NC/TN Appalachian Trail - Section 15 - Deerpark Shelter to Garenflo Gap

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
11/20/2021	7.3 miles	4 hours 21 minutes	1,195'	1.9	472.4

Map: 

• Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Tennessee-North Carolina Maps 3 & 4
• FarOut app (Guthook)

Parking: Garenflo Gap

Today we worked on filling in 2 gaps on the AT from our section hiking. The first was from Garenflo Gap to Deerpark Shelter. We are very familiar with Garenflo Gap, as we maintain a section of the AT starting from here, heading in the other direction. We also hiked from the Laughing Heart Hostel to the Deerpark Shelter on a trail maintenance trip once for the CMC.

Today's section looked flat on the map, but was really a series of short ups and downs. We didn't bring any trail maintenance tools, but we did end up doing a little bit of trail maintenance anyways. The trail is thick with leaves. I threw sticks and branches off the trail. Anything to make it safer - as its easy to slip on something that you can't see under those leaves. We also removed 3 trees from the trail - they were small enough that we could pick them up and slide them off the trail. We also noted some downed trees that will need a saw, which we failed to bring. This section of trail looks well maintained. Better than ours, lol. Glen has goals. He wants next year's thru hikers to write positive comments on the section we maintain :)

On this section, we did get some views due to the leaves being down. We had a nice view of Bluff Mountain (our section). We stopped at Deerpark Shelter for a quick lunch break. We saw a handful of backpackers out, but overall a quiet day on the trail.

Krumm got to sport his new Ruffwear pack. Same model and color as the old one, which had faded and was getting holes in it. I was wearing my blaze orange hat. And last night I sewed Glen a blaze orange pack cover. No hunters seen today.