I've always been a hiker. I grew up in the woods, it would seem, and I'm rather comfortable in a dense forest. That's why when Steven and I went on our first backpacking trip for our 2 year anniversary, I was hooked. I'd enjoyed the trails of Shining Rock Wilderness and Wilson Creek Wilderness but I'd been dreaming of a chance to hike in Joyce Kilmer Wilderness. Why? You ask. It's simple.
Big. F-in. Trees.
Joyce Kilmer is home to the last old growth forest in the state! Now populated by massive Poplars, it was once home to towering chestnuts as well. Oh that would have been a site. Kim and I had been dreaming up this two night backpacking trip for months (about 6 actually). We had planned for a trip in March but pushed it off a month because of the cold. By the time our rescheduled weekend came around, we were giddy.
Our itinerary was this:
Thursday night - drive to Asheville and stay in a hotel room.
Friday morning - eat a free breakfast and get on the road by 8 (arriving to the trailhead at 10)
Friday - Hike in on Naked Ground Gap Trail from the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest (after doing a loop in the memorial forest)
Saturday - Wake up, have breakfast, leave the camp behind and hike over to Bob Stratton Bald. Around lunch on Saturday we'd be back to the campsite, pack up and haul our gear to Hangover and then Deep Creek Trail
Saturday night - Camp down Deep Creek Trail
Sunday morning - Pack up and head out on Deep Creek Trail to the second car we parked at the trailhead.
Sunday afternoon - Rejoice with pizza and beer.
It went down very differently.
But let me start at the beginning.
Friday morning, Masi got her stomach stretches in. Little did she know, she was about to become the greatest trail dog ever.
We were slow to get out of the hotel and didn't head to Joyce Kilmer until around 11. Which meant we didn't get to the memorial forest till about 1. This set us way back but we had to get a loop of the memorial forest in.
I almost forgot to mention my trail buddies were Blake, Kim and Lego Hamlin! Kim and I had been dreaming this up but she managed to inspire her husband to come along with us.
There I was, moseying around the memorial forest, minding my own business when BOOM, massive tree.
That wasn't even the biggest. This is the big daddy (Masi for scale). I have never been more impressed with trees in my life. You think you've seen large trees before but never like this. With massive trunks, branches that soared to the skies and massive roots that were mazes of strength and nourishment.
Tree selfie!
Yep I did the thing with the two trees that everyone else does.
After about an hour we wrapped up the memorial forest loop and prepped for the hike. At this point I should mention that the weather was turning on us. We were hoping for two awesome days in the woods but the weather was supposed to turn Friday night and be miserable Saturday and Sunday. For that reason we decided to skip parking the second car at the other trailhead and just hike up and out the same trail for only one night.
Before I get to that, I have a funny story. I have a few essentials for backpacking: sleeping bag, tent, food, water and wine. I had a bottle of Moscato that I needed to open and pour into my nalgene, however I did not have a wine tool. I did what any other smart person would do, I shoved a knife in the cork. It was going well until the cork slipped and I geysered red wine all over myself, the back of my car and by some great feat, the SUV parked next to me. Hysterical laughing ensued.
After the great wine explosion of 2015, we finished packing up, moved the cars to the overnight parking area at the Jenkins Meadow trailhead (down the road from the memorial forest parking lot) and set out.
Obligatory pre-backpacking picture!
This is the trailhead for Naked Ground Gap trail. It's in the loop for the memorial forest and is currently not marked. Notice big bridge. If you hit that bridge, you've gone too far.
There were flowers everywhere! Trilliums galore and these Lady Slippers too.
Then I rounded a corner and saw this nice fella smiling at me!
The stream crossings were beautiful.
On the Naked Ground Gap Trail there are two trees that almost completely hallowed out and this was the small one. My cheesy grin in this photo was because I was among lots of buzzing things in this picture and really didn't want one of them to land on me. For scale, I'm 5'-1.5".
The trail was decently maintained.
Just one foot in front of the other...
The trail went on, and on and on. We kept looking for the first switch back because that heralded the last section of the trail. Finally, there was a final water crossing and a tight switch back! We were close! But then came the hardest section of the trail. I slowly pulled away from Blake and Kim and then left them to rest on a nice slate seat as I powered ahead to find the summit. Masi and I came upon a quasi trail junction that didn't look very well traveled but I waited there anyways to make sure Blake and Kim followed my direction. Little did I know this was about 100 ft from the summit. Once they caught up and I set off again, I saw this. Grass! Grass means summit! Summit means DONE!
We were so thrilled to be at the summit that we didn't quite realize what we had really found. We were bumping around with ours heads down, saying things like, "Ok, that's pretty flat, we could put you here and me there and here's where we'd put a fire" when we collectively turned to face the range and fell silent. Because. Wow. We had found the most amazing view from a camp site that I have ever seen. There was the lake in the corner and the green creeping up the mountain and the blue sky (that my camera phone didn't really capture). I was in awe.
Because of the impending rain, we set up a tarp right away and set the tents to face it. Me, in my infinite wisdom, set the tarp up like this. This damn thing turned into a massive sail in the middle of the night. The winds that were hallowing up and over the gap were intense and ripped this sucker out of the ground with ease. That was fun to take down at 2 am in the rain. Around this time a couple other hikers rounded the last bend and showed up in the clearing. We invited them to share our fire and they obliged (because it was the most epic fire ring ever and the view was the best from our site). They brought with them Fireball Whiskey and epic stories. Between the 5 of us we had a flask of Fireball Whiskey, a flask of Moonshine, a flask of Jim Beam and a nalgene of Malbec. Priorities, we have them.
Besides the wind and the rain the night was pleasant, and Masi and I slept. I wouldn't say well, but we slept. The morning brought buckets of rain and somehow the 3 of us managed to pack the majority of our gear up inside the tents. At about 8, the rain eased up and we finished packing up our bags to set off again. I...I had no idea how much heavier a wet tent was. Let alone a wet tarp as well. This was a rude awakening. The two hikers that joined us recommended that we hike down the Jenkins Meadow trail instead of hiking back down Naked Ground Gap trail and considering they sounded like they knew what they were talking about, we agreed. It seemed logical since the trail end/began right where we parked the cars. They were taking their time packing up so we said our goodbyes and followed the trail signs toward the Haoe trail which led to Jenkins Meadow. Or...we thought we did.
We all donned our duck sacks and rain coats, preparing for a wet hike. Kim: "Liz that pack is as big as you!" Yes...yes it is...feels like I'm carrying a friggin person too.
All smiles for day 2. Almost all.
The trail started off beautiful. We hardly noticed that something was not quite right.
The trail we were looking for was a ridge hike and we should have never, or very briefly at least, gone down hill. The trail we were on went down right away before it flattened out into a quasi ridge.
We were aiming for a 3.5 mile hike out...but we ended up on the longest, toughest trail in the wilderness, Slickrock. Each one of us independently got the erie feeling that something was just not right and we would stop the group and rethink our decisions so far. "The sign for Haoe pointed this way!" "But we're on a ridge!" "But the trail we got water on was Slickrock and we didn't take that one" "Maybe we accidentally got on this side trail" "There's no way we're on Slickrock..." Oh yeah...it was Slickrock but unfortunately it took us 5 hours to figure that out.
Fortunately the views from Slickrock were pretty amazing.
I accidentally startled a momma bird out of her nest on the trail and got to spy on her eggs. The craziest thing is this nest was on the side of the mountain. Not in a tree, but dug into the root masses.
I remember when we got here we kept saying, "This looks meadow-ish" because the trail we still thought we were on was called Jenkins Meadow. Yeesh. Even though we were lost we got to see some amazing sites.
At this point the trail started leveling out and we were certain we were nearly at the Jenkins Meadow trailhead (we were still in denial). It wasn't until we continued hiking on this flat trail for another hour that we (and I mean Kim) finally confirmed what we were trying to ignore...we were on Slickrock. A trail marker about 20 mins down the trail confirmed it. Unfortunately Slickrock was the one trail we needed to avoid. It led to the wrong side of the mountain range from our cars and was about 11 miles long. At this point we'd been hiking for around 5.5 hours and we had no idea how we would get back to our cars. Blake and I had mini panic attacks but Kim held it together and found a trailhead that was not too far from us on her map.
Unfortunately it was straight up the mountain. Don't get me wrong, we were counting our blessings. For one thing it hadn't rained a drop on us since 8am while the forecast had been calling for 100% showers all day long. We also had another nights worth of supplies with us so we could have survived and hiked back out on Sunday. Regardless of this we were hoping against hope that there was a hiker and a car at that trailhead and that they would take us back to our cars.
We hiked out on Big Fat Gap trail which led to the Big Fat Gap trailhead in the Nantahala forest. It took us about an hour and a half to go a mile. It was painfully slow. Blake and I would walk 20 ft and then stop to catch our breath while Kim dug deep and powered up the mountain. As we neared the crest and we could see the trail head marker, we were thrilled! However, when we finally saw the parking lot was empty we were deflated.
Another visit to the map to reassess what our situation was. The wind was picking up which heralded the bad weather we'd been lucky to avoid so far. Another night in the parking lot would not have been ideal (considering all my gear was wet) but we could make it. To hike out we would have either needed to follow the road for 10 miles or hike back to Naked Ground Gap on the Haoe-Lead trail and then follow Jenkins Meadow for a total of 6.5 miles. Both of those options sounded horrible. The other option? Get someone to come pick us up. Taxi?! Rangers?! We weren't picky. We all checked our phones...no bars. Not a single one and we were nearly at the top of the mountain.
My heart sank. Besides wanting to get the hell off the trail, I hadn't been able to get a message to Steven to let him know I was safe. My phone's battery had about 12% left on it and it was dying fast trying to find a signal. Finally, for my last effort, I hike-ran up the Haoe-Lead trail, which summited the mountain next to us, to find a signal. It was maddening, I just kept going up and my phone kept struggling. I'd get a bar, then lose it, I'd try to send a text message and it'd fail. I was nearly in tears when I finally gave up and turned around. At that very second, my phone went off because it had received a text from message Steven.
"HOLY SHIT" - Actual reaction.
I frantically texted as much information to Steven as quickly as I could before my phone lost signal or battery life. I managed to let him know we were all safe but very much wanted to get off the trail. My phone did eventually die but not before Kim had joined me up there and she managed to give him the remaining information. Steven totally saved the day. He got a hold of the Graham County Sheriff department who contacted their rescue squad. One of the final texts we got from Steven before we went down the mountain and lost signal again, "Go down to the trail head, they're coming to get you".
Kim and I had mixed emotions of relief and regret. What kind of boob of a hiker quits and calls in the rescue squad even though they have a full nights worth of supplies. Wet or not. But I kept thinking about the beer and pizza waiting for me at Asheville Pizza and Brewery...
It took about a hour for the Graham County Rescue Squad to reach us and when we first caught site of them on the road, I literally jumped up and down for joy. I think I amused them because when they parked the truck three laughing guys came out. Oh well, I've never been known for hiding my emotions well. We were all packed up in the truck and ready to go when they gave us the icing on the cake...a box of apple fritters. These guys rocked.
The drive down the mountain was a lot shorter than the hike up and it was filled with stories of other hiking groups that have done exactly what we did. Which made us feel far less dumb.
This last picture pretty much sums up the trip. Kim and I want to go back, Blake has sworn off Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness for life.
Now, for the pointers for future hikers. If you've found this blog post because you're considering hiking these trails, let me give you some advice to avoid our mistakes.
Get on the Naked Ground Gap trail early because you want that camp site. We got lucky that we were the first group on the trail at 1pm but that won't happen normally.
The water source near Naked Ground Gap is down an offshoot of the Slickrock Trail. When the trail forks, go left and you'll see a stream coming out of the ground about 50 ft down the trail.
The trail marker at the top of the mountain at Naked Ground Gap is somewhat misleading because trails have been rerouted. The Haoe trail is the one that cuts through all the camp sites. The trail that follows the Haoe arrow marker on the sign, is Slickrock. There is not another trail marker for Slickrock until you're at the bottom. If you find yourself going down, you're on Slickrock, so turn around.
That's pretty much it. My one big pointer, don't get on the Slickrock trail.
You know I'm a glutton for punishment though because while we were eating our pizza and drinking our beer, Kim and I were already talking about how we can do it again and get it right next time.
-Liz
