2010 08 06 staying balanced

Susan Donnelly Ultramarathon Trail Runner. Motivational Speaker. http://www.susanruns100s.com

Staying Balanced Date : August 6, 2010

Laughing at something Leonard said. The best medicine.

July 31, 2010. Smoky Mountains National Park, Big Creek Trailhead.

Heaven knows I have more than enough things that need doing at the moment. Making travel arrangements and gear changesfor the upcoming trip to UTMB, arranging details for my own race (the Cumberland Trail 50k), making reservations for Superior Trail, coming up with Rob’s birthday present, making long-delayed maintenance and improvements to the North Ridge Trail (I’m the steward), getting the not-even close-to-remodeled house ready for my family’s visit in September, cleaning out the basement for a remodeling project, and all the other little details of everyday life. In addition to a full-time job. There’s no wiggle room in my schedule.

So there are times like this past weekend when it’s hard to walk away fro the clamoring

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demands and throw an entire day away to playing on the trail. Yeah, sure, there’s plenty written on the necessity of maintaining a balance in life and the virtues of play, and in concept this makes sense. In real life, though, it’s incredibly hard to push deeply ingrained work ethic, commitments, and perfectionist tendencies aside to just…play. And not even put it on the clock.

Thankfully, this weekend I had a few factors in my favor: I’ve finally realize it’s hard to pull off a decent trail run up high in the Smokies in the depths of winter so I need to capitalize on good weather.

We don’t have many open weekends between now and mid-November to spend in the Smokies We actually need to train for the mountains of UTMB and the Smokies are perfect Rob and my friend Leonard both wanted to go.

We decided to run a loop Rob and I had wanted to try for at least a year. It’s 30ish miles with plenty of ups and downs. Unfortunately, plans often go awry. Leonard was a little late and I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d left something important so I made us later. We got started later than planned but the good new was we were flexible – there were plenty of nice ways to shorten the loop and still get decent mileage.

Baxter Creek Trail (6.1 miles) The loop starts out of the Big Creek Campground parking lot and crosses the bridge over Big Creek for the 6-mile climb up to Mount Sterling. I love this trail because it’s a steady, runnable 6 miles of up and the mossy rocks at the top are gorgeous.

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Rob and Leonard gearing up at Big Creek Campground.

Just over the bridge was one of the all-too familiar signs saying campsite #38 was closed due to aggressive bear activity. When Rob and I were here last weekend with Karen, the sign wasn’t here, so it must have been closed that week. This closure meant all three campsites in the Big Creek watershed were now closed.

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Pausing near the trailhead, before the climb starts.

The air today was unusually sluggish and muggy. I hadn’t thought about about hydrating on the way here and was starting out thirsty. Not great, because I’d surely finish my hydration bladder by the time we got to the top and would have to refill at the Mt. Sterling campsite spring.

About two miles in, the grey sky began to rain and when it didn’t quit, the three of us finally gave in and put on jackets. The temperature was just cool enough and the rain just persistent enough through the leaves above that jackets were needed.

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Rain. That's summer in the Smokies.

A half mile up the trail from there and I realized I’d left a glove where we put on jackets, so Rob and Leonard hiked on while I ran back down to get my glove. We had donned jackets at a rock overhang so it should be easy to recognize again but I started wondering if I’d missed it. Much further down the trail than I thought I’d have to go and I found it.

Catching back up to Rob and Leonard, now even further up the trail, was hard work but I eventually caught them. We passed a guy coming down the trail carrying an open umbrella, definitely an odd sight on the trail. Not the happiest of campers, he said his dad had given it to him and proceeded on. A minute or two later we met a woman, a younger guy, and the dad, probably in his 80s. All had summited already and were heading down – incredibly impressive.

We described the loop we were planning and the dad looked like he was turning the idea over in his mind and the woman quickly interjected with “don’t tempt him!” When we asked about the umbrella, the dad laughed and said yes, he’d given the umbrella to his son, but he hadn’t remembered he had it until well after it had started raining.

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Still climbing.

We finally reached the rocky section at the top where the moss is all furry-looking and everything is green. Too bad there’s not a “Mosses of the Smokies” book. I’d love to know the name of this one. We passed a young couple taking the trail at a leisurely pace. Thankfully, the rain had stopped and it was just cloudy.

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Love the mossy, rocky top. Looks like green fur.

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Lots of roots.

About a tenth of a mile from the top, we detoured down to the spring to refill hydration bladders and bottles. As we worked, the sun started to send golden rays through the mist and clouds.

The area was covered in crimson bee balm and pink turtleheads. Who knew filling up at a spring could be so beautiful?

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Treating the water.

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The sun's trying to break through.

At the top of Mt. Sterling (5842 ft.), the clouds were spaced out enough that we had a view, so Leonard and I climbed the firetower. It was gorgeous. Mt. Sterling is on the TN-NC state line and though clouds thoroughly blocked the NC view, we could easily see the Appalachian Trail/Mt. Cammerer ridge on the Tennessee side.

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Wow, the view was worth the climb.

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The white spot is Rob waving, waaaaay below.

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Looking toward Mt. Guyot.

Rob stayed below and talked to the young couple. Turns out they’re brother and sister. The sister’s husband is through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, and was north of here. He’s written a book on Hiking North Carolina’s Lookout Towers and is working to save Shuckstack Tower near the Fontana end of the park. She knew another area ultrarunner from North Carolina.

Small world!

By the time we got going, I actually needed to put on my fleece hat. Yes, this is August, with record heat, but once you’re wet this high up, it’s easy to get cold, no matter how miserably hot it is down below.

Sterling Ridge Trail (5.3 miles) Not far from the firetower is the junction with the Mount Sterling Trail. The trail is open to horses and they had really chewed up the trail. The footing was completely different from the hiker-only trail nearby. Negotiating the potholes and loose rocks and mud ponds slowed the pace considerably.

On the bright side, we slowed enough to notice a new flower – perfectly-named featherbells – and some mushrooms so shiny and purple they looked plastic.

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I would have sworn these were plastic.

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A bit of the featherbells, as graceful as the name sounds.

Leonard and Rob spotted a feature ahead of us on the map called Big Butt. Boys being boys, they got fixated on what it would look like. As you can imagine, plenty of jokes ensued.

We passed the junction for the Swallow Fork Trail and headed on. This was new trail for Rob and I (the whole route was new trail for Leonard). The running was blissful, some of the best I’ve encountered in the park – flat (a nice break after the 6 mile climb of Baxter Creek), and easy footing through a hardwood, spruce forest mix. We made good time.

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Wow, what a trail.

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Sunflower and guest.

In the end (pun intended), we passed Big Butt without noticing a thing except great running trail.

Thankfully, that was the end of the butt jokes for the day.

Balsam Mountain Trail (0.9 miles) Where Mount Sterling Trail turns downhill toward Cataloochee and passes the Laurel Gap shelter, we stayed high and turned onto the Balsam Mountain Trail. A half mile or so from the junction, we met a pair of hikers and stopped to talk.

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Pausing for a navigational check at the Balsam Mountain junction.

They’d started all the way over in Cosby and had re-routed their plans because of the campsite closures and were now headed to Laurel Gap shelter.

We parted and I led on. A couple tenths of a mile from there and I noticed a footprint in the mud of the trail. It caught my eye because I could see every toe. Who would be barefoot up here.

Then I noticed the claw prints at the end of each toe. The print was on top of the prints left by the hikers we’d just met. A bear must have used the trail in the minutes since they’d passed through. Curiously, we’d seen almost no scat the entire day.

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Oops, someone's ahead of us on the trail!

Gunter Fork Trail (4.1 miles) We were still on high bear alert when we arrived at the junction with Gunter Fork but discovered a new feature we didn’t expect.

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"During times of high stream flow, Gunter Fork Trail is impassable." Is this high stream flow time??? Use Swallow Fork."

The sign warned that the trail was impassable during high water. Hmm. It was stupid not to have read up on the trail. This would have been bad in the spring or winter but it probably wasn’t high water now. Big Creek looked low this morning – so we proceeded as planned wondering what was in store.

Unfortunately, the immediate answer was nettles. The trail hadn’t been cleared in some time and I discovered that the nettle berries at the top gave an instant, electric shock. The guys had hair on their legs to help shield them but I had to dodge as best I could and suffer the rest. The overgrowth made going here slow too and Leonard got stung.

The map showed the trail passing by Gunter Falls and though it was now late in the day, we figured we could see the falls in daylight. We also decided the obvious – to cut the loop short and head down Big Creek trail in the middle of the valley, rather than continuing on up to Mt. Cammerer on the other side of the watershed.

We passed three huge old growth hemlocks that had somehow been left by the loggers (learned later that they had branches growing low, which hemlocks usually didn’t, making them harder for the loggers to deal with so they’d left them) and arrived at what we figured was

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Gunter Falls. It was pretty, though not what I expected. Leonard and I snapped a few photos and we started to go again, wanting to get as far as we could in daylight.

The falls.

A couple of yards around a shoulder of the hill and the real falls appeared. Very impressive and very different from the other ones we’d seen in the park. It reminded me of many of the falls in the Cumberlands and would have been awesome and unquestionably impassable in high water, since the trail crosses the foot of the falls.

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The REAL falls!

From here, the trail crossed the creek twice and we picked carefully over the super-slick rocks in the twilight, trying to keep wet-ish shoes as dry as possible. The effort was in vain, because there must have been five more crossings, a couple of them deep, where we just gave up and waded across. One of the crossings in particular was wide and slow-water in a beautiful spot.

Rob and I vowed to come back in the daytime to this beautiful trail.

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Leonard and Rob survive the last creek crossing.

Camel Gap Trail (1.0 miles) We finally had to turn on our headlamps somewhere on this trail. We were running (no crowding undergrowth) and I was in the lead. The two other campsites in the area that were closed for bears were ahead and though I needed to keep eyes on the trail, I scanned far ahead with the light every so often to make sure I literally wasn’t going to run in to one. So far, so good.

We passed the two campsites without seeing a bear (or any scat or prints for that matter), and crossed the bridge to Big Creek Trail.

Big Creek Trail (5.1 miles) Big Creek is an old logging road, so it’s wide and the footing for the most part is pretty easy, though that can depend again on the amount of recent horse traffic. It also angles on a constant, gradual descent making it an easy start or end to the many loops you could concoct in this area.

It was full dark, much later than we planned to be out, but had still been a full day and the three of us were quiet as much as we talked.

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We passed all the familiar landmarks that we’d seen last week in the hot, sunny daytime with Karen, a very deja vu feeling.

We finally arrived at the parking lot and Leonard won the “how many cars left in the parking lot” contest for the day (three). Oddly, a group of kids out partying had pulled into the lot right next to my car as we arrived and they didn’t seem to want to move somewhere else in the almost totally vacant parking lot for more privacy. We ignored them and changed out of our wet, sweaty clothes as quickly and as best we could. Then hit the road for home, stopping by Newport for some late-night fast food dinner. The glaring lights and animated signs at the rest stop interrupted the lingering spell of a day in the quiet, peaceful woods.

A Little Play Goes a Long Way Rob and I slept late the following morning, a sure start to a non-productive day, but oddly enough, the day turned out to be unusually productive. I accomplished enough main to-do’s in that short amount of time that I’m honestly not sure I could have done better with the whole weekend before me. Maybe i work better on a tight deadline…who knows.

What it taught me was that playing really does help me do the tasks that need doing, better.

With a day in the park fresh in my mind, I was able to focus on priorities and it seemed easier to identify the unimportant stuff and let it go.

For example, I got a great start de-cluttering the basement because I could see the stuff that was no longer important to the person out on that trail. I finished the blog post about my sister’s visit because the run cleared the cobwebs from my mind and I could actually type what I felt. I got some race details moving because they seemed easy in comparison with yesterday’s run and no longer so huge. I made some healthy summer salads for the week because running in the park made me feel alive and like taking care of myself. On top of that, I made a bunch of big and little decisions because the afterglow of the run made it was easy to see what was important and not, and which direction I wanted to go. Time on the trail renewed my perspective on life and helped me place my attention and energy where it would do the most good.

Not only that but with great memories fresh in mind, I’m better prepared to face the work week.

So it really is true, a little play goes a long way toward keeping my life in balance!

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Being here isn't an "extra" - it keeps the rest of my life in balance.

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