On Friday, October 16th at 8:00 am I departed for a solo South to North Art Loeb one way run. The day prior I'd stashed 2 caches of water and nutrition. One at Gloucester Gap about 12.3 miles in and one between Silvermine Bald and Black Balsam Road about 18.5 miles in. My support came from my husband who greeted me at both aid stops (providing no assistance), but he did run with me for about 2 miles from Silvermine Bald to about a 1/2 mile north of Black Balsam and took some of the photos that I uploaded.
The day went great - it was a good temperature at the start, there were a few passing light showers, and lots of leaves recently fallen. There was moderate to high trail traffic especially in the first 6 miles and from Black Balsam to the Narrows. Route finding is tricky on this trail, I had previously scouted all the challenging sections and still a couple of times had to rely on both my Pisgah Map Company map via the Avenza app as well as Gaia GPS when it seemed to work better along the narrows section of the trail.
Very detailed report in the linked blog.