4/19 Day 47 Rice Field Shelter to Bailey Gap Shelter - 16.4 miles
Woke to loud winds. It was very cloudy and rain seemed eminent. I was sluggish this morning and ended up being the last one out of the shelter. The hiking was pretty easy in this section. We took our hour lunch break at Pine Swamp Branch Shelter and moved on hoping to get some more miles in before the rain.
Just a mile beyond the shelter was a place of mystery described in the guide as "The Captain's" place where camping was accessed by crossing the creek via zip line. The allure of the zip line brought us all to The Captain's just as the rain began. There was a note inviting hikers to camp in the yard or on the back porch and to help ourselves to the soft drinks in the fridge. The Captain wasn't home and left a note, "Gone Hiking." We took a break out of the rain and drank a pop and decided to hike on to the next shelter. About half of our group decided to hang at the Captain's while the rest came with us.
The rain continued as we hiked three more steep miles to the shelter. By the time we arrived we were soaked and most of our gear was wet. The rain had pretty much stopped but the temperature was dropping. We changed into some dry(ish) clothes and grabbed a spot in the shelter. It was an early bedtime tonight due to the colder temps.
4/20 Day 48 Bailey Gap Shelter to Sarver Hollow Shelter - 21 miles
Cold night last night. We had some snow flurries through the night. My bag had gotten wet yesterday so I had a cold sleep. We were slow moving this morning and I was last out again. As usual, we stopped at the first shelter for lunch and most of the other guys caught us.
We hiked on to a place called Kelly's Knob which was a cool place for a break. When we came to Laurel Creek Shelter we found a note from Nomad that he was just a couple miles ahead with trail magic. We picked up the pace and found Nomad waiting for us at the next road crossing with Nickelodeon and Pack Rat, both who are now injured. We had sandwiches and snacks and hung out for an hour or two before moving on.
Shortly after leaving Nomad we came across Keiffer Oak which is a huge tree over 300 years old. We hiked on climbing up to a ridge as the sun set. We hiked at dusk to the side trail leading 0.4 miles back down the mountain to Sarver Hollow Shelter. We arrived at about 8:30 and found one person sleeping in the shelter. The shelter was really nice and even had a porch. We were unable to find tenting so we slept on the porch. We went straight to our sleeping bags quietly to avoid disturbing him.
4/21 Day 49 Sarver Hollow Shelter to Pickle Branch Shelter - 16.1 miles
Today was a good day for me. I finally saw a bear. I took my time getting out of camp and was nearly the last to leave again. Cassandra likes to get a head start on me and I'm easily distracted while trying to pack so it works out. A short time into my walk I pass LDK and continue walking. As I'm walking I hear something to my right and when I look I think "Wow, that's a big dog." I did an instant double take and had a stare down with a bear. As I fumbled for my phone to take a photo LDK approached and the bear scurried off. I was, however, able to capture a very bigfootesque photo before it was out of site. I had never seen a bear in the wild so I was pretty stoked and couldn't wait to tell everyone. No one believed me and my poor quality photo didn't help matters. I thought bear sitings would be fairly common but I don't know of any among hikers this year.
The hiking the rest of the day included a long climb up to Brushy Mountain where we saw the Audie Murphy memorial. As I understand it, he was the most decorated American WWII soldier who had crashed a plane and died near where the memorial now stands. We continued to Pickle Branch Shelter where we all tented as a group just a bit away from the shelter. We met a thru hiker called The Dude who had begun his thru hike in January. Before going to sleep I was able to enhance my bear photo for better proof. See below for before and after bear photo.
Before enhancement
