Wow, that was an epic adventure! I had been trying to do 14-mile section hike on the Appalachian Trail -Carver Gap on Roan Mountain down to 19E for a few weeks now but the weather or my health has held me up, last week Jesse agreed to go with me. We got to the Carver gap trailhead around 6:00pm Friday. We were going to go the opposite way and camp at roan high knob shelter Friday night and begin this hike on Saturday morning but with impending bad weather on Sunday we started towards 19E on Friday evening. We had a great sunset hike we made it about 2.5 miles. It did leave us setting up camp in a less than ideal spot in the dark, the wind blew and flapped the tent around all night. After a good breakfast we were on the trail and what a beautiful trail it was! Wildflowers galore and Ramps I have never seen as many ramps, acres of them it seemed! We had planned on staying at the Overmountian shelter an iconic barn converted to a shelter but we since we had started hiking on Friday we had arrived at the barn around 12:00 way to early to stop so walked past it. After the next mountain, we stopped for lunch, fried spam on tortillas after that climb they were great. The next two mountains little hump and hump they almost kicked my butt the wind blew a constant 50 miles an hour (guessing) It was strong enough that you had to lean over as far as you could but if you walked in front of a rock that was blocking the wind you suddenly had to catch yourself from falling, it was blowing so hard my hiking poles were singing the entire time, Jesse said it was blowing so hard it was blowing out of his ear on the other side. But the 360-degree views on the top were worth it! Then to finish off the evening we moved into Billy goat heaven 3-foot round boulders for about a mile. I believe it made for about a ten-mile day We camped at Doll flats got there around 5:00pm I thought the wind would die when we got off the balds, it did not, we had an early supper, hung our bear bag, got water and very tired got into bed early. the wind was amazing sometimes you could hear it coming up the mountain like a locomotive getting louder and louder till all of the sudden your tent would begin to shake violently leaning over almost jerking guy lines out of the ground but it never did. At around 4:30 Sunday morning it began to rain, sideways of course in the wind! We packed up in the rain we hiked in the rain. Fortunately, we only had a few miles to go. It was a trip I will remember the rest of my life! I did not realize how many people on this trail were headed to Maine! All the thru-hikers had Orange badges they get on springer mountain and I counted 25-30 in just this one day. 3,735 attempted in 2017 only 20 percent finished, I wish them all luck, to make this far is a heck of an accomplishment! A rare thing I did not take my big camera was going to try just using he cell phone the dew knocked it out Saturday morning I was so mad, it is time for a new phone. My house looks like a bomb has exploded! I have had tents mildew on me in two days so now as soon as I get home I dry everything but since it is still raining I had to do indoors, Sorry Sherri.
chasingperi 