Detroit Free Press International Half Marathon

I really should try to be better about blogging my races. I did a few good ones this past summer to get ready for the big cahuna, but honestly they all kind of pale in comparison, so they didn't feel memorable enough to blog about. The Detroit Free Press half marathon was today and it's pretty dang fun—although my left IT band didn't really think so, as I had stop a few times and give it a little love. Stretching seems to do the trick, but the moral of the story is: stretch early and often. That was really the only way I could get the job done. But done it is, and at a meh-just-okay time of 2:27. I had hoped to squeeze in under 2:20, but whatev. At least I was faster than everyone sitting home on the couch, eh?

One of the things I love about big events like this is all the signs people hold as they cheer for the runners. Some of the really good ones I saw:

• "Way to go Melissa and all you adorable random strangers"
• "Toenails are overrated! Keep running!"
• "Run like a damn Yankee" (in reference to the Tigers running the Yankees out of town last week)
• "Run like you stole something"
• "The Zombie Apocalypse just happened, and they're right behind you. Keep running!"
• Two-tenths of a mile into the race: "Just 26 miles to go, people! You got this!"

Also some of the shirts that runners wear are pretty funny. Here are ones that I liked a lot:

• "I am a bomb technician. If you see me running, you better try and keep up."
• "WTF?? (Where's The Finish?)"
• On a half-marathoner: "I thought you said 1.31"
• On a full-marathoner: "Because 26.3 miles would just be crazy"
• "In my mind I'm a Keynyan, but in my legs, I'm a chubby white guy"

Getting my groove back

Crazy how life goes sometimes. A series of unfortunate events (none of them big or catastrophic, but the sum of which has been somewhat overhwelming) has caused almost three and a half years to go by in the blink of an eye. Hence the curtailment of most things recreational, including, unfortunately, both hiking and blogging. 

Which brings us to today when, I'm happy to report, the queen mum's getting her groove back.

Oh it's not like three and a half years have gone by with NO activity. Somehow during that time I managed to complete my first half-marathon, hiked the Manistee forest with the man I love (it was part of our 20-year anniversary celebration), ran a few 5k races, a few 10k races, got myself all smitten with yoga, and a few other things. But I won't kid you—all this took a backseat to just getting by. Basically I've been kinda busy with slogging through some wicked-hard parenting struggles and general midlife BS.

But now I'm back. The ship's starting to turn in a good direction. THANK GOD. Evidence:

• I'm training for my 2nd half marathon, which will be in October. It's the same one I did a couple years ago, the Detroit-to-Windsor Free Press race. I'm pretty geeked about it.
• The general climate in the household (I'm talking emotional/spiritual, not the indoor temp) has become fairly agreeable about 70% of the time, which I can live with. Because that's a hell of a lot better than it was a year or two ago, or even six months ago. Oh and have I mentioned that parenting is really hard? Yeah.
• As part of my half-marathon training I've been doing a couple 5ks here and there and this morning I did one in Lansing to benefit the Greater Lansing Sports Hall of Fame. It was a beautiful cool morning and crazy-fun to run along the riverside boardwalk next to the Grand River, and near the Michigan state capitol (you can kinda see it in the picture below). 

Oh and guess who got first in her age group? Yeah, this girl.

Now please don't equate that with the notion that I was fast, because I wasn't. I ran my typical pace of about 9.5-minute miles. But as luck would have it, all nine of the other ladies in their forties were even slower than me! Wooty woot!

A medal for my trouble? Why yes please, I'd love one. (Excuse the hair.)

Race for the Cure in Lansing

The fam and I did a 5k race today — the kids' first one ever! It was a Race For the Cure to benefit breast cancer research. This is pretty important to us, as my sister Eva had breast cancer a few years back and, thankfully, is now doing great.

It was a cool experience to be there, especially because there are quite a few people whose T-shirts indicate that they are survivors, or that they're doing the race in honor or in memory of someone with breast cancer. And in this particular race, there were a handful of people whose shirts simply said "I love boobs." No sense mincing words I guess!

Here's Maria and Joe with the state capital in the background:

Maria taking a water break:

Joe in front of the capital (and no, he's not dancing the mambo, he's just trying to pose for my camera without breaking his stride):

Red Rock Canyon

There are few things better than uninterrupted time with your BFF - unless it's uninterrupted time with your BFF while simultaneously taking in an amazing hike. I was lucky to have that over Easter weekend when Janet and I flew the coop and landed in Vegas. And no, I didn't win big while I was there (alas). Neither of us are big gamblers, at least not in the monetary sense :) ... but we've decided that LV provides a fairly cheap getaway to someplace warm and dry, which for two pastey Michiganders is a welcome respite from the deluge of snow and cold we've had this year. Fact, the kids had a snow day just a week before we left. Snow days in April. Preposterous but true. Give me a blistering-hot desert, please, with a little sunburn on the side.

Last time we went to Las Vegas (has it already been two years?), we went to see the Grand Canyon; this time we stayed local and took a day trip to Red Rock Canyon for an amazing day of hiking and scrambling. Maybe not as spectacular as the Grand Canyon, but the climbing is way more accessible, at least for a midwesterner. It was like a playground of boulders. Beautiful, easy, non-technical, thoroughly do-able - but still pretty thrilling.

We started out attempting the White Rock/La Madre Spring trail, a four-hour loop. It looked like this:

It was cool and all, but the view from that particular trail didn't hold a match to some of the rock formations we'd seen a couple miles to the southeast, an area called Calico Hills. So we bailed on the loop and hightailed it to Calico 1 and 2.

The Calicos are much more suited to thrill-seekers, and we saw quite a few climbers ascending some of the sheer rockfaces nearby. It didn't look quite as benign as Planet Rock, I can assure you.

We busied ourselves happily scrambling and climbing over some of the "smaller" boulders, which ranged in size from a refrigerator to a two-car garage. Awesomeness all around. Here's what it looked like:

There were also some funky desert flowers blooming, including this Indian Paintbrush:

All this was just the shot in the arm we needed to go back and face a few more weeks of cold and damp until spring comes.

The party's over

So yeah, it was pretty disappointing to have only covered about half of our intended mileage. But it was the right decision to stop. As Bob Peoples shuttled us back to Damascus, we learned that the temps in that area were actually in the teens at lower evelations, and into the single digits at higher points, which was where we were. No wonder our water bottles froze into bricks. And even colder temperatures were on the way for the following night.

We also learned that we weren't the only ones who got blindsided by the weather. The cold and snow were originally expected to hit mostly the regions north of us (West Virginia reportedly got ten inches!) but the front extended further south than anyone predicted. Schools were shut down in the three surrounding counties.

The blessings out of this? Well, we learned a lot and were grateful to have gotten through it without injury to ourselves or to the hound. We also got the pleasure of befriending Bob Peoples, a truly extraordinary man whose Kincora hostel will definitely be the launching point for my next section hike. And hey, I did get a little closer to Katahdin... 410 miles down, 1,765 to go!

On our way out of town, we stopped at a diner and I consumed the most delectable bowl of vegetable soup ever concocted in the history of the planet. And by nightfall we were at a hotel, showered and jammied, and can I just say that we will never take for granted the pleasures of a nice warm, clean bed? Least of all Buster.

AT: Moreland Gap Shelter to USFS 50

I have never been so cold as I was last night. There are no words to describe it.

When I woke at about 4 a.m., all my water bottles were frozen solid, and there was a good inch of snow covering everything in the shelter, including us. Tim and I discussed contingency plans in muffled voices through the layers of our respective cocoons. We both knew Buster's feet would have a hard time going very far in the new layer of snow, and Tim's feet weren't doing so well either. Last night he wore three pairs of socks, topped by my fluorescent orange hunter gloves, and a raincoat wrapped overtop of all that, and his feet were still numb. I too was starting to feel like I would never get warm. We decided that the best and safest next step would be to go to a hostel about six miles out, called Kincora.

We summited White Rocks Mountain, hoping for an easy descent, but even that was perilous. The plentiful snow, combined with a blanket of fallen leaves and the sharp grade, made it impossible to step carefully. I wiped out again several times, once banging my elbow and leg hard on the rocks (and I now have some nice purple bruises to show for it). I was hiking sloppy, I think, because I'd had nothing to eat or drink that morning — our water was frozen into blocks and so was undrinkable, and it was so painfully cold that to pause and feed ourselves seemed unwise — we just wanted to get to Kincora. So by about an hour into our hike, I was so thirsty that I was scooping up snow from the trailside like a cave woman, just trying to hydrate myself a little. I felt like an animal.

Tim offered to take Buster and clip him to his own pack, which was a big help because even at a petite 30 pounds, that dog can pull like nobody's business. So I gratefully accepted and then spent the rest of our descent fretting that both Buster and Tim would go careening swiftly down the mountain — and then where would I be!? Fortunately, Tim was more surefooted than I, and no further wipeouts ensued.

Finally the trail evened out a bit. The descent became more gentle and I knew the hard part was over.

We made it to the spot where the trail crosses US Forest Service road #50 and hiked the quarter-mile to Kincora, where we gratefully found proprietor Bob Peoples (the same guy who helped build Mountaineer Shelter, where we stayed earlier in our trip) available to shuttle us back to Damascus.

I was really disappointed that I didn't capture more of our experience in photos, but to my delight, I learned later that a fellow Whiteblazer happened to be at Carvers Gap just before we passed through, and he got some great pictures. Many thanks to TwistedToad (yes, that's his trail name — and I'm sure there's an awesome story to go with it!) who was very gracious to share the following photos with me.

AT: Mountaineer Shelter to Moreland Gap Shelter

There was more snow on the ground when we woke up this morning. Where is all this snow coming from!? This was not in the forecast!

Buster did much better hiking today. He seems to be getting the hang of hiking on a lead. I am concerned about his paws, though. The last mile or so today he was limping a lot and I had to stop many times to clear the ice chunks out from his toe pads. I'm pretty worried about this. I know that if this persists, the webbing between his toes will start to tear and bleed. Today we covered a fairly moderate 10 miles, but later this week we have a 13.5-mile day and a 15.9-mile day. I don't know if his feet are going to hold up.

Here's a view of an Appalachian rhododendron that I photographed today. Snow-covered rhodo leaves just don't compute! I'm accustomed to seeing them vibrant green and decorated with big pink flowers — not frigid and drooping under the weight of snow! Um, hello? Whose idea was it to come here in November!?

We are at Moreland Gap Shelter tonight... not nearly as nice as last night's shelter. This is an old one, built in 1960. Some goofball decided that its open side should face northwest, which means all the cold and wind comes blowing right in. Which maybe isn't a bad thing in the summer, but right now the weather is continuing to decline and snow continues to fall. Tim's got a little portable radio with him, and he picked up a weather report, but there's no way it could be right. They're saying the temp is in the 20's, but we are experiencing terribly bitter wind and cold. As an old mountain man and fellow hiker told me several years ago, the mountains make their own weather.

We tried like crazy to build a fire this evening to dry out our snow-soaked boots, but the fierce wind and dampness from the snow made it impossible.

I cut the sleeves off my wool sweater tonight, so that Buster could wear it more comfortably without getting tangled up in it, and Tim gave up one of his polypropylene hiking shirts so that Buster could also have a base layer to wear. He's making quite the fashion statement in this get-up, let me tell you. He's very, very cold, even when wrapped in the fleece pad that I brought for his bed. Right now I have him bundled up in my sleeping bag with me and he is still shivering.

AT: Route 19E to Mountaineer Shelter

When we woke up this morning and started getting ready to set off, there was about an inch of snow on the ground at the hostel. Whoa. Didn't expect that. And to Tim's chagrin, since this is the off-season, Mountain Harbour doesn't serve a humongous breakfast like they did when we were here last May. So instead, Tim scored a couple packages of oatmeal from the hiker box and I ate a Clif bar. Buster dined on several pieces of pizza crusts that the 50-mile-runner-guy gave him. Then we were off. I'll admit it was a little hard to leave the cozy woodburning stove at Mountain Harbour.

We got started about 9 a.m., and here's Tim making his way up the side of Buck Mountain in his signature red hat. As we picked up more elevation (about a thousand feet in the first mile and a half), the snow definitely became more plentiful, and more of a problem. Not only did it make for some slippery hiking, but in many places it made the trail almost invisible. It was pretty easy to lose the white blazes on the trees, too, because of the snow clinging to the tree trunks.

The snow really does make the view beautiful, though. It feels a lot like cross-country skiing in Stinchfield Woods — only with 40 pounds of dead weight on my back and an over-anxious dog bumping into the backs of my heels every third step or so. Buster's doing fine overall, but hiking with a lead attached to my backpack definitely takes some getting used to. I can't risk letting him off-leash, because he does have a history of running off after interesting scents or animals, and I would have no way to find him easily if he decided to go off on a wild romp. I don't love hiking with a leash, though. I wiped out a couple of times today because of his pulling.

Right now we're finished with our 8-mile day and snuggled down in Mountaineer Shelter. It's a deluxe place, and only two years old. A very well known trail maintainer named Bob Peoples helped commandeer the team that built it.

Tim's got his hammock strung from the rafters in the upper part of the shelter, and I pitched my bivouac on the lower deck so that I could have a little extra protection from the cold and wind. Buster's curled up inside with me, and he's definitely very cold. In fact I put my wool sweater on him to try to help him conserve some heat.

Here he is all bundled up with Tim. It is going to be a wicked cold night.

The Road to Damascus

No, not the biblical Damascus where Saul became Paul ... I'm talking about Damascus, Virginia, which is where Tim and I left a car this evening, and where we will eventually end up after hiking north for a week on the Appalachian Trail.

After studying up on the weather forecast all week, it looks like temps will be in the 20's at night and up to the high 40's in the daytime. And no thunderstorms predicted! Woot! So guess who got to come along? Yep, Buster. This will be his first long-distance trek on the AT. If there had been any chance of thunderstorms I would've had to leave him home, since he is deathly afraid of those. He is carrying a small pack which contains his food for the week, two collapsible dog dishes, and about 20 ounces of water. He is rarin' to go. I took this photo of the noble beast taking in a nice deep breath of mountain air.

That red house you see in the background is Mountain Harbour, the same hiker hostel where Rob and Tim and I stayed on the eve of our last big hike in May. Last time we did a southbound segment, and this time we're starting at the same spot but heading north instead. They're very pet-friendly here, as you can see from the treats that were on their shelf.

Also on the shelf here is a "hiker box," which is a common thing to find at a hiker hostel. It's just a big huge box full of all kinds of stuff — food, gear, fuel, maps — and you can take anything you want. Hikers leave whatever they're not going to use, and they take anything that might be helpful to them. How cool is that! Obamanomics, trail-style. Love it.

There are two other guys staying here tonight. One is Ben Davis, an elite athlete who is running (not hiking, but running) the entire AT in 65 days to raise awareness for ALS (see his website here). Sixty-five days!! I think the current speed record is something like 61 days, but to put that in perspective, most thru hikers take at least six months to finish the whole thing. Ben's support person, Rick Cheever, is here too... he meets Ben at specific points along the trail each day and provides food and other resupply items. Right now it's about 8:30 at night, and Rick told us that Ben started running at 2:30 this morning (!!), and he's expecting him to roll in about 11:30 tonight, for a total distance today of 54 miles. Unbelievable.

There was lots of rain all day today on our drive down, but that's supposed to go away overnight and give way to clearer skies for the week. I'm pretty excited.

Terrorist? Hiker? Terrified Hiker?

Check out the new headgear. No, it's not a terrorist get-up... it's my latest in a string of purchases in preparation for next week's adventure on the Appalachian Trail.

On Sunday, my brother Tim and I are setting off from Roan Mountain and hiking north toward Damascus. With temperatures predicted in the mid-20s at night, this Cupcake is, frankly, terrified of freezing her frosting. I've never done an extended hike this late in the year. Last week's snowfall in Michigan didn't help the fear factor.

Hence the headgear: the black thing is called a balaclava (not "baklava," nor "burka," as Joe and Maria have taken to calling it). It's made of fleece and covers my whole head and neck. The hat underneath was a knitting experiment with wool, based on a pattern from my friend Sue. The combo is certain to launch a fashion trend while at the same time (I hope) keep me from dying a cryogenic death in some A.T. shelter next week.

Here are the rest of the layers I'm bringing:

• On the top: polypropylene tee, longsleeve synthetic UnderArmour shirt, short sleeve synthetic tee overtop of that, zippered fleece, thermal jacket, vapor-barrier raincoat.
• On the bottom: long undies, synthetic lined workout pants, lined ski pants.
• On the tootsies: synthetic sock liners, Smartwool socks, fleece booties.
• On los manos: I've apparently lost my mind completely and might've singlehandedly rescued the economy from the recent financial collapse, because I blew $55 on a pair of Black Diamond gloves. In a kind of funny twist of irony, overtop of them I'm going to wear a pair of blinding-orange hunting gloves, which I picked up at the thrift store for 85 cents. During the day when we're hiking and I don't need the double layer of gloves, the orange ones are going to be clipped to the top of my backpack and double as the universal sign of please-don't-shoot-me-Mr.-Hunter, since it will be deer season.

As you can imagine, all this extra stuff means that I won't be bringing my usual sassy little ultralight pack, as it can't accommodate all the bulk. So I've upsized to my bigger green Kelty backpack, which I haven't used for a couple of years now. It feels funny to have all this room to spare. I'm pondering bringing along a space heater.

The Great Train Race

Alright, I have to showboat a little here.

Let me preface what I'm about to say with one important fact: despite my goal of entering at least one 5k or 10k per year for the last who-knows-how-many years, I haven't placed in even one running race since high school. And I'm okay with that, since running really isn't a passion of mine — it's just a mechanism by which I try to maintain some level of physical stamina, so that I can take my twice-annual backpacking trip without fear of a cardiac event. (That, and races are just fun. You get a cool T-shirt and they feed you afterwards.)

Well. Given my past performance, you can imagine my disbelief when I placed second in my age bracket in The Great Train Race, which was held in conjunction with Ypsilanti's Heritage Festival.

I'm only a little bit embarrassed to admit that when I saw the results, for a brief and glorious moment I felt a swell of kinship to Michael Phelps. Yes, I'd like to thank my family and friends for all their support, and especially my training partner, Buster...

Okay, so there was no tear-jerker award ceremony, and at only 140 entrants, it was definitely a very small race. And never mind the fact that I was second out of only 10 women in my age bracket (which was 35-39, since I know you're wondering). And the fact that my time was a leisurely 28:38. And the fact that a 69-year-old man beat me by well over a minute. No matter. I still placed, and that was a pretty big (and unexpected) rush.

The host of the event was The Corner Brewery, a nifty little beer garden and bottler of Arbor Brewing Company beers. No beer for this runner, though, as I wanted to finish The Great Train Race without turning into a Great Train Wreck before the finish line. Plus it was way too early for beer - the race started at 8:10 a.m.

Why 8:10 a.m., you ask? Well, the starting line is right next to the train tracks by the Ypsilanti Farmers Market, and the race officially starts as soon as the 8:10 Amtrak comes barreling past. For a pretty sweet half-minute or so, all the runners run parallel to this massive and thunderous train. It's really cool.

Long story short, I ended up with this kitschy but adorable medal, which the kids are convinced is made of real silver.

I haven't tried to convince them otherwise.

Rock On

Yesterday the kids and I spent the day at Planet Rock, the local rock-climbing gym in Ann Arbor. What a cool experience! I am definitely a rock-climbing newbie, and now, 16 hours later, I have the aching triceps to prove it. And the embarrassing thing is, all this soreness is due to scant little climbing, since my real purpose in being there was mostly just to belay the kids. "Belay" means "to hold" — so my job was basically to stand on the ground with a death-grip on a rope that was keeping my beautiful babies from careening down a 40-foot rock wall to their deaths. No pressure there.

Fortunately, the kids were quite comfortable with all this, especially Maria, who immediately emerged as the knot-tying expert of our little trio. She had learned all about knots earlier this summer while sailing in Maryland. Joe and I happily deferred to her when roping ourselves in. Here's an example of her lovely little figure-8 knot, which became the basis for the tie-on to our harnesses:

And here's my girl, climbing like a monkey:

Joe made quick work of the initial wall. He scampered straight to the top and touched the ceiling.

We'll definitely be going back. I'm already trolling the REI website for harnesses and chalk bags.

Day 7: Bald Mountain Shelter to Sams Gap

Our last day of hiking. Ironically, Rob’s missing knife and toothbrush – which we thought were lost three days ago at Cherry Gap Shelter – both turned up this morning. (For the record, as soon as I get home, I am officially retiring the Family Toothbrush that we’ve been sharing for the last three days.)

Like cows headed to the barn, the boys practically ran up Big Bald Mountain today, knowing that by lunchtime we’d be at Sams Gap, where Tim’s car is parked. Here are the two happy campers on the summit of Big Bald, which unfortunately didn’t afford us quite the 360-degree view that we’d hoped for, because there was an impressively low ceiling of clouds gathering.

We traversed eight mountainous miles in a brisk four hours, finishing up just after 11 a.m. On the last peak before our final descent, the boys stopped to appreciate the sight of clouds and fog swirling in Street Gap, from which we’d just ascended.

The last hour or so of our hike, it rained on and off, but we didn’t care in the least. We were mere miles away from a fresh change of clothes and a vehicle that would take us to food and showers.

Good thing, too, because I was seriously jonesing for a Diet Coke.

Once we piled all our gear and our bad smelly selves into Tim’s car, we drove a few miles to a little roadside gas station, where we changed and cleaned up a bit. And of course I slammed a nice cool 20 ounces of caffeinated, carbonated bliss.

Then it was on to Erwin, where we stopped for lunch. I’ve never in my life seen Tim eat with such gusto. Not only did he put away a hefty portion of spaghetti and garlic bread, he even topped off his meal with chocolate cake.

No, that is not a typo. I really did say cake. Since this was possibly the first time in like twenty-five years that he’s eaten anything that indulgent, I had to take a picture for proof. This is the guy who usually eschews all forms of sweets for earthy-tasting concoctions made out of stuff like millet and wheat berries and flax and whatnot. But for that brief moment, Dr. Dog was all about the chocolate.

He would’ve tossed back a beer, too, but when he asked the waitress what she had on tap, she looked like she might whip out a ruler and rap his knuckles. With a serious, unsmiling expression, she explained that “Perhaps you didn’t know, but this is a dry county, sir.” Ah, the south.

It’s been an amazing week. I feel so blessed. How many people on the planet have two crazy brothers who are willing to hike alongside a Cupcake for 73 miles, up and down mountains, through rain and hail, braving mice, risking coffeepots, and sharing toothbrushes? And not only are we all still on speaking terms, we actually still kinda like each other. Seriously, these guys are a treasure to me. I am lucky to have them.

Day 6: No Business Knob Shelter to Bald Mountain Shelter

Tim was up half the night, going toe-to-toe with the mouse. The mouse didn’t bother me, really – I guess I’ve just accepted mice as one of the inconvenient truths of the AT. There was another kind of interloper invading my space last night, however, that really did some damage. I think a spider took up residence in my sleeping bag, because this morning I had about 25 welt-like bites all over my legs. They have been itching like crazy all day.

We did a go-getting 12.5-mile day today, so we were pretty elated to see this sign, pointing the way to the shelter. Well, it’s either pointing the way to a shelter, or to pi, we weren’t sure.

We’re at Bald Mountain shelter tonight, and I’m kind of sad that it’s our last night on the trail.

There are two other guys here tonight, and one of them has a huge adorable dog named Trekker. He’s about the size of a pony. Here’s a shot of him and our very own Dr. Dog.

The other guy we’re bunking with is probably in his sixties, and kind of chatty. He was interested in the fact that the three of us are siblings, and he wanted to hear all about our family. When he heard that I have a husband and young kids at home, he said “You know, I read about someone similar to you – it was an article in A.T. Journeys maybe a year and a half ago, about a lady who does section hikes on the AT a couple times a year…”

It was kind of fun to tell him that I’m not just similar to the chick he read about – I am her!

Day 5: Curly Maple Gap Shelter to No Business Knob Shelter

Dr. Dog’s knee is still barking up a storm. But at least there doesn’t seem to be any more swelling. (Cupcake’s taking credit for having the foresight to bring a truckload of ibuprofen and Arnica on this trip. I’m just sayin’.) Plus, one of the many cool things about Tim is that he’s definitely the kind of guy who will muscle through just about anything without complaining. Today would’ve been his last opportunity to bail, since the trail crossed a significant road where he could’ve gotten a bunk at a hiker hostel, or hitched a ride into the little trail town of Erwin, Tennessee. But he barely even slowed down at the crossing, pausing only a couple minutes on the Chestoa Bridge to snap a few shots of the Nolichucky River.

Here's a shot of Uncle Johnny’s hostel, which the trail passes just after crossing the Chestoa Bridge.
Tim forged ahead, but Rob and I stopped in to see if Uncle Johnny might sell us a toothbrush to replace the one Rob lost. No luck.

It was quite the kick-butt climb up to Temple Ridge, so Rob and I enjoyed frequent breaks. Check out those silver shins! Whoa. You might need a pair o'sunglasses to gaze on those babies.

After about ninety minutes and nearly as many switch-backs, we had reached the top of Temple Ridge, and this was the view we had of the river. Pretty respectable climb!

We encountered a couple significant blow-downs today – large trees that had fallen right across the trail, completely blocking our passage. One of them required some rather acrobatic maneuvering and bushwhacking to get up and around the obstruction, and I got a nice little gash on my right knee in the process. Joe will be impressed with that, as he thinks it’s cool when his mom comes home from a hiking trip with some war wounds and good stories to go with them.

We’ve got the No Business Knob shelter to ourselves tonight which is kind of nice. This is the kind of shelter where I’m glad to have company, because it’s so high up and remote that it would be a little spooky to be here alone.

And I guess we’re all a little jumpy, because as we were hunkering down for the night, we heard an odd noise that we could’ve sworn was the squealing of a wild boar (those really do exist in this part of the country, and believe it or not, they're believed to be more dangerous than bears because they're quite aggressive). After further investigation, though, we discovered the noise was actually just the echoing of a woodpecker as he was working on a nearby hemlock. Don’t ask me how we could mistake a woodpecker for a pig – I guess our imaginations are just on overdrive. And it’s not because of Rob’s five-dollar scotch, either – that’s been gone for two days now.

Here’s a little family portrait we did tonight after dinner, and you’ll have to excuse my deer-in-the-headlights expression. I think I was just a little distracted because I still had wild boars on my mind. The cool thing about this picture is, the photography was done with the aid of Rob’s trekking pole. Check this out: if you jam the sharp end of his pole into the dirt (so that it stands up by itself), and then unscrew the little knobby handle at the other end, you can actually attach a camera to the screw at the top and use the pole as a monopod! How cool is that?

The other cool photography trick was that we managed to make it look like Rob's pants are on fire.

The big tragedy of the day happened around 6 p.m. when Rob pulled out his espresso maker to brew up a cup, and found that the little bendy thing at the top seems to have broken in transit. Buh-bye, espresso. Rob is beaming smugly, however, over having the foresight to bring a backup coffeepot.

A mouse appeared in the shelter this evening. Might be an eventful night.

Day 4: Cherry Gap Shelter to Curly Maple Gap Shelter

Tim was the first one up and out this morning, around 7 a.m. He wanted to get going early because he knew today would be full of lots of climbing and descending, and he wasn't feeling too spry due to his still-painful knee. Rob and I wished him well and told him we’d catch up. We set out about 20 minutes later.

Being one of the first hikers to pack up and vacate an overfilled shelter – especially when it’s still not fully light outside – is always hard. There’s gear all over the place, and because there are lots of sleeping hikers lying about, you don’t feel good about bumbling around and making a clatter to collect your stuff. Consequently, you’re never quite sure that you really got all your belongings. Case in point: when we finished hiking this afternoon and began inventorying our stuff, Rob realized he’d left behind his toothbrush and one of the several knives he’d brought. (I think he regards knives just like coffeepots – the more, the better.)

The knife he could live without, but the toothbrush? Ah well, good thing we’re family. We shared.

Saw lots of trillium on the trail today. I never tire of looking at these little beauties. They’re just amazing.

The biggest news of the day was that Cupcake had a near-meltdown when it appeared that it might be necessary to launch a search-and-rescue operation on our first big summit of the day, Unaka Mountain.

Here’s how it happened. By 9 a.m., the three of us had gotten considerably far apart from each other – Tim was way out ahead of me due to his early departure from the shelter, and Rob was quite a ways behind me because he preferred to climb at a slower pace. So for a solid couple of hours, I saw neither brother, which at first didn’t bother me at all – I just figured we’d catch up to one another before Indian Grave Gap, a few miles from Unaka’s peak. But after summiting Unaka and descending down the other side for about an hour, I still hadn't seen either of them.

I hiked and hiked and hiked some more, straining my eyes through the heavy fog, thinking Tim had to be just ahead of me. I even yelled out his name a few times. But I didn’t truly start to fret till I began noticing that every twenty or thirty feet I was running into strands of silken spiderwebs stretched across the trail, which meant no one else had passed through that area yet this morning. So if Tim wasn’t ahead of me, where was he? I started to worry that maybe he’d gotten disoriented at the top of Unaka, since the fog was so dense and the trail was easy to lose in the thick stands of red spruce. What if both brothers got turned around up there? What if they were still up there, wandering around and looking for the trail and each other? What if Tim’s knee blew completely out? What if one of them had a heart attack? Or ran into a bear? Or slipped and fell down the side of the gorge? How would I ever find them?

My heart in my throat, I decided I’d better just sit down and wait for a while, in hopes that one of them would arrive and then we could figure out how to find the other. But after a full 30 minutes of waiting, I lived up to my Cupcake moniker and started to well up with tears. I started to consider how I would break it to my sisters-in-law Michelle and Sue that I had lost their husbands in the wilderness of Unaka Mountain.

I couldn’t just sit there and keep waiting; I needed to go back up the mountain and look for them. I dropped my pack on the side of the trail, took my poles with me, and started climbing. After about 20 minutes (which felt like 20 hours), my eyes caught a flash of yellow: Rob’s shirt. With Rob in it. Sashaying leisurely down the mountain, a relaxed grin on his face. I could see he was listening to his Zune – the wires from his earbuds were flopping around as he walked. I think he was humming a blues tune. Not a care in the world.

“I LOST TIM,” I shrieked wildly, my voice cracking and tears flying out the corners of my eyes as I bounded up to him. Rob gave me a big smooch on the cheek and said “No you didn’t – he’s about five minutes behind me.” I dissolved in a heavy sigh of relief for a few seconds before moxying up my sternest Mom voice so that I could give that Timothy a good talking-to. I strained my eyes through the trees to see him, and there he was, still wearing his jaunty little red hat, stepping gingerly down the mountain so as to protect his knee. When he got within earshot, I fired out a dour “WHERE have you BEEN?”

He looked up, seemingly surprised at the severity in my voice. “I, uh, well… I stepped off the trail for a minute,” he said kind of sheepishly. “You know … when nature calls…”

He got two demerits and strict instructions to never just vanish off the trail again without telling someone. You just can’t mess with Cupcake like that.

The rest of the day involved a blur of – yep – climbing and descending. We hiked through quite a few fire-damaged areas, like the ashen hillside shown here. A passing hiker told us that the Pisgah National Forest had attempted to do some controlled burns recently, and things ended up being, well, not-so-controlled. In fact, some of the shelter logbook entries described how hikers had to walk through still-burning patches of trail as recently as a couple weeks ago. The whole area still smells strongly of smoke.

Right in the midst of a big stretch of fire-damaged landscape, we saw our first rhodo-dendron bloom of the week. Even though the plant itself looked like it had suffered irreparably from the heat and smoke, the flower at the top was open and stunning. Somehow there's something significant in that. It made me think about Isaiah 61:1-4, where God talks about exchanging ashes for a "crown of beauty" - in other words, turning really crummy situations into something good.

This is what the blooms look like just prior to opening up.

Tonight we’re at Curly Maple Gap Shelter, and there are three other hikers staying with us, all around 60. One of them is a dead ringer for Dustin Hoffman, and he’s kept us quite entertained all evening. He was quite impressed at my bear-bagging skills when it came time to hang the food this evening.

We’re thankful that there’s a clean, sparkling spring just a stone’s throw from tonight’s shelter. The last couple of nights, the water source has been kind of far off - and it’s quite a kick in the pants to hike yourself into a stupor all day, then finally collapse at a shelter, only to find that you have another significant distance to go for water.

Oh and check this out: at the little creek by our shelter tonight, some inventive person has fashioned a spout out of a rhododendron leaf and a string of dental floss, so that it’s easier to harvest the water. (Click on the photo to get a closer view.) Aren’t hikers cool?