A challenging, yet rewarding walk
Fires Creek Rim Trail (Nantahala National Forest, Hayesville, NC) - 25 Miles
Two weeks after backpacking the Standing Indian Loop Trail, the dogs and I were ready for another walk in the woods.
After paying $36 to AllTrails.com for a 3 year subscription of trail descriptions, maps, and GPX files to load into my handheld Garmin GPSMAP64 GPS, it took me some time to figure out how to make all of the technology work. The workaround for Garmin’s seemingly-arbitrary limitation of 250 waypoints per route is to convert the route into a track. Once I did that I was able to load the complete trail into the GPS. This proved to be absolutely necessary on the Rim trail, as we’ll see.
Some backpackers specialize in ultra-light equipment. Not me. With a whopping 41-pound pack I arrived at the parking lot next to the trailhead. There was a picnic area complete with a lovely stream and a church group from Franklin, NC feasting on homemade food. One of the ladies approached me and asked me if I would like a plate of dessert. After graciously accepting, I realized that I had experienced my first trail magic. It was absolutely delicious.
After that, I unsuccessfully started looking for the actual trailhead. A man in a small white car stopped and asked me if I needed directions. He showed me where to start and told me that he has moved in this area in the late 1970’s. He gave me a brief description of the trail, we exchanged pleasantries, and off I went. Start time was 17:45 – two energetic dogs and one human continuing my listening of Warren Buffet’s biography on my ipod.
Friday evening was a continuously steep uphill slog for 2-2.5 hours. This entire trail is sparsely-traveled, thickly-grown deciduous forest, so campsites are sparse and leave a lot to be desired. Feeling tired and lazy, and after continuously removing ticks from both dogs, I plopped down my Therm-a-Rest and sleeping bag in the middle of the trail and called it a night. That proved to be a good choice because of the beautiful view and fewer things to pack up in the morning.
On Saturday morning the dogs and I hit the trail at 6:40. I decided to take in nature and pack away the ipod. Everything was great until around 7:25 when I spotted a big black bear on the trail a few hundred feet in front of me. With Mabel darting directly toward the bear, and me deciding on a game plan, I remembered to flail my arms around, to look big and obnoxious, and to make a lot of noise. It worked. The bear scurried away. That happened.
Throughout the hike water was sparse but fortunately we always had enough. Whenever we would find water, I would force-drink a ton and then fill up my bottles. The dogs somehow understood this, and they drank up too. As we moved further from civilization, the trail was less and less maintained. By midday, we could barely find the trail, and we were heavily-bushwhacking for hours on end. Good thing I had the GPS. It saved my hide multiple times. This section was just as challenging as the first part of the Arizona Backpacking Trip in April. It was challenging because I was not covering much ground despite the tremendous mental and physical energy I was exerting. At one point I hears a bear howl in the nearby bushes. By then I just yelled a bit and kept on moving. At this point, visibility was low because of the heavily-grown vegetation. Even at the mountain summits, I couldn’t see much.
By late-afternoon I was tired, but I decided to keep traveling because I needed to cover more ground. The dogs found some standing water in a rock by the side of the trail, so after they drank up I filled up my Camelbak. Just as I finished up filling my container, the water in the rock was depleted. That was lucky. As we kept walking, the trail condition started to gradually improve since we were on the other side of the horseshoe, and thus closer to civilization. At 20:40 we stopped hiking, and I threw down the inflatable Therm-A-Rest and sleeping bag just like the night before. This was the second night not next to a water source. I was dirty and a bit nervous after seeing and hearing the bears earlier in the day, but despite only having a couple of miles to the finishing point and ample flashlight power, I decided to spend the night there – rationalizing that the dogs would protect me if any critter tried any funny business.
Once early in the night the dogs heard something and darted off. Millie the protector came back, but I couldn’t find Mabel. After some calling in the dark to no avail, I gave up and called it a night. Then, a few minutes later I saw the reflection from two eyes staring back at me from my flashlight beam. Mabel was only about 20 or 30 feet from us resting in some leaves and not responding to my calls. Sometimes that dog frustrates me, but gosh if she isn’t so cute.
The next day we started hiking at 6:50 and made a beeline for the car – arriving there just before 8:00. As an added bonus, I cleaned up in the creek next to where I was parked. This was probably the highlight of the morning, and it didn’t disappoint. The 2+ hour drive home in my underwear was great. During the entire trip, we didn't see any people on the trail. Also, it is notable that other than a couple of tuna wraps for lunch on Saturday, I did not eat anything on this trip other than trail mix from the grocery store. While there was a lot of extra food left over that I never consumed, I ended up not cooking it because of the lack of a water supply where I camped both nights. Subsisting on trail mix is possible for a couple of days, but I was getting tired of it by the time I completed the trip. The dogs ate their normal ration of dog food on both days.
Overall this hike was a lot of fun, but the overgrown trails and steep climbs definitely made it one of the more strenuous backpack trips I’ve done in awhile. On my next trip I will probably do something a bit easier, but the situation was beneficial because it gave me a great opportunity to mentally put my day-to-day problems in perspective. That’s one of the biggest reasons why I do these trips in the first place.
