Day 1-Thursday, 9/7/06
Route: Cades Cove to Spence Field shelter via Anthony Creek, Bote Mtn, AT and Eagle Creek Trails
Statistics: 5.4 miles traveled. 2,901' of hill climbing and 182' of descending.
Average hiking speed 1.7 mph.
I'd put-off a serious return to multiple day backcountry travel for
almost five years. This hike was almost like old times when I'd load too much stuff into too large a pack and then attempt
to lug that load up and down too steep a route over too long a distance in weather either too hot, too wet or too humid for
any normal person to enjoy very much. I loved it. I'm also going to state that after this trip I feel like I've
managed to eliminate the word "too" from the above description! Well, almost.....
Thursday morning greeted me with the knowledge that my pack had been loaded into the backseat of my car
the day before. Oh joy! I actually managed departure from home at a decently early hour and arrived unannounced
at Jan's house where like most sensible folks she was still sleeping. She is especially cute when she just gets up.
Grin.
"The plan was to drop me at the Anthony Creek trailhead in Cades Cove Thursday morning and pick
me up four days later at Fontana dam. "
Jan had agreed to be my personal shuttle service for this hike. I'd assumed (without consulting her)
that a four day backpacking hike along what was expected to be a physically challenging route would not be her cup of tea
(she usually doesn't like tea anyway). The plan was to drop me at the Anthony Creek trailhead in Cades Cove Thursday
morning and pick me up four days later at Fontana dam.
9 am Thursday and I'm on the Anthony Creek Trail heading toward Spence Field. The 46 lb. pack load
doesn't feel quite as heavy or uncomfortable as the 39 lb. load did only a couple of weeks earlier along the Balsam Mtn. Trail.
Actually 3 lbs. of the 46 lb. load is being hand-carried: My camera/tripod combination. I'm about to lose two
pounds of that weight over the next five miles.
Anthony Creek trail was unremarkable. The empty horse camp along the first section of the trail stank
of manure and urine. There were a few old footbridges on the route, one backcountry site (#9) and then nothing much
I found remarkable until arriving at the Bote Mtn trail junction.
Bote Mtn trail (excuse me for evoking bad memories) was as bad as ever. Physically I was challenged
to the point that climbing the monster route required a few rest stops to catch my breath, listen to my pounding heart and
wonder when my hiking legs would come out of retirement. Mentally I probably had a few moments of serious contemplation
of going back down to Cades Cove to schedule a psychiatric evaluation and order a cold beer. Finally, two pounds
of water later, I got to the top of the beastly trail and smiled as I caught first sight of the revamped Spence Field
shelter--my home for the rest of the day.
Spence Field shelter was visited this day by a few hikers and became home for a day to four other hikers
besides myself. Two of the first visiting hikers (retirement age gents who'd first met as Air Force Academy classmates)
had planned to travel down Eagle Creek trail but were quick to change their mind when I told them about all of the unbridged
stream crossings they had in store for them along Eagle Creek. Apparently that was the first they'd heard about any
kind of stream crossing along their route (I wonder sometimes what possesses people to embark upon a major hike without adequate
planning). While visiting the shelter the two flyboys (one was an active pilot for Delta) decided that one of the
two unopened cans of SPAM left in the shelter by a previous visitor(s) might be a good lunch. They broke out their
stove and fried-up the sliced SPAM. I accepted two of the six or eight slices they'd cooked. Yuck. Needless
to say the remaining 12 oz. can of SPAM didn't go into my pack. The flyboy hikers reversed course and headed back toward
Fontana dam via the AT with a planned overnight at Mollies Ridge shelter.
Another visitor was an athletic-looking young man who was backpacking along the Smokies' portion of the
AT. He was just looking for a water source and after refilling his bottle/bladder he tore out of there with hardly a
word other than to say he'd started at Davenport Gap and had overnighted the previous evening at Siler's Bald shelter.
Apparently he was bound for Mollies Ridge shelter (15.3 miles from Siler's Bald) for what I gathered would be only his
3rd overnight since leaving Davenport Gap. Probably the Briar Knob & Thunderhead Mtn section of the AT between Siler's
Bald and Spence Field is 2nd in difficulty only to the route between Low Gap and Charlie's Bunion for physical challenge
along the AT in the Smokies.
The four overnight hikers who joined me were so unremarkable that today I can barely remember them.
I do seem to recall that they struck me as semi-rookie backpackers with ambitions much like those of the characters described
in Bill Bryson's A Walk In the Woods book about an AT journey.
I'd been expecting a night of a full moon accented by the song of a pack of coyotes that hikers from the
previous night in this shelter had told me about. They said they could hardly sleep for the sounds of howling coyotes!
I was looking forward to the experience but as it turned out there wasn't a single sound from the song dogs Thursday evening.
Instead, there were bears.
Four or more bears dogged the shelter Thursday night and Friday morning.
Four or more bears dogged the shelter Thursday night and Friday morning. They were there all night.
I know because I kept getting up to chase them away! The first bear to arrive came strolling down Eagle Creek trail
just as it began to get seriously dark outside. My shelter-mates were joking about a bear someone had told them about
which supposedly had in this shelter taken and played with a hat belonging to another person they'd met at Derrick Knob
shelter the night before. It was just after this tall tale that bear #1 arrived. I said "speaking of bears, here
comes one now" and they all thought I was joking but soon we were all on our feet as I went out to chase away the furry intruder.
This bear looked to be male (no cubs in tow) and weighed maybe 200 lbs--bigger than average for a bear in the Smokies.
Over the course of the night this bear (or one just like it) would visit our shelter three or four more times with one visit
at 1 am resulting in him chewing on someone's (not mine!) cookware before I could get up and chase him out of the shelter.
After the 1 am encounter the bear trucked down to the composting pit toilet where he was heard banging around on what turned
out to be the 5 gallon bucket of wood chips stored inside the toilet for use as composting supplement; all the while this
bear kept up a steady chorus of growling, moaning and whining. Bears #2, 3, 4 & 5 all arrived together: A
mom with three cubs. It was 3 am and I'd just dozed-off after bear #1 gave up on destroying the pit toilet. The
racket outside sounded suspiciously close to the area where we'd hung our packs on the "bear-proof" cable system. I
got out of my sleeping bag and went outside with my light to find a moma bear with three cubs in a tree that had limbs precariously
close to overhanging our suspended packs. My guess was that she intended to drop onto one of the food storage bags from
an overhanging limb. My light and camera flash apparently changed her mind and she came scrambling down the tree with
the three cubs close behind. Bear #1 (or his near twin) continued to visit the shelter throughout the night and was
still hanging around at 7 am Friday when I retrieved my food while preparing to cook breakfast.
Somehow those semi-rookie hikers slept thru most of the racket and one of them even went down to use the
composting pit toilet right around 2 am--just a few minutes after the last sounds of the toilet-wrecker had ceased.
Ignorance is bliss. As for me, I didn't have the urge to visit that toilet or any other for the rest of my four day
hike! One might say I was scared "sheitless" by the experience.
