Big Bald and Big Bear: Day 30

Tigger had offered the night before to slack pack us 9 miles ahead from where he had parked his car. We happily accepted and were looking forward to getting in some extra miles. For those of you who don’t know, slack packing was when somebody took your pack and drove it to another location further up the trail. You then hiked with water and snacks for a couple hours depending on how long you were planning to go. Without the weight of a 35lb pack on your back you felt as if you could run up the mountains. Kyle spun through the fields like Maria in The Sound of Music. “I feel so free!” were his exact words. We hiked our 9 miles and were a bit more tired than expected. When we got to the gap, Tigger threw a bag of McDonald’s cheeseburgers out the window. “On the house! Glad to see hikers still out here.” Tigger was our knight in shining armor. We still had about 10 miles to go and today we were going to be hitting Big Bald. Big Bald was the first of the many grassy 360 degree views we were going to see. This climb was supposed to be pretty tough and our pace began to slow down quickly. There was a shelter 1.5 miles past Big Bald and we had plans to hike to Big Bald, eat dinner, watch the sunset, and night hike the last mile. Within the first mile of the climb, we had completely lost Kyle. Danny then received a text that read. “Really tired had to take a nap. I’ll get to camp when I get there see you at the shelter” happy to say Kyle actually caught up before we even hit Big Bald. The last .5 to Big Bald was a rock mine field that seemed to never end. I kept looking up just to see more and more rocks. When I finally broke the tree line I had a gorgeous view of the surrounding hills. Completely worth the climb. This had to be the best view yet that we had gotten. The grassy hilltop was completely exposed and the sun was beginning to set. The sky turned cotton candy colors as the sun departed from the sky. I wished we could set up camp here, but the wind would have been a bit strong and probably not the most enjoyable. We slung our packs and proceeded down the hill after our most beautiful dinner spot yet. What was nice about eating dinner on Big Bald was that we only needed to pitch our tents and hang our bear bags on the very useful bear cables. We climbed into our tents and began to fall asleep when we heard thuds from outside. “Do you guys hear that?” Kory asked. “Yup” Dan replied. “Bear?” I asked. The thuds continued. It sounded like a bear was getting up on two legs trying to get the bear bag and then thudding to the ground. Kory then began the screaming to scare away the bear. I had never heard him yell that loud and I was very impressed. We all chimed in screaming at the top of our lungs. The bear went running off into the woods and we didn’t hear him return the rest of the night. It took a while for me to fall asleep after that but eventually my heart rate slowed and I was able to drift off.