On this trip we spent 4 days backpacking in North Carolina's Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness. JK-S is well known for being a tough but beautiful place to explore, we have been wanting to make a visit here for years!
Our first day (after a heckuva time even making it to the trailhead due to car problems) took us straight upwards to the top of the Hangover. The views from this mountain are as good as it gets - unbroken trees, mountains, rivers & lakes for as far as the eye can see. Unfortunately this ended up being one of the worst nights of sleep I've ever had in the backcountry due to unrelenting wind that shook our shelters all night long and caused a puncture hole in my tarp.
On day 2 we dropped down from the Hangover ridge into the Little Santeetlah Creek basin, home of the massive trees that Joyce Kilmer is so famous for. Beautiful cascading streams escorted us on our way down to the bottom of the drainage and the trees grew larger and larger with each descending step.
Day 3 took us back up to the top of the ridge by virtue of an off-trail bushwhack then an on-trail bushwhack up the Stratton Bald Trail. We were too pooped to make it out to the view on Bob Bald, but that gives us something to aim for in a future trip. We set up camp in the Naked Ground area and saw 3x more people come through that one spot than we had the entire rest of the trip.
We finished up our final day by dropping back down to our trailhead at Big Fat Gap - but not before enjoying the view from the Hangover one last time. We had an awesome, albeit difficult, time in Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock and definitely look forward to exploring this area further in the future.
Shorter highlight video for anyone who wants to see the scenery without the trip details:
https://youtu.be/k9tlnDBGZ6k
Thanks for checking out our adventure!
Layne
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