{"id":62,"date":"2009-04-01T23:24:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T03:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/?p=62"},"modified":"2010-05-17T07:30:27","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T11:30:27","slug":"noc-to-brown-fork-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/01\/noc-to-brown-fork-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"NOC to Brown Fork Gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wednesday, 4\/1<\/p>\n

AT Miles = 16.0 \/ 151
Other Miles = 0.1 \/ 13.1
Total Miles = 16.1 \/ 164.1<\/p>\n

I had a good night at the NOC last night. After hanging around in the common room of the hostel for a couple of hours chatting with other hikers, I headed back to my bunk to sleep figuring I would be woken up when the heavy drinkers came to bed later in the night, but apparently I slept through their entrance as the next thing I knew it was morning.<\/p>\n

It rained all night and was still raining when I walked back across the river to the restaurant for breakfast at 8:00am. When I left the restaurant and started hiking about 8i:50 the rain was tapering off but was still heavy enough that I hiked in my rain gear.<\/p>\n

It took a few minutes of exploring to figure out where the trail left the NOC parking lot, but I finally found the place where it crossed the railroad tracks and headed up the hill. <\/p>\n

It was a tough day. I only covered 16 miles but this 16 miles included a LOT of steep climbing. The first 6 miles were all uphill and the next 10 miles were a constant up and down. At the beginning of the day I figured I would be done by 4:00, but in actuality I didn't arrive here until after 5:00, totally spent.<\/p>\n

The first half of the day was rainy or overcast, and I hiked in the heavy fog I have become so used to, but about 1:00pm the sun finally burned through and the rest of the day felt more like summer than early spring. Right now it is just gorgeous out, except for a few annoying gnats. It will be dark in an hour and I still have to go through the frustrating ritual of hanging my food bag.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow should be a relatively easy 12 miles into Fontana Dam. I should be able to get there in early afternoon and have plenty of time to get a ride into town and collect all my packages, then retreat to a motel room where I can sort through my food and gear and figure out what I need for the next leg in the Smokies. Whatever I don't need I'll bounce* further up the trail. I still haven't decided whether I will zero in Fontana or head back out on Friday.<\/p>\n

* Jargon Alert:
There is a subculture around hiking the Appalachian Trail, and like any subculture it has its own lingo; a handy way to tell the insiders from the outsiders. Here's a short primer in case I slip some trail lingo into my posts:<\/p>\n

– Thru-hiker: Someone who hikes the entire trail in one year<\/p>\n

– Section Hiker: Someone who hikes the trail in multiple shorter chunks, often over many years<\/p>\n

– NOBO: Northbounder (like me), someone who hikes the trail from south to north<\/p>\n

– SOBO: Southbounder<\/p>\n

– GAME: GA to ME; same as NOBO<\/p>\n

– MEGA: ME to GA; same as SOBO<\/p>\n

– Zero or Zero Day: A day in which you hike zero miles; a day off. Can be a noun or a verb. "I will take a zero on Friday" or "I will zero on Friday."<\/p>\n

– Bounce box: A box used to mail things you don;'t need right now to a town further up the trail. I have a bounce box waiting for me in Fontana Dam that has some of my warmer clothes in it, as well as the charger for my camera battery. I mailed it from Hiawassee because I knew I wouldn't need those things for this part of the hike.<\/p>\n

Allen Freeman
allen@allenf.com<\/a>
www.allenf.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, 4\/1 AT Miles = 16.0 \/ 151Other Miles = 0.1 \/ 13.1Total Miles = 16.1 \/ 164.1 I had a good night at the NOC last night. After hanging around in the common room of the hostel for a couple of hours chatting with other hikers, I headed back to my bunk to sleep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at_thru_hike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":484,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}