In the old days we called this a Team Extreme event. AJ and John Dempsey had originally planned to go up there. So I invited Richard and Wildcat. Then Brian came along.
it rained about 2 inches on Thursday. Friday morning promised to cool off and we ascended in the sleet.
Didn’t take long to reach the snow line right before the bald.
And soon we found AJ and Jon shivering in the high winds.
Richard and Bert were wise enough to drop off the other side of the hill to get out of the egregious wind. I’m thinking the wind chill made it down around zero given the fact that the ambient air temperature was probably 19 or 20.
Fires are important in this kind of weather and we did not have great ones. Not that we didn’t have a champion crew of fireman up there. It’s just that the wood was absolutely saturated.
This was my tent the following morning after a night of shivering for some. I was in my minus 40 so things were okay with me. However my toe monitor told me that it was well into the low digits. Hoar frost moved in and coated the trees so beautifully.
I had an unusual animal sighting. A black skunk creature walked below me on the freezing ground. It looked like a skunk but with a bushy and shorter tail. Then I noticed it has spots instead of stripes. Bert and I figured it to be a spotted skunk, which appears quite different from a usual skunk. It walked right by Bert’s tent.
Bob Stratton was killed by raiders during the civil war when he left the Bob and headed down towards Coker Creek. There’s a lot of good history for this area. You just have to look around to find it.
with all this snow and icy weather, you might enjoy my recent contribution for City View magazine.