So the summer of 2014 my friend Jim and I planned a little adventure run. At this time I hadn’t done anything like this and wasn’t sure what I was going to need. Our plan was to head to the Smokey’s, camp at two different spots and do two different runs. As we planned out the adventure I wasn’t sure of the distances we would be covering each day, up to this point my longest run had been a very tough trail marathon. Our runs where going to start and end at Newfound Gap, day 1 was to Mt. LeConte and day 2 was to Clingmans Dome. We didn’t have any GPS devices with us so we didn’t have that type of data for distance we estimated that one day was about 18 miles and the other was about 16 miles round trip. Jim used his AT book to get these distances. It was a memorable adventure.
What I remember most from the trip was the journey to Mt. LeConte. That weekend the bears for some reason were very active in the park. When we started out we saw a mama bear with two cubs at Newfound Gap on top of the sear rock wall that overlooked the parking lot, this was not going to be the last bear sighting of the day.
To get to Mt. LeConte from Newfound Gap you have to take the Appalachian Trail, AT, north to the Boulevard Trail. The AT is a very famous trail and so I was supper excited to be on it. Jim has been on it many times and has completed the whole thing twice. From our start out to the Boulevard Trail the trail was a gentle yet technical climb, the first mile or two was full of large rocks that you had to work your way over and around, some of this required some very high stepping to get up. By the time we reached the Boulevard Trail the AT had leveled out and had become much easier to run. Jim and I where making good time as we moved forward.
When we came to the Boulevard Trail and started down it the terrain changed as well as the technical aspect of the trail. Loose wet black rock seemed to be the norm with a lot of climbing and descending. After we had been on this trail for a while I started thinking about having to come back this direction and dreading it, this was no joke. The steep climbs burned my legs, the sections of light stepping so as not to cause rocks to slide out from under you, and the very narrow trail as you scooted across a ridge all made for some tense situations for me. I wasn’t use to any of this; this wasn’t Warner Parks by any stretch! Jim and I are moving along reasonably well with Jim about 10 to 15 feet behind me on a ridge section, this ridge section was encased in cloud so you couldn’t see anything as we moved plus we were in a section of fir and hemlock trees.
The trail itself was only about 12 inches wide if that and both sides fell away sharply, the only comfort for me was the fact that the trees where so close to each other and the trail that they seemed to offer some protection in case I rolled off the side of the mountain. It was during this section that it happened. A bear. He went bounding down the mountain to my right. I stopped and looked back at Jim and stammered out ‘Did you see that?’ Jim: ‘No, what was it?’ Me: ‘A bear just went tumbling down there!’ Jim: ‘Yea, I didn’t see that I was too far back and when they want to they can move pretty quickly.’ After a moments recovery from seeing the bear we were off again. I was glad Jim had told me what to do if we encountered a bear. He gave this information while telling me of his various bear encounters during his many hikes on the AT, PCT and CDT. Still, I didn’t feel quite prepared for the encounter. As we came closer to Mt. LeConte we hit a section of trail that was very sketchy, the trail began to become more exposed with part of it going along a rock face, which had a cable you had to grab to get across.
In this section I’ll never forget what the trail did, ever. We had been moving at a good pace and I stepped over this section of trail that seemed to drop off, it wasn’t until I was past it that I began to question what I had just stepped over. We made it to Mt. LeConte and took a break, refilled our water and ate; we didn’t explore too much beyond the few buildings that where there. When we headed back I made sure to pay attention to the spot in the trail that I had stepped over earlier, I wish I hadn’t. I’m not a heights guy and when we got back to that part of the trail I looked down through what I had stepped over earlier. There was nothing there but air. If I had miss stepped there I would have been a goner. I’m not sure how far down it was to the next piece of ground but I didn’t really care I was just glad to be over that spot.
The rest of the journey was void of any wild animal sightings or huge gaping sections of missing trail, but what it lacked in those areas it made up for with brutal climbs as we worked our way back to the AT. Once back on the AT it was fairly smooth sailing until we came to that last mile or two down into Newfound Gap. I’m sure Jim was shaking his head at me and apologizing to the walkers that were on the trail. I was bounding down the trail bouncing off rocks and hollering ‘Runner back!’ in an effort to get folks to move off to the right side of the trial. It was an exhilarating run and I was so glad it was over and truly couldn't wait to do it again some day.
Gear
At this point in my trial running I didn’t yet own a set of poles and hadn’t even thought about them. I did have my Salomon Skin Pro 10+3, which has become my favorite running vest, such that even with all of its holes from the many journeys I still pick it over any other.
My shoes at this point would have been a pair of Cascadias 7 or 8's, after they changed the shoe on the 9's I couldn't wear them anymore because they hurt my feet too badly. For this run I had learned from Jim that the only places we would be able to get water was from springs along the trail so I took my Katadyn filter with me.
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