Tales of Stratton Bald

The best beer I ever had came my way about three-quarters of the way up the 10-mile trail leading to the top of Stratton Bald one hot summer day when I was hauling a backpack up that beautiful, but long and uphill trail. 

The occasion was an overnight backpack that I was leading for the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club.  We were all seasoned hikers, as few novices attempt this trail, and had strung ourselves out over a good distance as we sweated bullets at our own pace in the sweltering heat.  I was with a small but lucky group who happened upon a few  bear hunters out scouting for the upcoming season. These burly mountain boys had backpacks, too, but theirs were filled with cold beer and ice, which they offered to share.  Oh my!  No beer, and possibly not anything else ever, period, has tasted so good.  I made myself save a few swallows for Bill, my co-leader, who I knew wasn't too far behind me.

When I stop to think about it, I've had more than a few fine moments on or about Stratton Bald, which lies in the Joyce Kilmer/Slickrock Wilderness of North Carolina, reaches an elevation of about 5400'.  I can specifically remember four separate backpacking trips, and there may have been more.  All I remember about the above trip was that cold, cold beer on the sweltering hot day.

The trail skirts groves of some of the largest virgin yellow poplar you'll ever see, deep in the heart of the Joyce Kilmer Wilderness far from the beaten tourist path.  It goes up, and  up, and up, but the reward is a large round-top mountain with meadows for camping, a trickle of water, expansive views. It was my favorite trail in my favorite place, and I've spent many hours backpacking every trail in this wilderness, most of them more than once. Those are all tales for another day. Today, my mind is on Stratton Bald.

I am not a cold weather backpacker, but sometimes Mother Nature offers up surprises.  On another occasion when Bill was along, the weather turned on us by the time we got to the top:  cold, windy and wet.  Our group was a small one, but all veteran hikers who had tarps and ropes and knew how to use them.  An intrepid group of men literally built us a room, complete with ceiling, large enough for all of us to crowd together around a campfire to prepare and eat our evening meals, then sit around simply enjoying the close camaraderie for a good long while into the night.  Lots of laughter rang from our warm spot into the cold wetness outside on that evening I'll never forget.

By morning, the top of the mountain was covered with snow, although I didn't know that until Bill walked up to my tent and hollered at me, to see if I was awake.  Thanks to a small vestibule in my tent that was perfect for using my little camp stove without getting into the elements, I was snuggled in my warm sleeping bag while water boiled for coffee and hot oatmeal and thawed the zipper that had frozen in place.  Our group quickly ate and packed up our gear and headed on down the trail over crunchy virgin snow that faded away as we walked down into warmer climes.

On yet another trip we had a maximum size group (the number of participants on club hikes is always limited in wilderness areas to lessen impact on the trail) and found a surprise awaiting us on top.  Charlie, one of our newer members, had been unable to get on the hike so walked in by himself on a different trail. As usual, we had our tents spread around the top of the mountain meadow according to our individual preferences, but gathered around a central spot for preparing our evening meal and group conversation.

After dinner I saw Charlie sitting alone just inside his tiny, one-person tent.  I stopped to visit and he moved over a bit so I could join him inside the doorway, out of the wind that had developed a cold bite. Soon enough more and more people stopped by to chat, and each time Charlie and I moved back a bit to give them room to sit inside. Remember, this was a tiny tent with just enough space for one person to stretch out comfortably. The front was high enough to sit up, but then the tent tapered so that the other end was just roomy enough for feet.

Every newcomer brought more laughter as we squeezed into the tiny, but warm, space.  All the laughter brought more people over to see what was happening and, eventually, we had everyone inside that tent, telling our individual repertoires of jokes and living our own joke in the moment.  Charlie and I ended up pushed against the smallest end of the tent, pressed against the nylon and half lying down, with other bodies piled up against us, tangled with our feet and legs.  Another unforgettable evening on Stratton Bald.

This is clearly not Stratton Bald!  Sadly, no photos remain of my trips to that spot.  This was my first backpack into this area, deep in the heart of the valley alongside upper Slickrock Creek.

Stratton Bald is at the high end of what is basically a rim bowl surrounding the waters of Slickrock Creek, which tumbles down its side and through thick vegetation before emptying into a distant lake.  I'd always wanted to backpack the entire rim trail so one summer I talked my friends Darlene and Duff into taking a few days off work and making that happen. Again, that is a story for another day, but when our route brought us to Stratton Bald we found the entire meadow covered with waist-high wild Sweet William, a riot of purple-pink blossoms that we forged through in wonderment. Absolutely beautiful and a one-time sight for me as I'd never been there at just the perfect, fleeting season for these flowers.

When I moved from Georgia in 1996, back to the west coast, I asked a couple of dear friends to join me in a downhill dayhike so I could say goodbye to this trail that I loved so much.  It's possible to drive almost to the top (hence the ice-cold beer in the hunter's backpack), and this is what we did.  We'd driven up the night before, slept in a cheap hotel so we could get an early start that April day.  We left John's truck at the bottom of the trail, then crowded into mine for the shuttle to the top.  Since I was planning a drive across country in less than a week, I had my cat with me so she'd grow accustomed to travel.  As we walked down the mountain the weather changed for the worse, grew rainy and cold and, although we didn't know it until later, tornadoes were in the area.

We hustled out fairly quickly to find red clay roads turned to mud and some sort of official roadblock at the base of the road leading back to my truck and my poor cat.  They were letting residents through and would have let us through, but John wasn't willing to try and take his truck up the road, saying he wouldn't make it.  Nothing I could say changed his mind.  I promised that my truck, similar in size and engine to his, would have made it, but he wouldn't budge.  "Okay", I said. "You guys go on back to town, I'm going to walk up and get my cat and I'll meet you later."  Duff, ever the gentleman, wouldn't let me go alone so together we started out up that long road to the top, in the mud.  I don't know how far we hiked before eventually one of the residents of the area with four-wheel-drive stopped and gave us a lift to the top.

As always, Stratton Bald threw me an unexpected punch as I said goodbye, but it was still a damned fine hike!