Headwaters of the Pigeon River

This past weekend, I got the opportunity to hike around in the Shining Rock Wilderness (near Brevard, NC) with 9 other cool kids from NC State. We started hiking at the Big East Fork trailhead around dusk on Friday night and proceeded to hike just under 3 miles in the dark to the campsite. We set up camp while it was snowing and went to bed pretty quickly.

Saturday morning, we woke to Bengt and Weston singing "You are my sunshine" and about 2 inches of snow on the ground. We had breakfast (oatmeal and tea/tang/coffee) and hiked along the river for a good while until the trail started to really climb. From there, we hiked along the Graveyard Ridge and Graveyard Fields trails (which includes part of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail) until lunch (crackers, salami, cheese, apples, and granola bars) at a four-way junction. After lunch, we hiked up and up, under the summit of Black Balsam, through as much as 6 inches of snow. When we reached Shining Rock Gap, we set up camp in 4-5 inches of snow and started cooking supper. Supper Saturday night consisted of Ramen and Uncle Ben's Rice (w/ canned chicken and carrots). Sleeping Saturday night was rough, since the snow had a habit of drawing your body heat, the wind blew snow up under the rainfly into the tent, and I'm pretty sure it dropped to the teens.

Sunday morning was cold, but bright and we feasted on oatmeal, Tang, and tea. Once camp was broken down, we started our (glorious) descent. We hiked and followed another river until we came to a nice flat area on the river/creek for lunch. We ate lunch (Frito Burrito, you'll have to ask), spent some time alone, and then Bengt, Weston and I decided to go for a little swim. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was about 38 degrees outside and I can tell you that the water was pretty cold. From lunch it was a casual hike along the river back to the van, where we packed everything back up and changed. All told we hiked around 15 miles, with 8 brutal, snowy, uphill miles on Saturday, but every aching muscle was worth the views that I got to see and the fun times I had with everyone who went.

I've got some pictures online here.

Windows did something right!?

So I was doing my weekly computer maintenance (yes, I am that much of a geek) and when I finished, my Firewall Alarm popped up asking to allow a program access to the internet. Without thinking (because it said Windows Login) I clicked "allow." Big mistake. The next thing I know, I have something called SpyFalcon installed on my computer. I don't recall asking for this to be installed, so of course I 'google' it. Turns out it's a fake spyware remover which does the exact opposite. So I followed the instructions online for removal, to no avail. I try it in Safe Mode and make sure that there's nothing on my computer associated with SpyFalcon. Restart and SpyFalcon is still there. I have, at this point, resigned myself to the fact that I have downloaded some sort of registry monster and that I am going to need to reformat my computer (about a 2 hour process before reinstalling all of the software that I'm used to having). So I decide that I'm giong to try out Window's System Restore feature. I restore to a point during my clean-up this morning and ka-blam!, no more SpyFalcon. I'm shocked, really.