Rufus Morgan | athikedotcom

Day three found the Scouts packing quickly so they had time to stop at the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) and get some junk food. I had promised Jay a pint of ice cream at the NOC during our drive to the trail head so he was pretty excited. We had a quick walk down the hill to the NOC.
Jay got his pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. He ate it in under 15 minutes. I bought a Gatorade for lunch and a Tilley Hat. I’d tried to find the hat before our hike but couldn’t find my size at the store. After a nice break we began the longest climb of the hike. The rest of the day was a long hard climb out of the valley. The climb seemed like it would never end. Every time we thought we were coming to the top we would crest the rise and there was another rise to climb. Not only that it was really hot and it really made the day drag on.
Remember that Gatorade I bought at the bottom of the hill. I was really glad I had it about lunch time when we were running low on water.
We did eventually climb the mountain and make our way to Sassafras Gap. The other Boy Scout troop beat us to the shelter so it was a tent night for everyone. There weren’t a lot of good tent sites at Sassafras and we ended up sleeping at an angle.
We were over hump day.

Our second day started out chilly and windy. Wake up time was 7 AM and the boys were moving a little slow. They reported that they were visited by some mice during the night in the shelter. We got the boys lined up on the ridge for the morning photo and a cautionary tale about 3 bears one the area that a ranger had told Steve, one of the other Scoutmasters with us, about. It was a beautiful sunrise up on the ridge and we could see clouds down in the valleys.
It was a good day of hiking. We made Wesser Bald right around lunch time and had our lunch at the base of the fire tower and then climbed the tower to enjoy the view.
After Wesser we had a long downhill into the Nantahala river basin. I do not enjoy going downhill as it is much rougher on my knees and seems to have a longer effect on my body. I much prefer going uphill.
We finally arrived at the Rufus Morgan Shelter to find the shelter empty so the boys quickly occupied it. Jay and I set up our tent as he had decided the shelter had been too crowded the night before. We went to make dinner and couldn’t find the meal we had packed. We had it at lunch and figured we must have left it at the top of Wesser Bald when we had lunch. Fortunately we were carrying an extra dinner so we ate it. The bigger loss was our package of Mountain Home Blueberry Cheesecake. We had two and had planned to have one them tonight. We had the Blueberry Cheesecake we were supposed to have Tuesday night.
About this time another Boy Scout Troop and Venturer Crew came hiking into camp. They were from Michigan and doing a prep hike for their trip to Philmont this summer.
When we crawled into the tent Jay decided it was too hot in the tent and grabbed his sleeping bag, mat, and pillow and headed to the shelter.