Sunrise at McAfee's Knob

The last time I hiked to McAfee's Knob my mom went with me. It was about a year before she found out she had cancer. I hadn't been back until Tuesday.

Several weeks ago I mentioned to Ross that I wanted to hike up there and watch the sun rise. I think he thought I was insane when I explained that we would have to get up at 3AM to do it! Nonetheless, Ross, ever the good sport, said yes and so it was agreed upon that I would pick him up at 3:45AM on Tuesday and we would strike out, headlamps charged, to greet the sun and it appeared over the Roanoke Valley.

When we arrived at the Appalachian Trail parking lot, there were a few cars but I assumed they belonged to long distance hikers. We decided to take the fire road up until we interssected with the trail. This is what all smart locals do as we know that it's murder to take the trail from the bottom. Now when I say road, I use the term loosely as it is very small and trail like and full of rock obstacles, and as we would later find out, giant spiders and coyotes.

The headlamps did a great job of illuminating the way for us, but I also had a hand held flashlight that I looted from Doug's camelbak. Ross carried a can of bear spray! I wasn't concerned about bears as much as I felt leary of people or of rabid foxes. Roanoke has had a ton of rabid fox attacks lately so we wanted to be prepared. For the most part I never felt creeped out; although I admit that I did turn around every so often just to make sure nothing was behind us.

We made really good time and felt good about ourselves until we came across a sign that said "you are here" and it appeared as if we had only walked two centimeters. Concerned we wouldn't make it in time for the 6:14 sunrise, we double timed it up the road. At one point, we suddenly smelled very fresh animal feces. We REALLY picked up the pace at that point and hurried as fast as we could to get away from the smell as we didn't want to encouter it's former owner.

We finally met up with the Appalachian Trail and headed towards the summit. The trail was very rocky and rather dangerous in the dark, especially given the fact that we were hurring as fast as we could. I led the way and poor Ross struggled at times to keep up. I think all the running I've been doing has really helped. My legs were nice and strong from all the weight lifting I've been doing as well. Several times we had to stop for him and I felt badly for him as I know how rough it is to be the one who needs a break. Luckily it wasn't me this time!

As we approached the summit, it was amazing to see how light the sky had become in the hour and 25 minutes we had been on the trail. When we started it was pitch black and the woods were full of all the night time music you hear in the summer: tree frogs, whipporwills, and crickets. Yet, suddenly, those had disappeared and had been replaced with bird songs. On the final approach, I took off running afraid we would be late and encouraged Ross by telling him we were there!

We ran out on to the cliffs and I couldn't believe my ears! We stood high above the forest and below us the sound of hundreds of different birds was deafening! It was amazing how quiet the whole world seemed, otherwise. It was as if everything stopped to listen to the bird songs! Amazing.
We sat down, had some water and scarfed down power bars. We had earned them!

As the light became brighter and brighter, we started taking photos. We posed a million different ways and I did cartwheels. At one point, we even saw a chipmunk run around the rocks, marking territory. After goofing around a bit, I decided to walk farther down the cliffs to have a look around. Much to my dismay, I heard a voice and saw two guys standing out on the cliffs. It wasn't even 6AM. Where did they come from? At first I thought they had camped at the AT shelter down the trail but later I found out that they had hiked up to see the sun rise too. Really? What are the odds that four people would have the same idea on a random Tuesday in July? They were nice and I suspected they were Tech students since they were Asian and Middle Eastern. They seemed to enjoy watching me do carthwheels on the cliff edge. Glad I could amuse them!

Unfortunately, the sun rise was less than stellar due to humidity and cloud cover. Bummer.  Still, it was beautiful to be so high up above the world as the sun greeted it. We had a good time. Around 7:30, we headed back down the trail. We came across the poo we smelled earlier and saw tracks near it which confirmed it was a coyote. We joked about scaring the poo out of a coyote! We then started calling it Coyote Ugly! HA!


We finally made it to the car and drove home, tired and looking forward to a nap. Another great adventure!