out black bases that flaked precariously on the cliff’s edge waiting for the right gust of wind or tuft of snow to send them crashing into the valley below.

The trail snaked up the back of the mountain and then back around to the tower. I stood atop it looking off at the mountains that composed the Appalachian Trail in the distance. I couldn’t quite see them, but there was a string of white rectangles that stretched as far as I could see in each direction, leading me atop the Albert Mountain Fire Tower in the distance where the hundredth-mile of the trail was and then circling around to where I was currently standing. I could see Clingman’s dome where I had spent my final day on the AT before getting off the trail earlier this year and I remembered moments from those days where I thought I was walking all the way to Mt.Katahdin. Finally, I saw Cheoah Bald just in the distance. This was my final objective for this particular trail, and despite the constant winding back and forth, the series of switchbacks and side destinations wherein the trail would take me another 40 or so miles to go to a place that wasn’t even 15-miles away, I would be standing atop that mountain before lunch the next day.

Off I went with renewed strength having finished the hard climb for the day. There were seven miles down to Nantahala Lake, then I would walk the perimeter of the lake, follow the river back into the mountains, climb two more mountains and make my final push up Cheoah.

The Second Night

A few hours into the nightwalk I decided I was ready to call it quits. I had walked over 60-miles in a day and a half, not record-breaking by any means but enough to where I felt I could rest and start early the next day for the final push to the finish and make my 48-hourr completion goal. My camp setup is very methodical: If it’s not raining I start with suspension and then my hammock. I empty my backpack into my hammock and placed my hand warmer inside my top quilt so it’s toasty when I get in it. The rain fly comes after followed by my underquilt which I adjust to whichever end of the hammock my head will be at for the night. My feet go above my head so that the swelling will go down when I sleep, and I clean off my boots as best I can so that I can stick them inside my liner and can start the next day without frozen boots. I go through the whole process and lie down. I throw the hood up on my topquilt and instantly am startled by a noise I had never experienced before.

Somewhere on the other side of the valley I was sleeping on a deer was being eaten alive. It shrieked and fought for its life, but the series of snarls and yips from the coyotes that were tearing it apart denied the creature any salvation. For almost twenty minutes I heard this fight go back and forth from blood-curdling cries and the sound of hard thwacks against the trees it must have been trying to flee through to cries of victory and scraps over who gets to devour more of the pack’s prey. To take time and kill the deer was to give the other members of the hunting party a chance to eat, ultimately leaving you with a smaller meal, and with Winter coming quickly no one was willing to sacrifice a single bite just for the sake of a coup de grace. They wanted their bellies full, and that was the only thing on their minds.

I began shaking at the sheer resonance with which the animal’s cries had slammed into my ear drums. Sometimes they sounded almost a mile away, and sometimes they sounded right on top of me. Surely the wind played a factor in these delusions, but there was also the incremental chance that the deer, in trying to flee, would come crashing into my campsite and entangle me in the whole ravenous affair. I could probably scare off a coyote or two had I stumbled upon them while on trail, my headlamp blinding them to my size and whatever object I would pick up to chuck at them and scare them off, but wrapped up in my hammock like some kind of human burrito while bits and pieces of their prey were still dripping from their jaws meant I would not only be in a severely disadvantageous position but in such a position with the coyotes in their most aggressive form. I had to get out of there, and I had to do it quick.

Everything which hung underneath my rain fly went stuffed into my back with full disregard for efficiency. I could buy myself some extra room by tying my rainfly off to the mesh pouch on the outside of my pack instead of packing it inside. This would mean sleeping under a dripping rainfly since it would be exposed to the rain for the remainder of my walk, but if I rolled it correctly I could keep the underside tucked in and protected. Besides, sleeping wet, if I could manage to get to sleep that night, was a far better outcome than getting mixed up with the deer whose cries were now filled with the gurgling sound of its own blood.

I moved out double-time with my headlamp on full blast, my head sweeping from the path to the valley where I was praying not to catch any of the animal’s eyes. I was about 4-miles into the walk when I started seeing town lights. Never had I felt such relief in humanity’s presence than in that moment. The encounter with the hunting dog’s that morning mixed with the surge of adrenaline from the coyotes and the deer left me in a tired state where my emotions were swinging faster than the pendulum of a grandfather clock. My breathing would begin to come down, but my paranoia would cause me to come right back on edge and afraid of some potential danger that was now miles behind me. Never had I felt so out of control of my own self despite the wherewithal to remove myself from my hammock earlier and push those extra miles. I was spooked bad with the sound of that deer’s cries still ringing in my head. Stumbling into Beechertown was an almost angelic moment of relief, and I rehung my hammock directly beside the light poles as if they provided some magical protection over me. To my surprise sleep came almost instantly, and the worries of the day were swept away by the serene sound of rain trickling atop my fly.

Day Three

Three times I woke up the next morning and drifted back to sleep with the sound of the rain. I still wanted that 48-hour finish, and I had until noon to grab it, but being warm and laying still felt better than I deserved. Wind would creep into my shelter and run through the little tuft of hair that hung out of my hood. It vaguely reminded me of when my mother would run her fingers through my hair as a kid. I would lay in her lap and I feel her nails trace the lines of my head until I inevitably fell asleep in her arms. The contrast of this sensation to my experience the night before made me laugh quietly. One moment I was trampling down a mountainside through rain and running from a fear of being eaten, and now it was as if nature herself was holding me in her arms and telling me I was ok. She is both fearfully awe-inspiring and serenely loving among so many other things.

Back at the car. Unfortunately, it was raining too much for me to take a terminus photo. Peep the trash bag rain coat.

I did eventually get up and moving. The climb up Cheoah was long and relatively uneventful. The rains meant a few cold river crossings, and I was waste-deep in water three times before I came to the sign at the terminus. I wanted to badly to just blink and be done with those extra miles down to the car, but those are just the type of things that define thru-hikes. They are slow, often painful processes. They reward those who prefer type-II fun and make for good storytelling. You can move your body through some of the most amazing places in the world at the speed of your own footsteps and it’ll reach inside you and change you if you let it.

Within a few hours I was sitting in my car with blasting heat contrasted by a cold cider. I did shed a tear or two, something not uncommon for me in all honesty, and thought about how the very next day I would be spending Christmas cuddling with my dogs in the presence of my family. My love for these moments has been renewed just as I had hoped, and just in time for me to start thinking about 2021.

-Val