When a trip starts off with blue lights, things could get interesting…

Friday:

Jenn called to tell me that she unfortunately would not be able to join us on the trip.  She was sick.  Huge bummer!  She told me that she still wanted me to go and have fun, so I decided to stay with her Friday night and head up with Althea on Saturday morning.

Saturday:

I left the house about 10 til 5:00, about 5 minutes late.  I was to meet Andrew (who was driving Karen, Chad and Stephanie) at some point on I-485.  I called him to let him know that I was a little behind, and after a little chastising from Andrew, he told me he would stop along the shoulder of the exit for Tryon and I would flash my light when I saw him.  Well, the boys in blue beat me to him.  When I arrived, there were blue lights ablaze, so of course, I did not stop and let Andrew deal with that.  I got off onto Tryon and figured once Andrew got out of jail, he would give me a call.  Just kidding no jail time, but they were most interested why someone was stopped on the shoulder at 5 AM on Saturday.

After the excitement, we headed on.

We decided to stop at Waffle House along the way, of course.

We arrived at Mount Mitchell State Park parking lot about 30 minutes late of schedule, but not too bad.  We decided to summit Mount Mitchell first since the clouds were all low in the valley and there was a good view.  Also, there were very few people on the summit at this early hour.  1 down, 8 to go.

Next, we headed south to summit Mount Hallback.  This consisted of a bushwhack through relatively thick forest up a fairly steep hill about a 1/4 mile off of the trail.  There happened to be a sign (albeit a little loosely anchored) to mark the summit.  2 down, 7 to go.

After we returned to the trail, we continued on where we hiked past the first gate to the park, a few miles from the summit of Mount Mitchell.  We could tell at this time that the park we getting very busy as the weather was still nice on a Saturday of a holiday weekend.  Several motorcyclists were riding on the scenic roadway.

From there we hiked up a long gravel roadway that led us near to the summit of Mount Gibbes.  This was a slight bushwhack that took us near some very creepy buildings (some abandoned) that apparently were used at times by NC State University.  We found the summit that was not marked, but we are certain we were there.  Snapped some pictures and headed back to the parking area.  3 down, 6 to go.

Along this stretch, Karen, Andrew’s wife, let us know that her knees had been bothering her a good bit all day.  The terrain we were covering is very technical, especially for someone that has had a couple of surgeries and zero cartilage in one knee.  By the time we got back to the cars, we all needed a break.

We ate lunch and rested up before packing our overnight packs to head in the opposite direction towards Deep Gap for the night.  We got about 1/2 mile in and Karen was not doing well.  We could all tell she was in a lot of pain and we decided it would be wise to turn around before it got worse.  The last thing anyone wants is for someone to be 4.5 miles into the back country unable to walk.

We headed back to the cars and decided to still camp in the area so we set out to find a place.

All of the campgrounds we came to were full.  Apparently we weren’t the only people who decided to go camping in the area for the long weekend.  We finally came to a trail head where, after hiking along the trail for about a 1/4 mile, we found a decent place to make camp.  We headed to the cars, packed what we needed for the night and returned to set up.

We got a fire going and made dinner and told stories for a while before turning in.

The next morning we took it easy for a while before breaking camp.  Little else happened, but we did stop to eat at Sonic (since Zaxby’s wasn’t open yet) before heading for home.

All in all a great trip, but we will be back for the remaining 6 peaks!  Get well soon Karen!

P.S. The special places ended up being in restrooms, so nothing to note on that here.