The "Wonderful" Weather Continues

Out of Hiawassee I did 9 miles and camped at the North Carolina state line. Then I did 15.3 miles and camped at Carter Gap Shelter. Then I did 12.1 miles and slept in Rock Gap shelter.

Finishing my first state this time around did not have the same sense of accomplishment. It felt good but last time I remember it meaning a lot more. Just for completeness I took a photo.

After that day there was rain. Lots of rain. Two full days of cold, windy rain. In the midst of it all I did hit the 100 mile mark and was able to keep my spirits up.

After two days and nights of cold, wet rain I decided to sleep in the shelter at Rock Gap. Unfortunately it was completely full and there were almost no flat spots. Someone offered me a hammock and I grudgingly accepted. I had never tried to hammock sleep and figured this was an opportunity to try. Last night was 20 degrees and snowed slightly. What I learned from that combination is that hammocks are quite cold and extremely uncomfortable. To make up for very little sleep and cold feet today I went into Franklin to dry out. I am doing laundry and grabbing a bite to eat and heading back to trail today. The weather looks warmer and sunnier, hopefully the weather isn't lying. 

The Southern Cold

For those following along in a guide book or on a map:

I left Neel's Gap and did 11.5 miles to Low Gap Shelter. The next day I did 13.4 miles to the Cheese Factory camp site. Then I did 9.4 miles to Deep Gap shelter. Finally I did 3.6 miles to Dick's Creek Gap and went into Hiawassee for resupply.

Last time I was on this section of trail it was in the 60's or 70's everyday and I was named Naked Ninja. That name would not have been given to me this time around. Every night it is in the low 30's or less and the days are not that much warmer. I decided to hike to the cheese factory camp site to camp amongst the Mountain Laurels in an attempt to have a nice sheltered spot. It worked fantastically.

That night it felt nice and warm so I assumed the night was warmer then the previous ones had been. During the night I heard precipitation that sounded more solid then rain so maybe it was cold. When I got up that morning there was a beautiful white layer to welcome me into the day. 

The whole next day it was warm and sunny on the eastern side of the mountain and bitter cold, windy and frozen on the western side. It did make for a change of surroundings which was nice.

That afternoon a bunch of decided that the weather forecast of -5 degree wind chills for the night was enough to drive us the slight extra mileage into town. We called a lot of places and it turns out every hiker close to us had already made that decision and there was absolutely nothing available in town. We just had to get friendly in the shelter and hike into town the following morning. Hopefully the weather gets a little better before I get to the Smokies or it is going to be outrageously cold.

Once in town I made the common mistake of buying too much food and now I have to hike out of town, up a hill, with far more food then I need. Then again, if it stays this cold I am going to need fuel to stay warm. The forecast has the temperatures getting back to the high 40's and low 50's but it is calling for heavy rain over the next few days. The AT is absolutely lovely, why doesn't everyone want to enjoy everything it has to give?

Clean Clothes and a Shower, Good Things

I successfully held myself to roughly eight miles a day until Neel Gap. It made for some short days but I wanted my legs to get accustomed to the pounding of hiking everyday. My typical day involved getting out of camp around 10 in the morning the hike for a few hours. I would stop after 8 miles even though that would usually mean I would be stopping around 2 in the afternoon.

The past few days have been just about ideal for hiking. It has been sunny with a high in the mid 40's. That is the perfect temperature to hike in my kilt and a tshirt without me getting too hot. This does not sound like it will continue. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain and then the temperature will drop quite a bit. Tuesday night might have a low in the mountains of 15 degrees with an inch of snow. Hopefully I can hit Deep Gap Shelter on that day since it has a real four walls unlike most shelters that are just three walls and a roof.

In the last couple of days there have been some fantastic views. I had kind of forgotten how far you can see when there are no leaves on the trees. One of the better ones is the top of Blood Mt. which is the highest point the trail hits in Georgia.

Today I made it into the hostel at Neel Gap. The las time it was here it was run by a guy named Pirate and it was dirty, strange and an amazing way to show that the trail has some crazy people but they are generally quite nice. Now it is all redone, has nice wood floors and is run by the people at the store. It is still a good place to get clean but I feel like something is lost by losing the craziness.

Lastly, something I have noticed so far is that the diversity, what there is on the trail, is a lot different at the beginning. Now basically everyone at least claims to be attempting a thru hike of the trail. Some people, including me, are willing to admit that circumstances can change and others are die hard Maine or bust. What makes everyone different now is their gear, speed and experience. Later on in the trail peoples speed has normalized to be closer together, people's gear is all worn and dirty making the differences harder to spot and everyone is an experienced thru hiker after a thousand miles or so. Later in the trail though there a lot of long and short section hikers that are also on the trail. Then the thru hikers all become the experienced grizzled people on the trail forming a more cohesive group when looked at as a whole community. Hopefully I continue to notice little things like this that sort of escaped me last time while looking at the situation from only the present.

I just noticed I didn't do specific mileage and sleeping locations for this post. It seems like something most people don't care about but if people want that kind of info leave a comment below and I will do that in future posts. 

Initial Thoughts and Impressions

First I want to touch on why I decided to hike the approach trail to the top of Springer Mt instead of driving to the top like I did last time. Last time I was happy I didn't hike it since it's not part of the AT and was just adding meaningless miles to my journey. Virtually everyone that I met that did the approach trail thought it was the worst thing ever and hated it. So this time I quickly decided to tackle it.

This decision was mostly done in the name of experimentation. I wanted to see what it was like personally and wanted to see what someone who had done a lot of the trail thought of it. Would I think it actually quite easy and it was just people inexperience that led them to complaining? It turns out I think the complainers have a justifiable complaint.

It is not outrageously hard compared to the rest of the trail, but it is very challenging for the first day of real hiking. It starts you out with 600 stairs to get your legs nice and wobbly and then sends you on a relatively gentle 7 mile incline to Springer Mt. I will admit to having tired legs after it, although I wasn't horribly upset with my performance.

The first night on Springer was cool, breezy and wet. Sounds just like he AT that I remember. Luckily while my legs are mildly tired after the two days of hiking so far my speed is still pretty good so I can easily do the eight miles a day I am limiting myself too before two o'clock and then take a nice afternoon nap. Taking naps on the AT is something I have always felt is not done enough by hikers.

The first day actually on the AT was as easy as I remember it. Mostly downhill and gradual. Hiking through large groves of rhododendron and crossing small streams. I was feeling good enough this time to even take a side trail to take a look at some falls.

So tonight I reside at Hawk Mountain Shelter, the first of my journey last time and possibly the busiest shelter on the trail. Walking up to it reminded me of my past journey and that almost exactly two years ago I met Greta here. It has it's charms. 

This brings me to what I think is the largest realization so far. I think my biggest hurdle this time around will, at least in the beginning, will be emotional. It is one thing to say goodbye to friends and family for a few months but it was far more difficult for me to kiss Greta goodbye at the bottom of the approach trail and walk into the woods. I don't know if that will continue to be the biggest hurdle but it was definitely something that wasn't present last time I was in the woods for six months and it will be interesting to see how it evolves. So far two day in, I'm feeling pretty good and doing my best to stay dry and warm. Hopefully I will see the sun away some point to help with those.

DC to Trail: the Never Ending Drive

So I spent four relatively noneventful days in DC. Most of the time Greta was cooking all of the tiny hors d'oeuvres. During this time I entertained myself or did small tasks to assist. If there is anything that I truly accomplished it would be moral support for the head chef. The end result once assembled at the bar looked like this. 

The food was great and the party went off as smoothly as I could imagine. Good band, good food and lots of people seems like a winning formula. As usual, Greta was adorable. 

After that event there was a laid back Sunday leading into the next long drive. Driving from Maine to DC took 12 hours and had some bad traffic in NYC and on the New Jersey Turnpike. I was hoping the next leg of the journey would be a bit better. We planned on leaving fairly early Monday morning and beating the traffic because everything would be delayed from the 4-8 inches of snow that was predicted. 

It worked like a dream. We got up and had to clear some snow.

But after that it was time to go. The roads were as close to empty as I can image three to four lane highways being. There was zero traffic from DC all the way to Georgia. I felt the roads were fine but I saw perhaps a dozen cars in ditches and I watched in my rearview nitro as the car behind me went into a 720 spin at 70 mph but that vehicle didn't crash horribly and I was completely unaffected.

We made it to Georgia sick of sitting in a car but otherwise fantastic. Tomorrow I will go to Amicalolo State Park and do the approach trail to Springer Mt. while Greta drives back to DC. Hiking sound way better then another 11 hour drive. Hopefully the snow, freezing temperatures and driving rain of the last week magically disappear for the start of my time in the woods.

Food and other Preparation

Over the past few months I have been slowly getting everything ready for my hike this year. This has included finalizing a few gear decisions and a whole lot of dehydrating. On my last hike my main plan was to have a few items of food with my dad to be sent but most of my food would just be purchased along the way in town. This is not a bad strategy and is used by many people that attempt, both successfully and unsucessfully, to thru-hike. For the first section of trail last time this worked quite well. I was able to find decent grocery stores at resupply towns and after a few resupplies I had a good sense of what I should buy and how much.

This all changed when my mom offered to get a dehydrated and dehydrate meals for me while I was hiking. Obviously I took her up on the offer immediately. There was no question in my mind, food I neither had to prep or purchase being sent to me on the trail... there's no down side there. Like most things my mom does she went a bit over board and dehydrated fancy meals for me for the rest of my trip as well as plenty of amazing dehydrated desserts. This split in styles of resupply allowed me to see both ways in first hand experience. It made me think carefully about what method I wanted to use this time around.

There are definite benefits in both styles. The resupply along the way in stores method allows for more leeway in distance traveled and times to resupply. If you feel like doing a lot of miles a few days in a row you can just hit the next town. If you take a few slow days to revitalize yourself just resupply a little earlier. For most of the trail there are plenty of towns along the trail to hitch a ride into and buy food. This slowly gets to be less true as you get further north along the trail and towns get further away from the trail and further spread out. 

The biggest upside to dehydrating food and getting it in mail drops along the way is the food itself. It is far easier to create a variety of meals with advanced preparation. In a small grocery store there are only so many different things you can buy that doesn't require refrigeration and is somewhat light. The biggest downside of mail drops is the amount of pretrail perpetration that needs to happen. For the last few months I have been dehydrating food at least two days a week. Luckily some family friends loaned me their homemade dehydrater which is much larger then my moms (picture below). 

In that photo I was trying to dry chili. It was the one thing that failed miserably. All I was able to do with the chili was turn 80 dollars into a fabulous quantity of mold. Besides that one failure everything else went great. If anyone is curious the dehydrater was homemade and used a toaster oven heating element as it's heat source. Using the food I prepared I made 20 boxes of food, guessing at about one a week. Inside each of these boxes there is 6 dinners, a bag of cheese powder, a bag of extra veggies, a tube of Nuun, a bag of trail mix and 6 BigSurBars. Big Sur Bars is the maker of the best tasting bar that I have found and is what I will be eating for breakfast. Not only do they make a great bar but when I asked them to sponsor me they actually said yes! If you want to try a bar out there is a link on the right. Here is a picture of what the contents of one of the 20 mail drop boxes actually looks like. 

In under a week I will be hitting the trail. Yesterday I drove from Maine to Washington DC in 12 hours, not a great time interestingly enough, and on Monday I will be heading to Georgia. I wish anyone who started the trail already luck and warmth since I checked the weather on top of Springer Mt using mountain-forecast.com and the wind chill was 5 last night. Stay warm hikers!