McAfee Knob backpack, 5/31/14--6/1/14

I've decided that "Knob" means "Don't climb this!" in Algonquian. Or something like that.

McAfee Knob has been on Dave's must-hike list for the past year. We've been planning on doing it for several months but something kept coming up. We finally scheduled it for the last weekend in May. When the time came, Dave almost pushed it back again ("We should go pick out our new living room recliners this weekend.") but I insisted. I knew it was only going to get hotter, and I was afraid at the rate we were going we'd never get there.

I should have test driven recliners instead.

By the time we arrived in the parking area, near Roanoke, it was already about 11:30 in the morning. It was hot-ish (76) and very  muggy. As soon as I opened the trunk to pull out our hiking sticks I knew we were in trouble. No sticks. We'd left them in the truck or the other car or somewhere. If only we'd checked instead of assuming (we all know about assuming, right?). If only we'd put the packs in the trunk instead of the back seat. So we started a 4.4 mile hike--or is it 3.9? the signs and hiking sites disagree, and our GPS wouldn't work right, so we'll never know--without our hiking sticks. Auspicious start, no?

All smiles....for now!

We picked up some sticks as we climbed the initial ascent to the information kiosk. If ever there was a hike that was uphill both ways, this was it. The whole first 2.3 miles seemed to be allllllll up hill to me, and the 30 pounds on my back was absolutely killing me. I kept stopping to catch my breath. Teenagers bopped past like mountain goats. Septuagenarians bounded past, also like mountain goats. I labored slowly up the mountain, whining the whole way.

 

Wildlife bingo instant winner--poisonous snake. It was tiny--this is zoomed in. I "eeked" but didn't scream.

There are lots of these walkways. This spot would've been pretty  much impassable without one.

  

 

 

Somehow I pulled it together and managed to get to Johns Spring shelter. It took us a ridiculous amount of time to make that first mile.

We stopped and ate a bit of our lunch and got our breath back. As we started to leave, some other overnighters came in and asked us if we'd found water there. No, there was no apparent water source. They told us that there was no water at Catawba Mountain shelter, which was our destination for the night, and that we'd have to go to Pig Farm to get any. Yikes! Pig Farm is 6/10 mile down the other side of the summit, which, more importantly, means 6/10 of a mile BACK UP that we weren't planning on doing. Considering how badly I was doing at this point, this did not seem to be a good option.

I continued to struggle on the next section, the 1.4 miles to Catawba. At one point I broke into tears, both physically exhausted and emotionally bereft. I felt awful because I knew I was going to have to quit, and deprive Dave of the summit he'd been dreaming about. I was also very concerned about the water situation. We bounced options back and forth, and didn't like any of them. When we finally reached the spring right before Catawba, it was a sorry sight--a completely dry pipe. Argh. Somehow I was praying that those guys were wrong, or lying, or something. About twenty feet later we reached the second part of the spring...and discovered there was a trickle coming down the rock. There was a leaf there that had water dripping off it.

I was able to Bear Grylls a little rock dam to keep the water from settling into a pool, and add a couple of leaves just..so...and we had a tiny stream of constant water. Score! We used the smaller blue bottles to collect the water, then ran it through the prefilter into the big bottle and sterilized it with the Steri pen. I was collection and Dave was sterilization. Team work rules! It was nice to get a breather. We actually were able to even sit down for a few minutes.

 Once we had our dirty, muddy tasting water collected, we went up yet another up section and saw the shelter. Just beyond were some "campsites", if you could call them that. None of them were big enough for our tent, and all of them were on substantial grades. We picked the best of the worst and set up the new tent, then dumped all our gear except for water and camera for the final 1.6 miles to the top.

The last section is pretty much straight uphill. I don't think we had any downhill parts at all. It reminded me a lot of the grade we hiked at Molly's Knob (there's that knob thing again.) The funny thing was that this part was easier for me than the first section. Not "easy" by any means, but easier. Dropping the weight from my pack made all the difference. Dave, on the other hand, was dying. He had no trouble at all on the first 2.3 miles, but he was struggling now. He even asked me to stop and rest once. Wow!

There were some very cool rocks near the top.

 

 

 

Eventually I said "I see the overlook sign!" and behind me I heard Dave breathe out "YES." We eagerly turned off onto the spur trail and suddenly, there it was before us...the iconic McAfee Knob

rock. Wow!

 

 

There was a guy sitting on the overlook rock talking on his cell phone. I kid you not. After 3.9 miles of hell, we had to wait for the guy to realize there were other people there wanting to enjoy, ya know, the view of a lifetime. He finally moved and we began taking pictures of each other. Then we took turns with some other folks who arrived.

The view is simply impossible to capture with a camera.

Once we'd finished with our photo ops, it was back down the mountain to our campsite. I was feeling much better at this point. Although it was straight downhill, it wasn't too bad on the knees because there good sections of no rocks or steps. My only problem was that in an effort to dump as much weight as I could, I'd switched out my Merrills for my Ariat slip ons. These weigh much less but aren't as comfortable for the trail, and most importantly, they fit sloppily and have zero ankle support. I rolled my ankles three times, and the last time it was significant enough that my knees went out from under me and I went down, hard. I tweaked my "good" knee pretty hard as I fell. Fortunately, the knee brace on my right knee protected it from too much torque. I sat there on the ground for a minute with my legs stretched out and had my second cry of the day. It hurt as I went down but I was grateful that there didn't seem to be any actual damage. I was able to get up and keep walking.

Dave, on the other hand, was not doing so well. He wasn't having any trouble hiking down, either, but the climb up had wiped him out pretty effectively. He was really overheated and feeling nauseated. When we reached camp, I mixed up a sports drink and split it with him. He refilled his bottle with Crystal Light and drank that while he was shaking the plastic bag of banana pudding. I fixed chicken salad from pouches of chicken, pecans, raisins, and dried apple. I didn't realize how bad off he was--he's not the world's greatest communicator, I'm afraid--until he upchucked all of the delicious dinner I'd fixed. Thankfully, he felt better almost immediately. Poor guy!

Since we were now short of water again, I went back to the spring and put my leaf funnel back into effect. I collected another 32 ounces of water and treated it. Then it was back to camp to hang the bear bag in the near dark. By the time I collapsed onto my very sloped sleeping bag, I was so hot, sweaty, and sticky that I couldn't bear to put on my cotton long sleeved sleep shirt. I laid there half dressed for a good hour until I cooled off. We even pulled the rain fly completely off the tent to get some air circulation. Thankfully the night was clear and there was no rain!

Eventually we both put on suitable clothing for sleeping, and we even crawled into our sleeping bags during the night when it cooled off a bit. I didn't sleep well at all, though. I was in significant pain from my knees and back, and I got some serious charley horses as the night wore on. Even worse was the slope. Every half hour or so I had to squiggle myself and my slippery sleeping bag back uphill.

When the sun came up and we finally crawled out of the tent, we decided we weren't even going to bother with making coffee. Dave ate his granola but I couldn't even eat. The water from the spring was so muddy tasting that everything was "off" and I couldn't handle any more of it. We packed up our gear and headed out.

I was surprised at how many darn UPHILL sections there were on the 2.3 back out. I swear, it was ALL uphill on the way in! How was it uphill both ways?! Oh, it's that pack again. Even walking on the flat is hard for me when I'm carrying a full pack. But seriously, there was a lot more up and down than I remembered. It wasn't all an easy descent as I'd thought.

another entry on my wildlife bingo card.

It took us about an hour and a half to get back down to the parking area. I was never so glad to see my purple car as I was that day! As we packed up to go we saw a thru hiker looking for a ride. He was wanting to get to The Home Place and so were we! We blew off our original plan of driving to Claytor Lake to use the showers there and just went as we were.

The Home Place is a gorgeous old farm that's been converted into a family style, all you can eat restaurant.

I was so, so, so gross and I apologized to the waitress, who just smiled and said "We get thru hikers in here every day. You're just fine."  The food was a cross between "ok" (instant potatoes" and "fabulous" (fried chicken) but it was full of flavor and all you can eat. I had both a glass of ice water and a Pepsi, and we had seconds on everything including peach cobbler.

The funniest thing to me was going into the bathroom. I stared at the sink for a minute marveling at the ease of turning hot or cold water on with just a turn of a knob. It's amazing to me how fast those things become important when you're stuck on the side of a mountain with no water source.

All in all, it was a brutal 24 hours but we got some amazing pictures and we learned a lot about ourselves and about backpacking. I think (hope?!) we're done backpacking until the fall when there's cooler weather.