The Beginning

My journey started with a nice hour delay at the airport that became a 3 hour delay because I couldn't make my connecting flight. The result was I finally arrived at Atlanta at roughly 4:30. By the time I collected my bag (thankfully that part went smoothly) and rode the Marta train from one end of the city to the other it was after 6. This meant survivor Dave couldn't get me to springer mt. I took a cab to a hotel and got ready to get picked up at 5:30 am tomorrow morning. Despite what sounds like a horrible journey it was not really that bad. I had made it to Georgia with all of my gear intact, that was what really mattered.

The next morning I got up early and met Dave. He was getting me and then picking someone up at the Gainesville Amtrak station before heading to springer. We arrived at the springer mt parking lot at roughly 9am. From there it was a mile up to the top of springer. Even with the "interesting" travel I was still starting at basically the same time. I had been planning on camping on top of springer and starting in the morning, now I was just getting dropped off in the morning. I hiked up to the "peak" and then started my journey.

It seemed prudent to start off going pretty easy. No need to hurry and injury myself or burn myself out on hiking. I made it to hawk mt shelter and decided 9.1 miles is just fine for day 1. My pace was such that I could have easily done the extra 5 miles to the next campsite but I figured this was safer. There are a ton of other people starting at this time too. The logbook says 32 people stayed here last night and it is looking like 20+ will be here tonight. I figured it would be nicer tenting then being crammed in the shelter but now that I have everything set up it looks like almost everyone thought as I did and the shelter won't even be full.

I have also learned a downside of the app I use to write these blog posts, I can attach pictures to them but not insert them in like I would on a computer. Hopefully it works out and the pictures are just shoved at the front or end of this but who knows.