Appalachian Trail Thru-hike Journal – Fontana Village, North Carolina

On the way back to Fontana Village
12/30/2000
Mile 2,000-something or other

*This was written on a Greyhound bus on the way back to the trail. I went home for a few days off at Christmas to wait out some miserably cold weather. -JP

Hey ya’ll,

First off:
1) I’m not dead
2) I’m not done
3) I haven’t quit

Where to begin this update? Right now I’m on a Greyhound bus heading towards Asheville. How I got to Fontana Dam, NC is a long story. Just getting from Hot Springs, NC to Fontana Village, NC is a long story. I’ll try and be brief, so bear with me.

I left Hot Springs, late as usual, with a full belly and little daylight to work with. I’ve been having the hardest time getting out of towns lately. Must be something to do with the fact that its warm there, there’s plenty of food, and I can get to a payphone at will to call friends and family back home. By the way –let me tell you how tired I’ve gotten of payphones on this trip. Man, it’s going to be cool to not have to stand outside in the rain to make phone calls. Before I get too far off-topic, let me continue with the Hot Springs story…

As I was leaving Hot Springs, I had made the decision to just suck it up and power down the remaining miles and get finished by New Year’s Eve. Seeing as it’s 12/20 today, and I’ve still got 160-something miles to go, I’m going to have to get my hiking mojo workin’ if I’m going to make it to Spring Mountain tomorrow. Somehow, I just don’t see it happening.

Every time I’ve set a finish date I’ve ended up changing it so what else is new? Right now I’m thinking Chinese New Year, Groundhog Day, Summer Solstice, or maybe Labor Day. Any of those are as accurate as any I’ve made. Back to the story…

So I’m leaving Hot Springs at 2pm, determined to pile on the miles. This means I’m back to night-hiking mode again. Everything’s going fine till about dusk when the wind really picks up. The weather folks had called for a front to come plowing in, so there it was – wind, rain, some sleet, blah, blah ,blah… I get to the shelter where I’d planned to stop, only to find that it was on top of hill getting pounded by the wind. A piece of the sheet metal roof was loose, slamming against the shelter with every gust. After about 10 minutes of sitting through that cacophony, I decided there was no way I was going to get any sleep in that demonic kettle drum, so I slid into my wet raingear and pressed on to the next shelter 2 miles down the trail. Thankfully this shelter was much more protected from the wind. Needless to say, I was exhausted and slept like a baby.

The upshot of pushing to that shelter was that it put me that much closer to the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. The next day, I looked at my maps, the amount of food I was carrying, my desire to get through the park in good weather, and decided to get my groove on and pull a “hero day.” I hiked 30-miles and got around five miles into the park. This would leave me 63 miles from Fontana Dam, or about three solid days of hiking if I skipped going into Gatlinburg, TN. That was the plan at least.

The weather in the Smokies can get squirrelly any time of year, but especially during the winter. I had just enough food for three days, but not a cookie more. That made me a little nervous, so I made a side trip to Mountain Mama’s Kountry Kitchen just before going into the park. Mountain Mama’s is located near I-40, so I could hear the interstate waaaaaaay before I could see the road to the store. When I heard the traffic on I-40, I took off like a pack of Pavlov’s dogs, thinking about burying my face into their coveted “Huge Cheeseburger Special.”

This wasn’t the first time I felt like this. Back in Maine, Anne and I ran out of food the last night in the 100-mile wilderness. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so happy to hear cars as we approached the road leading to Monson, Maine. When you’re bottom-feeding on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the whole food thing becomes WAY important.

When I finally got to Mountain Mama’s, I wolfed down town burgers in no time, ordered two more to go, bought an extra day’s food, then set off into the park. Looking back, that little bit of extra food saved my butt, as the weather was getting ready to get a little bit wacky.

Like I mentioned before, the weather in the Smokies can go all over the place any time of year. During my hike though the park, I hiked in everything from beautiful blue skies and with highs in the forties, to slogging through 2-3 foot snowdrifts with God-only-knows what wind chills, torrential rains, tornado warnings, and everything in between. Anyway, the perverse weather changes made for better stories later if nothing else. Can’t say that I was bored.

My first full day in the Smokies was beautiful. The fog from the previous night lifted but left a hint of dew on everything to reflect the early morning light. I love getting up hiking at sunrise on nice days. It’s a great way to let the day unfold. There were still lingering ice and snow patches from last week’s storms as a reminder that winter was still here. I actually hiked in short sleeves for the first time in a long time. In a few areas, the trail was under several inches of ice. I could still see a small trickle of water behind the ice flowing with a lava lamp effect as it made its way through. I just sat and watched this for several minutes as I ate my lunch, letting the sun warm my tired and chilled bones. My final few miles that day were highlighted with an outstanding sunset from a rock outcropping named Charlie’s Bunion. Another night brought another night-hike, but the sunset was definitely worth the effort.

I shared the shelter that night with six other hikers out for the weekend. I normally don’t see six hikers in a week, much less all in one night so this was pretty cool. We stayed up talking till way too late, and then finally crawled into the warmth of the sleeping bags for a long night’s rest. The night was interrupted by a huge thunderstorm that rolled in, bringing rain, some sleet, and enough wind to blow everything around pretty good. This was the beginning edge of a front that’d I’d deal with for the next few days.

My original plan was to cover the next 43 miles to Fontana Village in two days. That plan, to put it mildly, was slightly altered. I took off that morning to mixed conditions – rain for awhile, then clearing, then rain, snow flurries, wind, etc. The weather seemed to change every 15 minutes, depending largely on the altitude I was at. I’ve always used 4,000 feet as a rule of thumb for weather getting particularly goofy in the southern Appalachians. This seemed to be holding true to form.

When I took the side trail to Clingman’s Dome (6,643 feet – highest point of the trail) I felt like I was walking through a carwash. A carwash with thunder and lightning. This calmed down after awhile, so I went up to the observation deck to check things out. After a quick snack, I had about ten more miles to cover and three more hours to do it in to reach the day’s goal. Once again – another night, and another night hike.

The storm picked up in intensity as soon as the sun went down. Temperatures dropped like a rock, and standing up was a chore with all the wind, much less trying to make any time. When I finally reached the shelter, it was a welcome sight indeed.

When I arrived at the shelter, it looked like a bomb had gone off in there. There were already wedged in there, and soaking-wet packs, jackets, boots, and food bags hung from every available nail. Three other southbounders had made it there earlier – Companero, Doc Martin, and his wife Straight A. I had been following their entries in the registers for months, and finally caught up with them in Hot Springs a couple of days earlier. Three weekenders were up from Greensboro and Winston Salem NC, two others, and Ward Leonard. Ward’s something of a trail icon, having hiked the AT 10 times already, including one of the fastest unsupported hikes. He doesn’t do too well in groups, and looked to be getting more sketched out by the minute.

The storm outside was howling, the temperature’s dropping, Ward was pacing back in front of the shelter looking for bears with his little flashlight. Then it starts to get weird.

Companero had a little radio playing “Prairie Home Companion”, the whole time being pre-empted with tornado warnings from the National Weather Service exhorting everyone to “seek secure shelter immediately.” All this time I’m thinking “well my shelter only has three sides with a chain link fence in front for the bears, folks are staring to tweak, but that’s about as secure as I’m going to get.” Good luck with that.

The storm did its thing all night. I have no idea how the guys in the top bunks got any sleep because the roof sounded like it was going to fly off with every gust. Craziness.

The next morning we woke up to about a foot of snow, with 2-3 foot drifts all over the place. Anything left hanging during the night was frozen solid. Hiking in knee-deep snow wasn’t in my vision when I started this thru-hike, but there you go.

The going was ridiculously slow, and I was grateful for the little bit of extra food I’d picked up at Mountain Mama’s. It took two long days of solid hiking to cover the 21 miles to Fontana Village, a distance that would I’d normally be able to make in one good day. It was the most exhausting part of the trip by far.

Snow was blanketed everything, muffling any sounds. While the hiking was hard, the views were stunning. One of the best views of the trip came from the Shuckstack firetower. That was also where we guessed the 2,000 mile mark was, so I was doubly-stoked.

The snow accumulation wasn’t as heavy the farther we descended off the ridge towards Fontana Dam. We finally made it to the road over the dam and tried to call in a shuttle from the Visitor’s Center to head into Fontana Village. As we were trying to coax the pay phone to life, a woman and her son pulled up in a pickup truck. You’ve got to understand that we’re in the middle of nowhere, in nasty weather, so this truck was a welcome sight indeed.

Anyway, she asks if we’re hikers and if we needed a lift. I said “Yes Ma’am!” I wanted give her a big kiss on the cheek right then in there. We threw our stuff in the back started to pile in next to the cab to stay out of the wind. Just we were getting ready to leave, she pops a cooler open and offers us a beer. At this point I’m prepared to name my first-born child after this benevolent trail angel. That may have been the tastiest beer ever tasted by man.

Once we got to the lodge at Fontana Village, we check into our rooms, ate dinner, and then slept like dogs. We planned to take the next day off to chill, do laundry, and catch up on some sleep. Another front moves in, bringing more snow and ice. We ran into another southbounder, UnTraveller, who was a day ahead but headed back to Fontana saying the trail was frozen solid and basically impassable. Decisions, decisions. Do we press on and hope for the best? Do we wait? Do we bail and head home for Christmas (all this was going down on 12/21.)

We stayed glued to the Weather Channel, ate gobs of food, and saw another band of snow and ice heading our way. UnTraveller had already hired a shuttle to take him to Knoxville, TN so he could go home to take care of some things, and on top of everything, we happened to be in a dry county. Things looked grim.

Since we were basically stuck till the weather cleared up some, we finally decided to head home for a few days then meet up right after Christmas. Hopefully things will have calmed down a bit and we could be on our merry way.

Our ticket out of Fontana was a 4-wheel drive van, and the twisty road up “The Dragon” was pretty sketchy, but we made it to Knoxville where I caught a bus to my sister’s (Mitzi) place in Nashville. I hung out there with her and her family for a couple of days, then we drove straight back to Climax, NC to my other sister, Pat, and spend the night. I hadn’t told my folks that I was coming home, so this is all hush-hush.

We swing over to my brother Jim’s, and then I hid in his trunk over for the short ride to my parents down the road. After a minute, I start getting claustrophobic and have to concentrate to not freak out, but it worked out fine in the end.

Mom opens the trunk.

“Surprise! Got anything to eat?!”

[Cue lots of tears, and lots of eating]

Anne came up the next day for lunch, and we then drove back to for folk’s place in Ahoskie, NC. Following that, we drove to Morehead City for a couple of days. Walking on the beach and skipping seashells wasn’t something I’d planned for this trip, but it was very cool. Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow, wherever it might take you.

Then it was back on the Greyhound, eventually making it to Asheville, NC where I’m meeting Straight A and Doc Martin, then back to Fontana Village. Whew!

Looking back, this has been one of the best Christmas’s I’ve ever had. One thing I’ve learned from this journey is a real love and new-found appreciation for my friends and family. I was great to surprise everyone, hang out, and reconnect for a few days.

Well, my bus is pulling up to the station so I better wrap this up. Worst case scenario puts us being done in about two weeks. I can’t believe this journey is about over. I’m looking forward to hiking the next few days with our little posse of four. So far I’ve covered all the bases group-wise: hiking as a couple with Anne, hiking solo for a few months, and now with a small group. I know our parents are pretty jazzed about us hiking together with all the weather. I’m thinking there needs to be a new support group – PWWW: Parents of Wayward Winter Walkers.

Anyways, gotta roll.

-Johnny Swank

*******

12/31/2000
Fontana Village
Mile 2,000-something

Getting ready to head back out to the trail. We left the snow and ice to go home for Christmas, now we’re heading back into the thick of things. Beautiful day thing, so no complaints here. The first few miles out of the valley aught to be interesting, because I’ve done no physical activity whatsoever other than walking back and forth from the fridge for the past week.

Oh yeah, happy birthday to me! What a cool way to celebrate 31 years on this big blue marble.

Well, its time to get back to the trail.

-Johnny Swank