4/18: Indian Grave Gap to Iron Mountain Gap

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• Miles 352.5-363.6 (10.9 mi.)
• Total ascent: 3737’; descent 3143’

In my Boy Scount troop, we occasionally did a Round Robin activity around called Rose and Thorn. Each of us sitting around the campfire would share a peak and a trough of the day, often rousing debate about just how fun or how miserable something was.

My “rose” today was not Beauty Spot, which wasn’t nearly as impressive in size or in view as Max Patch, but the subalpine forest enclosing Beauty Spot. As if a switch had flipped, oak and hickory and locust became pine and spruce and club moss. What a throwback to the higher areas of GSMNP that mile and a half was for us.

My “thorn” literally poked me throughout the day: my ingrown big toenail. I’ve trimmed it straight across and attempted to cut the curl of the nail digging into my toe. I’m hopeful that it will callus over, like my heels and toes themselves have.

We also noticed, as we discussed with one (Tracker, he called himself) of the two or three people we saw today that the bubble seems to have dissipated. Our theory is that people have been trickling out of Erwin, rather than stopping and then stampeding, as they did during and after the bad weather in Hot Springs and Gatlinburg. 

I’d also like to report on our dietary experiments: the bullion cubes have made dinner more satisfying, and seem to help us recover better in the evenings. We aren’t sure whether we’ll continue to make breakfast oatmeal, which is difficult to justify when compared to no-prep, high-calorie Pop Tarts. We cold-soaked it, which may have caused its runny consistency; tomorrow, we’ll boil water to pour into a bag I prepared — with golden milk and dried currants — and mash it as we do our dinner. We think the vitamin-enriched electrolyte packets, despite tasting like those Flintstone vita-gummies, are worth the extra quarter.

We’ve also been harvesting dinner supplements from the forest. Wild ramps are like sweeter, larger green onions and go wonderfully in cheese grits. We’re interested in trying dandelion greens on a future evening.

On a non-food note, we can absolutely tell our packs are lighter after we sent home our crampons. My $6 Walmart shirt does, I discovered today, get smelly, but it’s cut like it’s tailored to me.

We continue tomorrow our multi-day ascent of Roan Mountain, which marks the beginning of the Roan Highlands. We hear freezing, windy weather is ahead, but also speculation that it may be the cold’s last stand we reach until New Hampshire. Our hopes are high, though our expectations not, that the optimists are right.