last expedition chris

Chris Gewehr's Blog

11/12/11

The last two weeks have lasted a lot longer than two weeks. They've been filled with excellent activities, both adventurous and straight up fun. The first week of expedition we were backpacking in the Pisgah National Forest which had lots of beautiful vistas and sweet campgrounds. Some of the hikes were difficult, but all of them were worth it.

On Saturday, when we got out of Pisgah, we drove over to the Green Narrows Race and had to hike down to the river. The trail was absolutely packed with people so it took us more than an hour to get down the ravine into the actual race (although it didn't take nearly as long to get back up). We sat and watched kayakers eat it for a couple of hours on some class five rapids before heading back up the ravine the old fashioned way. After that it was back to base for a couple of nights where we had hoped to go mountain biking. Unfortunately, the mountain biking never happened, but we did get to go to a climbing gym and do some drifting around downtown Asheville.

Caving was probably the highlight of this trip for me. When you enter a cave, it's like entering another planet. In the beam of your headlamp, the world is illuminated in brown. There were a few times in the cave when everyone turned off their headlamps and no one moved. During such times there was only complete and utter darkness and silence.

P.S. Shoutout to the Jefferies for feasting us on delicious white castle burgers and Jack-the-Dippers it was delicious and much appreciated.