Several months ago in this column I wrote about a pre-dawn hike to Charlies Bunion in which I described the beauty and excitement of a four mile hike under a bright, crisp moon. One thing I didn’t mention about that hike was that after watching the sunrise from the Bunion, we didn’t turn around and hike four miles back to our car. Instead, we kept walking east for about 14 hours and 30 miles. Here’s how that little escapade started…
“Hey, Hoov. Let’s hike the eastern half of the Smokies. Can you get off work two weeks from Friday?”
I had some commitments on that Saturday and Sunday, so I simply responded, “Naw. I can’t.” And that was the end of the conversation.
A couple of days later Keith asked again, “Are sure you can’t get off that last Friday in November?”
“Friday, maybe. But Saturday and Sunday, I can’t.”
Keith’s quick comeback caught me off guard, “Great, then let’s do it!”
I paused for a moment, confused. “I can’t, man. I’m tied up on the weekend.”
Keith persisted, “Not a problem. Let’s do it.”
At this point I was beginning to feel like I was trapped in an Abbot and Costello Who’s on First routine. Neither one of us seemed to know what the other was talking about.
Keith continued, “You’ll only be gone for a day.”
“A day?” A pause as I let the weight of his last statement sink in. “Are you talking about hiking 30 miles of the AT in one day?”
Keith corrected me. “Thirty-one miles, plus the side trail to Cammerer.”
We had now stepped out of the Abbot and Costello routine and into the Twilight Zone. I had once read of a guy who day hiked the entire eastern half of the Smokies back in the 1930s. It took him close to 18 hours. The thought of hiking from Newfound Gap along the main ridge crest to Davenport Gap on the northeastern end of the park was intriguing, if not a bit misguided and unrealistic. So, of course, I agreed immediately. It sounded like a trip perfectly suited for a guy who occasionally feels the need to prove his manhood; although, there was a certain element of risk involved – the risk of failure and, therefore, disproving my manhood.
The most significant risk in this trip would be the length – 31.4 miles. None of us had ever walked that far in a single day, and we didn’t really know how long it would take. Our best guess was about 14 or 15 hours on the assumption that we could average about 2 mph, maybe even 2.5. That would be about typical for a day hike, including rest and scenery stops. Of course, there was also the possibility that we would maintain at least a 2 mph speed for the first half, but we might slow significantly in the last half. We simply didn’t know because this was all uncharted territory for us. Not the trail itself, mind you – we had hiked it before on backpacking trips – but the sheer distance in a single day.
The other problem was daylight. It was late November, and we were less than a month away from the shortest day of the year, so there seemed to be no way that we could complete the hike in the 11 hours between dawn and dark. Even the most optimistic scenario had us walking several hours in the dark. The only question was how many hours. Of course, waiting until the long days of summer wasn’t an option because…well, I suppose it was an option, and a pretty good one, too. However, once we got it into our heads that we were going to do this, we became like kids at Christmas. We got all wiggly and giggly and excited about it and couldn’t wait. So – bad idea or not – we’d do it in late November.
[To be continued.]
I've written two books on the Smokies. The first was Hallowed Hills, Holy Waters, consisting of stories about hiking and fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains. The second book is Paths Less Traveled, a book of stories about off-trail hiking in the Smokies. Both are available at Amazon. Some of the stories in these books appear in this blog, but much of the material in the books is new and non-blogged.
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