Day Four brought more cool days, but we still had the sunshine. We came across more thru and section hikers, one of which was 73! He took the photo of us at Powell Gap. He didn't really want to talk much to us but we learned about him from other hikers because he had a strange get up and was easy to identify. We took a photo at Powell Gap for the Powell's (Valerie and Kingsley). I honestly don't recall much about this day until mid-day when I saw my first bear! No photos of it as I was more concerned with keeping track of where it went. It was alone and small, but likely a 2nd year, and most importantly, it ran off in a hurry as soon as it saw us. Despite being in Glacier NP, Yellowstone NP, hiking all through the Olympic NP and growing up in PA, this was actually my first bear siting. No one else we met on the trail was as fortunate to see one as we were, probably too early in the season.
It was early, perhaps 2pm when we reached the next shelter, Hightop Hut. There were plenty of sites and no one anywhere. We stopped and read the journal, reported our bear sighting and deliberated over what to do next. With it being so early, we could press on, however there was no way we were going to make it to the next hut by dark, or we could stay and leisurely set up camp, and call it a day early. I was feeling pretty great that day and requested that we push on. We still had hours and hours of daylight. I felt confident we'd find a spot. In the meantime, we met a solo section hiker in his 60s, "More to do." We had some friendly conversation and he thought we'd surely find a place to set up. So on we pressed, but I was nervous after an hour of locating no spot that seemed worthy of our camp. On and on, we passed over our first highway, Rt 33, and back into the woods. Heather even recalled on her bicycle trip last summer, passing through this cut in the mountain. Just as I started doubting my decision to move on, I spotted some leaves patted down off to the right. There was a little path that had been trampled into the woods. We went in, assessed and decided, okay, this is it for the night, at this point, we'd likely put in 10.5 miles. We quickly set up camp, boiled water for dinner of mushroom risotto, then hoisted our bear bag up into the trees, much more gracefully this time than the first night. The wind whipped through the trees and we could feel the temperature dropping quickly. We were probably only 1/4 of a mile from the highway, if even that, and we could hear the cars rushing by. After a little bit of time in our bags reading our magazines, we heard voices. Heather said, "I hope this isn't one of those teenager hangouts to get wasted in the woods," and fear struck in both of our hearts. Were we in a bad place? She asked me where the bear mace was and as I grabbed it, we waited and listened. "Look kids, there's a tent and see they've put their food up in the tree to protect it from animals," we heard. I unzipped the tent to watch about 30-50?? teenagers, mostly Asian, walking on the trail. Mind you it was 7:30pm, what the heck where were they going and doing? None of them were in hiking gear. After they passed about 20min later they ran back out. In the morning after finding clothing tags, we discerned it had probably been a high school field trip to DC with a quick stop to "hike the Appalachian Trail" thrown in there. Anyway, made for an interesting night.
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