Day 19

Happy Easter Everyone.  I miss you all and hope your Easter is great. 

Back to white blazing and so long to our hosts Steve and Maggie.  The Nantahala Mountain Lodge was awesome.

We also had to say goodbye to Belinda aka Lady in Waiting and Will aka Dilly Dally as they head back to the trail but at a spot a few days behind us.  Nice people from Illinois. It doesn’t appear that they will catch up to us but you never know.

Steve shuttled us to Fontana Dam to start the next leg of our journey.  Morning skies are partly cloudy and no rain is forecast for the next several days.  Hope that’s accurate.

Fontana Dam is a hydroelectric Dam built by the Tennessee Valley Authority and is on the Little Tennessee River.  It is the tallest dam in the Eastern United States.  This is what it looks like from the dam:

We walked across the dam and from there we jumped into the Smokys. 

It’s just past the Dam where we officially enter the Smoky Mountains.  I’m squatting a little to not block the sign.😂

Temperatures jumped around all day.  When the sun was out and we were at lower elevations it was warm.  As we got higher it cooled down and  got a little windy so more layers were required to stay warm.  By mid morning we looked back to see the Dam from where we started this morning but we have much further to go before we reach today’s destination at Mollies Shelter.

We were at an elevation of 1,700 feet at the dam.  We climbed up to Mollies Shelter at 4,600 hundred feet and are camping there.  Total hiking miles were around 12 but it was all up hill.  The trail had a lot of hikers as many had holed up near Fontana to let the storm pass and all jumped back on the trail now that the weather is better.

You need a permit to thru hike the Smokys.  20 dollars gets you 8 days to hike this park.  You leave half of the permit at a box when you enter the park and carry the other half before depositing it in a box as you exit.  Good thing we had ours as Ranger Hal was checking permits about four miles in.

Along the way we came upon a big fire tower at the top of Shuckstack peak but we decided not to spend the energy to climb all the way up.

We got a pretty good view from the first landing.


At least one hiker reported a siting of bears not too far away from our camp site.  We have not seen any.  There is also a warning of bear activity in the area.  

The Smokys require all food bags to be hung on bear hangs so I did my first bear hang today.  Prior to this I have been just securing my Ursack to trees but not hanging it.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful day and we have targeted Derrick Knob Shelter as our next stop.  It will be another 12 mile day but not as much climbing.

Legs and feet are tired but doing reasonably well.

Time for bed as it’s hiker midnight ( 8pm) and I’m tired.  💤