Appalachian Trail 2025, Days 33-35: Sam's Gap to Curley Maple Gap Shelter

Back in May 2025, I flew back to Tennessee to pick the Appalachian Trail up right where a knee injury had left off the year before at Sam's Gap. This 75-mile section climbs Big Bald, winds through the storm-scarred woods around Erwin, and ends at Curley Maple Gap Shelter at mile 348.9, with a trail angel, a moonshine-era shelter name, and a makeshift river crossing along the way. Watch here!

Back at Sam's Gap

The travel day started at 4am, with my wife driving me to the airport for an early flight from Florida to the Tri-Cities airport, then a shuttle from Steve at Unicoi Shuttles — who also tossed in a spare fuel canister — out to Sam's Gap. It was the exact spot where I'd waited for a shuttle to Nature's Inn Hostel and Cabins at the end of last year's hike, so picking the pack back up there felt like closing a loop. It was noticeably cooler than Florida, low 50s at 9am, and my pack straps were noticeably tighter than they'd been the year before — a sign the diet plan would have to wait for another week.

Blowdowns from Hurricane Helene

Steve, the shuttle driver, is also a trail maintainer in the area, and he pointed out some of the damage along I-26 on the drive in from Hurricane Helene, which tore through this stretch of Tennessee in late summer 2024. Out on the trail I saw far more blowdowns than in previous years, and a real appreciation for the maintainers who'd cut miles of fallen trees clear just to make the trail passable for this season's hikers.

Climbing to Big Bald

The trail meandered through an open meadow with Big Bald visible in the distance, and by early afternoon I was deciding between stopping at a water source 3.7 miles in for an easy first day, or pushing another four miles higher to Bald Mountain Shelter for its bear box and dedicated tent pads. I chose to push on, climbing a steep, rocky, fern-lined trail up to the open summit at 5,516 feet — genuinely one of the best balds I've seen, and a solid way to close out day one.

A DIY Dinner and a Cold Night

I reached Bald Mountain Shelter, built back in 1985, around 4:30pm and was the only one there for a while, so I pitched my tent out front in the grass for some space of my own — though by 7:30 that evening a dozen or so hikers had trickled in between tenting and the shelter. Dinner was my first attempt at a DIY dehydrated meal: ground beef, ramen, and a dehydrated vegetable soup mix, which turned out surprisingly good. The night dipped into the 30s with the elevation, and between that and an early wake-up the day before, it added up to a pretty restless half-night of sleep.

No Business Knob and Miss Janet

Day two was a 10.6 mile push to No Business Knob Shelter, whose name traces back to Prohibition-era moonshining — anyone asking what was going on up there was told they had "no business" being up there. The trail through here was immaculately maintained, fresh grass clippings and all, and I spotted a couple of deer bolting off through the woods. A side trail up to High Rocks delivered a nice open overlook and more visible Helene damage — whole ravines of downed trees from what must have been a concentrated gust, leaving me hiking in full sun through what should have been shaded forest.

Coming out of Spivey Gap I ran into Miss Janet, a locally famous trail angel who shuttles hikers and hands out trail magic — she handed me a cold Gatorade, which hit the spot. She also tipped me off that No Business Knob Shelter itself wasn't much to write home about and had no water source nearby, so the plan was to grab a tent site a little short of it instead. With no sites available along the way, though, I ended up at the shelter after all — an old brick structure with a bit of a reputation, though I'd have gladly stayed inside it if the weather had turned. That night, camped nearby, a father and his 15-year-old son wandered in, built a fire, and swapped stories about how the Erwin area was recovering from Hurricane Helene.

Ferrying the Nolichucky into Erwin

Day three's trail hugged a steep mountainside with barely a flat spot to take a break, all leading toward the bigger event of the day: getting into Erwin. Hurricane Helene had taken out the bridge that normally carries the AT across the Nolichucky River, so hikers were instead being ferried across by boat — a service that stopped running at 1pm, which meant picking up the pace to make it in time. After a quick resupply stop at Uncle Johnny's for a couple of dinners, I caught the ferry across, waded through the last stretch of shallow water — which felt surprisingly great on tired feet — and climbed the far bank back onto the Appalachian Trail.

The Final Push to Curley Maple Gap

From the river crossing it was another four and a half miles to the shelter, weaving alongside a healthy little stream thick with gnats, past several decent campsites I passed up to keep my planned mileage. I filled up on water from a slow-flowing source before the final climb and rolled into Curley Maple Gap Shelter at 3:45pm — a newer, well-kept double-decker shelter with a grassy clearing, a fire ring, and a covered picnic table that came in handy with rain in the forecast overnight. A solid place to close out 29 miles and three days of getting reacquainted with the trail.