Oats on the Pinhoti: Days 14 and 15

Note: This article was originally published on The Trek and can be found at the link here. Oats’ packing list for the Pinhoti Trail can be found on Build A Pack at the link here.

Day 14, Friday

My necklaces are a map of the Pinhoti Trail bead-by-bead, and the nordic rune Raidho a friend made for me before I began my first long trail in 2019.

The morning began like any other on trail. I was woken by the light of the sun starting to illuminate my bright white tent, and my dire need to pee. On the Appalachian Trail, when the nights plummeted below freezing, I would often dehydrate intentionally so I wouldn’t have to emerge from my bag for a wizz in the middle of the night. But this time, instead of a couple more minutes of morning contemplation before getting a move on, I crawled into my soft, down thermarest bag and snoozed for another two hours.



When this happens, I typically have some wild dreams. And because my dreams are always ultra-vivid when I’m hiking, I was in for a wild one. I was spending time at a field day of sorts with my Mom, Aunt, and Gram. There was an event my Gram and I teamed up for that required her to get on a scooter, but before I could give her pointers, she was fully over the handlebars. Thankfully, in the dream she was fine (just disappointed in our performance in the challenge.) We were all simply happy, smiling, and together.



I spent ages 10-12 sleeping in my tree house. I always had the best dreams when I slept outside with cold night air cradling me in the dark (or as dark as you can get in an Asheville suburb). I’ve really started to savor my dreams the last couple years. I even savor the bad ones – the ones where I have a band concert and forgot my clarinet at home or have a test I haven’t studied for – because when I wake up, it’s all good! No consequences for dream-me’s negligence.

I’ve wondered if my love for long, deep sleep is healthy, but at the end of the day, there are worse coping mechanisms out there. One more reason to spend all day yearning for when my eyes will finally close again is that in my dreams, I have a chance to see people I love—people I can’t see again in this life.



Even with my late start, the first 10 miles of the day flew. But the afternoon proved to be hot and difficult. I spent most of the interspersed road walks singing. On the queue for today:



A couple choice podcasts also made the cut to keep me company for the day:
The Off Book Podcast, The Magnus Archives, Worlds Beyond Number, and Not Another DND Podcast.

In the afternoon, I approached a river crossing unlike any in recent memory. The widest part of the creek was a 20-foot-wide concrete slab with about a foot of water flowing over it. Also unique to this experience were the half dozen pairs of curious eyes staring back at me from the other side of the creek. There were 2 adults, a man and a woman, a teenager, and a couple kids that couldn’t have been older than 6 or 7. My heart ached a little as I remembered the coolest kid I’d known that age.



I approached the edge of the creek and removed my socks and shoes. I gently lowered my toes into the cold water and slowly put weight into my right foot. Thankfully, I caught myself the second I started to slip. I was expecting it; the algae blooms were pretty impressive. I looked across to my audience, a nervous expression on my face, and continued carefully, a half step at a time. My patience paid off, because eventually I joined the onlookers on the other side of the creek.

The youngest boy immediately approached me and rattled off about a million questions. “Who are you? Where did you come from? How long are you hiking? How do you get water? Where’s your food? How much more do you have? Where are you going?” I smiled. Boy, do I love kids.

The man I presumed was his Dad shrugged. “He’s never met a stranger.”



I spent the next half hour soaking my feet in the water, topping off my bottles, snacking, and answering every question until the kid thought of another one to throw my way. To him, I was known solely as “The Girl.”



As we crouched on the slab of rock dipping into the creek, planting our butts for a rest, we both opened a couple snack pouches. He struggled with the package for a moment. “Can you please open this for me?” He offered me the packet of vanilla cookies, which I readily took and pulled into the tear at the top. I opened my package and held out my cracker towards him. “Cheers!” He looked down at my cheeto-dust-covered fingers and tentatively tapped his vanilla biscuit to mine. We both smiled and took a bite.



I set up camp for the night at the edge of a small meadow, this time facing the glorious sunset in the distance. Overall, considering yesterday’s marathon day, I was feeling pretty good. But it wasn’t long before I noticed a blister forming on the top of my second toe on my right foot. I saw it, and eventually I couldn’t help it; I picked that sucker to kingdom come.


This was an objectively bad idea.

At around 9 pm, I heard noise and saw lights approaching from the north through the woods. It’s unusual but not unheard of for folks to hike into the night, so I wasn’t concerned. Heartbeat told me he hiked past midnight earlier in the week, just because he enjoys the nighttime forest. The voices passed me by, so I assumed they were thru-hikers trying to make miles. As much as that interested me, especially because it sounded like two women, I couldn’t be roused and quickly fell back into another night of deep sleep.

Day 15, Saturday

To alleviate some of the productivity-related guilt I felt about getting on trail late yesterday, I was up and going early today. I passed a biker (or, rather a biker passed me) who told me a bike race was coming through in a couple hours along this stretch of the Pinhoti. I spent the next couple miles as a Wild Thornberry, poking eastern ringnecks to prompt them off into the woods and moving box turtles that were stubbornly set in the middle of the trail.



Eventually, I started encountering more day hikers. There were a couple of teens at the wooden overlook at the trailhead at the beginning of the peak’s loop trail, and I crossed paths with two different families as I approached what I realized was a local gem: Keown Falls.



The trail took me to the top of the falls first, and I habitually thought back to when I was a wee adventurer in Asheville TAASC learning outdoor rules for the first time; for safety, stand one body length from any ledge. It reminded me of Chimney Rock State Park.



I spent the next hour investigating salamanders, enjoying the cool mist bouncing back from the rocks directly below the falls, and getting to know “sport mode” on my camera. I even tried to stand, bottle in hand, arm outstretched, to collect directly from the falls (a technique I quickly abandoned when I got soaked in the first 7.5 seconds.)



Eventually, I moved on, but before I reached the trailhead, I ran into two young girls and their guardian. The younger of the two, her kinky black hair pulled into a puffy pony behind her head, looked up at me and said gleefully, “I’m on my first hike! This is my backpack.”

I raised my eyebrows in awe. “That’s such a great color! Have a great hike!” This is what it’s all about. I also passed by a hiker and his husky as it pulled him up the trail. “Great dog!” I called out. “Thanks, you want him?” I laughed, grateful someone once asked me that and meant it. While I missed Thru with my whole being, it was nice to feel so good without her.



Somehow, I never crossed paths with the bikers. I must’ve made it off the stretch of Pinhoti they were using before they caught up. What I did encounter, however, was four giant military aircraft that flew directly overhead as I approached the gravel trailhead to the waterfall. Neither I nor any other recreationalist in the parking lot knew of any military base nearby, but I do know a thing or two about flying, and those planes were low.

Oh, heat rash. My old friend.

I noticed lots of discarded gel packet tabs and occasionally even full wrappers along the trail for the rest of the day. I assume the bikers took a different route around Keown Falls and had passed me before reuniting with the Pinhoti. I didn’t mind much; microtrash is such an easy way to make a big impact, and I can imagine at least a couple of these athletes failed their dexterity check when they rolled for “snack on bike.” That’s one high DC.



Eventually, I caught up to Heartbeat! But not in the way I expected. I saw him hiking south down the trail towards me, and immediately assumed he’d gotten turned around. When I tried to gently correct him, he turned the tables on me and informed me he’d just followed the wrong trail (the one we were on) for the afternoon and ended up unintentionally adding 5 miles to his day. Thankfully, I wasn’t even a half mile from the intersection that tricked us both, and I turned around and led the way back to the Pinhoti.

Listen if you’re going to have a different trail intersect your long trail, maybe use a different color? For the different trail?

Over the course of the next couple miles, Heartbeat and I agreed to split a hotel room in Dalton and exchanged a couple treats with a trail runner that’d passed us earlier in the day. He was planning on swinging by Toadshade at some point that week, as he had a couple of important replacement pieces of gear coming in by mail. I told him to say hi to my car for me (the one with all the trail stickers.)



Because we were approaching a ridge walk, Heartbeat and I discussed potential sites for the night. There weren’t many (or, any) established sites within a couple miles of where I wanted to end the day. But, after browsing the comments on FarOut for every marker listed, I saw some hikers had indicated there was a decent site unlisted at mm 269.2. When I caught up to Heartbeat at the end of the day, a mile short of where the comments indicated the site was, I decided to stay put.

I’d been burned before by mile markers not being quite right, or trail miles changing from year to year, so I didn’t want to risk there not being a site in another mile where FarOut indicated it would be. I’m glad I did because after an hour I got a text from Heartbeat, “Good call. No site here.” Thankfully he was content to hike into the night again, and continued on towards Dalton where we would reunite again in a couple days.