Warm-up day 3: Big Spring to Carter Gap, plus Timber Ridge Trail

The forecast for last night was very cold: temps down well below freezing. I decided to forego hammocking tonight and try out my plan for very cold weather: I slept inside the shelter directly on my foam pad, with both my down quilts over top. (When I'm in the hammock, I've got one quilt over me and one under.) It worked well, except for the fact that I had only 1 cm of foam padding in between me and a wooden floor. But I was plenty warm, at least, and I was able to take some of my things (boots, water bottle) under the quilts with me to prevent freezing.

The day ended up being really nice, though. The sun came out and temps shot up into the 50s. With the sun out, the trees of the Standing Indian Basin looked very different. Still bare and cold, but now with a kind of spare beauty; like a brand-new house for sale, without the furniture, the floors vacuumed, the walls painted white, the heat turned off and sunshine shooting through the windows.

The exception was the rhododendron. The trail would frequently run under and through thick green tunnels of rhododendrons, and when you were inside you could think for a moment it was summer. They're really an amazing plant, when you think about it. You look at a spruce or a pine, and it just makes sense that they stay green all winter long; they're big tough-guy trees. But rhodos are evergreen, too, and not with measly little needles either. They've got these big, floppy, beagle-ear leaves that stay on all winter long. They actually are kind of doglike, if that makes any sense: hardy, loyal, humble, dependable. They even produce flowers for you in spring. A botanical overachiever.

The first thing I come across this morning was Albert Mountain. Stupidly, I did not get photos of the view, but thankfully other people have (Image search). The first time I came up to this area, a year ago, I hiked this same section of the AT northbound; Albert Mountain is the reason I'm doing it southbound this time. Going north, there's a stretch about where the trail rises 400 feet in about two-tenths of a mile. I opted to take that downhill this time, thanks just the same.

By midafternoon I reached Carter Gap, and had to turn off the AT. As noted before, I was behind schedule, and if I kept to my original plan to hike all the way to Deep Gap before turning off the AT, I would not get back to the car before Monday. Given that my folks were expecting me in Durham on Sunday, given that I had surgery scheduled in Orlando on Wednesday, and given that I did want to catch at least part of the Super Bowl, I needed to start heading back.

I had hoped to cover this whole loop, so that when I come back through here in April I could just skip it as having already been done in the same hiking season. Alas, I'll guess I'll have to cover that when I return.

I walk down the Timber Ridge trail into the valley, and camp near a Forest Service road next to a creek.