Grandfather Mountain Hurricane
One stormy Saturday, around the end of November, maybe in the early 1990's, I made my first double traverse day hike of Grandfather Mountain. That is, I started at the bottom of the mountain at NC Hwy 105, climbed the Profile Trail, traversed the all the peaks the length of…
Hump Mountain with Friends
Many years before this article was written, a group of friends and I went backpacking on the Appalachian Trail from Yellow Mountain Gap to Hump Mountain. I arbitrarily picked the date of July 1994, but I could be off by 5 years in either direction.
Mount Mitchell Ice Storm
Sometime around early winter in the late 1980's Dwayne Morrison, President of the Northwest Outing Club, planned a long weekend backpacking trip to Mount Mitchell. I went along, together with a friend of Dwayne's from Morganton. I drove my big, old Bronco with the granny gear to pick up Dwayne…
New River Camping with Mixed Company
Bob Laney, Dan Bumgarner and Landon Alfriend (later Dunn) had the idea to go on a New River camping trip on a summer weekend in the late 1980's. Landon's boyfriend Jimmy Stevens, the president of the Northwest Outing Club and a major paddler, was not available. Dan's wife Pat was…