McAfee Hikes

Date Written: 11/06/2024 | AT Mile 1605.3 | Day Total: 11.9 miles | Gain: 2533 ft

Woke up just as it began to get light outside. The rain/mist stopped late last night and I’m happy to say the cockroaches didn’t bother me last night.

I made some breakfast and packed up. I’ll heading into Bland today for two nights.

I started the day with a 500ft climb. As I curved around a valley the sun poked over the opposing valley giving a beautiful shine as I hiked up.

Soon after I was on the ridge I heard a loud hoofing sound. I looked up and saw a group of deer in the woods nearby. To my surprise there was albino mix buck! I later looked it up and it’s called a Piebald Deer.

The ridge is really bumpy and I’m nearly on it for the rest of the day. Lots of little ups and downs. Theres also a lot of blowdowns in this area that haven’t been cleared yet. I was able to get around most of them but a few were a bit more difficult.

I continue to see patches of Laurel. They are really cool sections and stand out because they are now the only large green plant as all of the others have lost their leaves.

As I hiked down from the ridge towards the road into town there was a massive rootball that had removed a few feet of the trail. It’s incredible how much mass a tree and lift up.

I eventually made it to the beginning of the road walk that goes over interstate 77. There’s a small parking area and a garbage can for hiker here.

I walked up along the road for a half mile before I walked over the interstate. As I continued down the road there were marvelous views of the valley below.

I got to the road into Bland around 12 and after some attempts at getting a ride I decided to walk the 3 miles into town. The roads got hardly any traffic making for an easy walk but a difficult hitch. About 1.5 miles into my road walk a car pulled over and asked if I needed a ride. There were 3 2024 nobo thru hikers in the truck going to Erwin. They dropped me off at the local grocery store two minutes down the road and I said my thanks.

I did my resupply while I was in town and walked over to Big Walker Motel to reserve my room.

The rest of the day I did lots of random tasks including drying gear and washing my backpack. I picked up a meatball sub from the subway down the street and enjoyed it with my half gallon of chocolate milk.

As I began to journal this evening and I got a notification for an update to new iCloud terms and conditions. I agreed and went back to continue journaling only to find today journal had disappeared… after further investigation it appears that the past 8 days of my journals have all magically disappeared as well… I reset my phone looked stuff up and tried a few things. It seems like because the journals for the past 8 days haven’t uploaded to icloud they were deleted when I agreed to the new terms and conditions… I’m not very happy