Old Butt Knob and the final training hike

The first time Tait and I trained with two high-mileage days back-to-back, we chose a 20-mile out-and-back trail in Uwharrie National Forest — a piece of land known for having some of the oldest mountains in the world. “Old” in mountain terms also tends to mean “eroded,” which tends to mean “not all that bad from a hiking perspective, tbh.”

This past weekend, we took the enthusiasm and hubris borne of our success in those gentle hills out for a spin in the Shining Rock Wilderness. Our route: 37.5 miles and untold feet of elevation gain and loss, expertly planned by Tait so that our trails crossed but never once repeated.

During the planning stages, I noticed Tait’s route passed something called “Old Butt Knob.” I clung to the name as something whimsical in the midst of what I knew to be an unforgiving and grim piece of land. Between my second and third years of college, I had spent about a month in the area as part of an Outward Bound trip. Apart from knowing the land to be steep and difficult to navigate, I recalled how it had rained about 25 of the 28 days we’d hiked.

And as Tait and I labored up and over so many gaps and peaks (on Saturday morning, 3,500 feet up to Deep Gap, then Cold Mountain, then back to Deep Gap and over to Shining Rock Gap), I even looked forward to getting up Old Butt.

“I wonder if there’s a rock up there that looks like a big ol’ butt,” I wondered aloud so many times.

But as we descended a trail that followed Shining Creek down a drainage from Shining Rock Gap, dread bubbled up. This descent, I knew, was the first leg of a loop that would find us back up at Shining Rock Gap, and every foot we lost — it felt like thousands, surely we must be at sea level —was a foot we’d have to regain and more, knowing as I did that Old Butt Knob was a prominatory from which we would descend into the gap we’d just left.

We arrived at the turnaround, the trailhead up to the Old Butt leg of the loop, and headed up its unforgivingly steep ridge. Each rocky step loomed after the next, somewhere around thigh height. We plodded. It was brutal.

I had spent a day or two snickering at Old Butt. Yet here I was, begging for mercy from Old Butt. I began to consider the possibility that is name was meant to be a lesson in humility, in not judging a mountain by its ridiculous name, or some other such Aesopian conclusion.

“This isn’t so bad,” Tait mused as the grade began to level out somewhat.

“Don’t let Old Butt hear you,” I grunted, without turning around. If Old Butt wanted my deference and fear, it had it now. There’s an unspoken rule that one ought to never comment aloud on a pleasant lack of rain. Similarly, I feared his words would cause a new, unforeseen summit ridge to rise steeply and indignantly before us.

We arrived at what we thought was the top. There was no butt of any age, geologic or otherwise. Tait wondered if the name was meant to describe what a backpacker smelled like upon reaching the summit on a July afternoon.

The next day, we descended the East Fork trail Sunday afternoon at a near run. The road came into sight, and all the humility Old Butt had taught us was quickly forgotten. We high-fived and hugged, convinced that after this hike, we truly understood what it meant to be big and strong in the woods.

We leave for Colorado in fewer than 20 days. We start hiking July 26. And I’m kind of terrified.