Crazy night last night. Asheville bound.
12 years ago
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Fontana stop
I just booked a spot at a new hostel in Asheville from my tent, for when Ashley comes down this week. It's an example of how profoundly technology has changed the trail. I can't imagine thru-hiking in the early 1990s, having to use a payphone to reach out and touch people and being virtually unreachable. Much less hiking the AT in '48, Earl Shaffer's day.
I'll soon be taking a few days off the trail that coincide with Ashley's spring break. Then I'm meeting up with a friend from the class of '09 for the epic challenge presented by the Smokies. I'm thinking of the privy-less shelters, Clingman's Dome, the highest point on the AT, and horrible horrible weather, with cold long nights.
At the NOC I spent a tedious night in an Dutch oven of a little bunkroom. Somebody finally dialed down the thermostat and I slept a while.
In the morning they were out of clean towels at the office so I did town stuff - pick up a maildrop, eat real food - while I waited. I spent a gorgeous day in the sun, studying the movements of kayakers negotiating a slalom course. Kayaking is one skill I'm keen to learn.
Last night I tented next to a rhododendron patch against the phenomenal wind blowing over the ridge at Sassafras Gap. I rebuilt a fire ring and got a fire going. It went out, and I pushed all the sticks and logs together so their still-glowing embers might generate enough heat to reignite flames. Nothing but a trickle of smoke emerged, but the wind's relentless energy eventually did the work for me. I had a good blaze going.
This southern trek has been blessed with campfires. I've started three so far myself.
Today I think I hiked the worst climb so far down here. The trail went up hard from Stecoah Gap to the ridge just before Brown Fork Gap, with some rain thrown in for additional challenge.
The rain didn't stop me from breaking my tenting streak [I've slept in shelters on only three nights so far]. I set up in a gulch below the shelter. Raindrops fell on my footprint and then through the mesh tent before I was able to top it with the rain fly. I toweled the inside down with a handkerchief. It seems ok in here now, just moist around my sleeping pad.
Tomorrow I should make the Fontana "Hilton," a 22-person capacity shelter with developed water and hot showers. Then it's time to find a shuttle for the two-hour drive east to where I'm meeting my girlfriend.
Happy full moon,
Ink
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Sunset from Wayah [wolf] Bald lookout tower
I camped next to this tower, built in the 1930s, last night and woke up and took a picture of the valley.
Then I went back to sleep. When I awoke again at 9:45 the wind was whipping between my tent and the rain fly, causing the fly to flutter.
Wayah Bald elevation = 5,342 feet.
Today I may or may not have seen a ghost.
On my way to the Wayah shelter I looked up and saw a young man running the trail. I let him pass. As he did I noticed what appeared to be tattoos on his cheeks, and on the back of his legs. He wore a hoodie and had no pack, or any equipment. He hopped into the woods to take a shortcut to the shelter.
When I arrived he was there, studying the laminated house map of the area. He was looking for a shortcut to the NOC, he said.
"I need to make it to Nantahala," he said, pronouncing it "Nan-ta-hay-la." "I've run out of food."
I said nothing, held my position. The NOC was 16 miles away; it was already noon. He had holes in his Nikes.
Soon he left and was gone. Strangely, though, nobody else I passed today saw him. So, either he took a road somewhere or he was a ghost.
I came across a lot of people.
Including Grits GA->ME '09. Grits, an older guy from Atlanta who I never really met in the summer, had a huge tent and a grill set up at Burningtown Gap. So I had two hot sauce-doused hamburgers and we chatted about the people we knew in the class of '09.
And today was a day where it was supposed to rain all day but didn't. Bonus.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
What's next on the AT
I'm in Franklin waiting for the afternoon round of shuttling by Ron Haven, owner of the Budget Inn and the Sapphire Inn here and recently the Hiawassee Inn. I had to skip this morning's trips because I needed to mail myself an 11 pound box of food and fuel to Fontana Dam, some 50 miles north and the beginning of the Smokies.
Today is a glorious day. Blue skies and in the 70s. I plan on tenting tonight.
So I upgraded from the Therm-a-Rest Ridge Rest closed-cell sleeping pad to the TrailPro self-inflating pad. I'd forgotten that the Ridge Rest wasn't rated for winter weather. Hopefully the upgrade will lead to more comfortable nights. I also got a second sleeping bag liner, a fleece number that supposedly adds 14 degrees of warmth to my sleeping system.
I had a great time in Franklin. For the last two nights I've gotten to know the class of 2010 much better. I'm adding a blogroll to the right to link to a few of their trail journals.
In a few days' time I'll be at the start of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, at Fontana Dam. Then I'll be taking a few days off with Ashley. Which I'm EXTREMELY excited about.
Later,
Ink
Today is a glorious day. Blue skies and in the 70s. I plan on tenting tonight.
So I upgraded from the Therm-a-Rest Ridge Rest closed-cell sleeping pad to the TrailPro self-inflating pad. I'd forgotten that the Ridge Rest wasn't rated for winter weather. Hopefully the upgrade will lead to more comfortable nights. I also got a second sleeping bag liner, a fleece number that supposedly adds 14 degrees of warmth to my sleeping system.
I had a great time in Franklin. For the last two nights I've gotten to know the class of 2010 much better. I'm adding a blogroll to the right to link to a few of their trail journals.
In a few days' time I'll be at the start of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, at Fontana Dam. Then I'll be taking a few days off with Ashley. Which I'm EXTREMELY excited about.
Later,
Ink
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Trail scenes
[Bly Gap, the NC/GA state line. Afternoon break, March 19. 76.4 miles from Springer, 2,102.7 miles from Katahdin.]
[Mouse line hanging in the Muskrat Creek Shelter, March 20, 79.3 miles from Springer.]
[Water break on the trail, March 22.]
[Hikers' night out [the first social outing of the southern trek so far], Cody's Roadhouse in Franklin, March 22. From left: Allgood, Lightning, Ring Leader, me, Tintin, Monkey and Prophet.]
21 hours in the Carter Gap shelter
An abbreviated retelling of the events of Sunday, March 21
11:30 a.m.
I get to the shelter, nestled in a thicket of trees and rhododendrons at 4,500 feet elevation, after a hard-charging, 3-mile hike from Beech Creek Gap. The Mist of Cold Death has already descended ahead of schedule. The forecast calls for Thunderstorms in the afternoon. Three other hikers are there. One, Allgood, of Kentucky, has his FM radio on the table tuned to NPR in readiness for a weather report. "Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me!" plays.
Three hikers who also camped at Beech Creek Gap, Denver, Dufus and Pebbles, show up and settle in. After an hour or so, I break my sleeping bag out and slide in to get warm. The writing's on the wall.
"I think I'm done," I say, because I don't want to summit Albert Mountain [elev. 5,250 ft.] in a T-storm. I can kind of tell that the other hikers are thinking the same thing. Nevertheless, Allgood and four other hikers head out, while the three I mentioned earlier remain and cook lunch.
Afternoon
[Interior of the Carter Gap Shelter, March 21. My sleeping bag is the orange one.]
I play with my phone, see that the weather says the T-storms aren't due until evening now. Denver and Pebbles string up a tarp along the front of the shelter. As I nap, more and more people find their way to the shelter and mill about on the other side of the tarp to get out of the cold rain. Some pitch tents, a couple claim shelter spots.
Around 5 p.m.
From force of habit, I cook food amid a collection of hikers shuffling around the elevated table in the shelter vestibule. The rain and wind whip around the shelter; I block the wind with a laminated house map. Eating temporarily breaks the lethargy of waiting for night to fall.
Night
A hiker arrives in the evening and sets up underneath the shelter, where a wood platform parallels the shelter floor, because the shelter is too full. Several other people are tenting nearby.
Around 5:30 a.m.
A phone alarm goes off in the shelter. It lasts ten minutes and wakes everyone. I get up to see if I can't squelch it; it's in the very bottom of a pack belonging to someone tenting. The alarm goes away on its own as I'm contemplating tearing everything out of the pack to get to it. I crawl back into my bag.
About 20 minutes later
It goes off again. Anger in the shelter.
"Somebody's going to find their pack in the privy," someone says.
Two hours later
I wake up and see the snow on the ground, like grits in the bowls of dead leaves. I've made a decision: I'm going to get up, get out and make it to Franklin - 16 trail miles and a hitch away - by later that afternoon. Before I leave I distribute the contents of my water bucket, which Denver fetched yesterday. The water is singeing to the skin it's so cold.
I'm the first hiker out. As I round the bend I give a final look back at Carter Gap Shelter, my chance home for 21 hours. Every step north is victory.
11:30 a.m.
I get to the shelter, nestled in a thicket of trees and rhododendrons at 4,500 feet elevation, after a hard-charging, 3-mile hike from Beech Creek Gap. The Mist of Cold Death has already descended ahead of schedule. The forecast calls for Thunderstorms in the afternoon. Three other hikers are there. One, Allgood, of Kentucky, has his FM radio on the table tuned to NPR in readiness for a weather report. "Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me!" plays.
Three hikers who also camped at Beech Creek Gap, Denver, Dufus and Pebbles, show up and settle in. After an hour or so, I break my sleeping bag out and slide in to get warm. The writing's on the wall.
"I think I'm done," I say, because I don't want to summit Albert Mountain [elev. 5,250 ft.] in a T-storm. I can kind of tell that the other hikers are thinking the same thing. Nevertheless, Allgood and four other hikers head out, while the three I mentioned earlier remain and cook lunch.
Afternoon
[Interior of the Carter Gap Shelter, March 21. My sleeping bag is the orange one.]
I play with my phone, see that the weather says the T-storms aren't due until evening now. Denver and Pebbles string up a tarp along the front of the shelter. As I nap, more and more people find their way to the shelter and mill about on the other side of the tarp to get out of the cold rain. Some pitch tents, a couple claim shelter spots.
Around 5 p.m.
From force of habit, I cook food amid a collection of hikers shuffling around the elevated table in the shelter vestibule. The rain and wind whip around the shelter; I block the wind with a laminated house map. Eating temporarily breaks the lethargy of waiting for night to fall.
Night
A hiker arrives in the evening and sets up underneath the shelter, where a wood platform parallels the shelter floor, because the shelter is too full. Several other people are tenting nearby.
Around 5:30 a.m.
A phone alarm goes off in the shelter. It lasts ten minutes and wakes everyone. I get up to see if I can't squelch it; it's in the very bottom of a pack belonging to someone tenting. The alarm goes away on its own as I'm contemplating tearing everything out of the pack to get to it. I crawl back into my bag.
About 20 minutes later
It goes off again. Anger in the shelter.
"Somebody's going to find their pack in the privy," someone says.
Two hours later
I wake up and see the snow on the ground, like grits in the bowls of dead leaves. I've made a decision: I'm going to get up, get out and make it to Franklin - 16 trail miles and a hitch away - by later that afternoon. Before I leave I distribute the contents of my water bucket, which Denver fetched yesterday. The water is singeing to the skin it's so cold.
I'm the first hiker out. As I round the bend I give a final look back at Carter Gap Shelter, my chance home for 21 hours. Every step north is victory.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Good morning, North Carolina
[The gnarled oak at Bly Gap marks the line btw Georgia and North Carolina, March 20]
I camped out here last night. After some coffee and journaling I'm off hiking, past Standing Indian Mountain.
I'm glad I went to the Wild Game dinner at McConnell Memorial Baptist Church in Hiawassee. The locals were friendly and I got to try a frog leg. Serving suggestion: Douse in lemon juice. I had two and a half cups of sweet tea to wash down dinner.
The message was definitely Baptist but not in a tent revival way: God is "standing in the road, waiting for you to come home."
I love slow mornings on the trail. I aim to enjoy this while I can.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Why I love zero days
I picked up my first care package of my GA->ME hike, a personal favorite since 1989: Homemade no-bake cookies!
They came with instructions to share.
Besos, a. s. :)
And the Hiawassee Inn attendant a few minutes ago gave me a ticket to the McConnell Memorial Baptist Church 2010 Wild Game Supper, to be held tonight, down the street.
"You ever eat bear meat?" was how that convo started.
"No, " I answered.
"You ever eat deer meat?"
"A few days ago," I said (the venison stew at Blaze of Glory was the only time I can recall).
I'm not caught by surprise by this, because hikers last summer told me about religion and trail maj coming intertwined in the South. I'm praying for a low-key pitch, but this being a Baptist event, I'm expecting a hectoring.
The German mother-son team I mentioned a while ago beat the odds and made it here. Good for them!
Cheers,
Ink
Photo dump, March 15-16
With the change to daylight savings time and more warm, sunny days, I'm getting in more miles and taking more photos.
[Campfire at Blue Mountain shelter, March 15. iTrod, Kate, Emily, Allgood, guy from NC whose name I didn't get, other guy. The shelter stands on a mountain at 3,900 feet elevation; lots of wind. Couple of industrious hikers found a tarp near the privy and shielded half the open face of the shelter with it.]
[Bear bags hanging from bear cables at Blue Mountain shelter. The cables take the trial and error out of hanging your food in the trees at night, which is good.]
[Eastward vista from the summit of Rocky Mountain, elev. 4,017 ft., 52 miles north of Springer, March 16. Nice day!]
[Campfire at Blue Mountain shelter, March 15. iTrod, Kate, Emily, Allgood, guy from NC whose name I didn't get, other guy. The shelter stands on a mountain at 3,900 feet elevation; lots of wind. Couple of industrious hikers found a tarp near the privy and shielded half the open face of the shelter with it.]
[Bear bags hanging from bear cables at Blue Mountain shelter. The cables take the trial and error out of hanging your food in the trees at night, which is good.]
[Eastward vista from the summit of Rocky Mountain, elev. 4,017 ft., 52 miles north of Springer, March 16. Nice day!]
Day 113 on the trail: Zero day in Hiawassee
Two nights ago, I camped out in a gorge ringed by a USFS service road, out of the wind and just six miles from Dicks Creek Gap. It was just me and a couple and their dog.
They stayed in their tent while I, after arriving in the evening on the back of a 13.4-mile trek, went about the series of necessary camp tasks that comes with hiking the AT: Get water, hang line for bear bag, change some clothes, set up tent and set up camp stove. Then make dinner, brush teeth, hang bear bag. Next, hang laundry to dry, gather things, make bed. Efficiency grows with repetition.
Most people I have been seeing at camp this past week were staying at the Tray Mountain shelter, six miles south, but I wanted to be close enough to be able catch the morning shuttle into Hiawassee, mainly because my food supply was down to fig newtons and grape jelly, and a pack of Lil' Debbies that Two Dogs [AT '07] handed out as trail magic at Indian Grave Gap [just before Tray Mtn.]
Which is how it should be. If you're doing it right, you're supposed to be out of food whenever you hit your next resupply point.
I set my alarm and started hiking before dawn on Wednesday, jamming on my iPod and rocking my headlamp up Kelly Knob [elev. 4,276 ft.]. New band to check out, if you haven't: Glasvegas, of Glasgow, Scotland.
[View of the rising sun from the AT just past Kelly Knob, northern Georgia, March 17.]
I got to the road at 9 a.m. At 9:30, Ron Haven, whom Baltimore Jack called the "Donald Trump of the AT" because he owns three hiker-friendly hotels in Franklin, NC and just bought the Hiawassee Inn, pulled up in a yellow short bus to drop off some hikers and pick new ones up. I jumped on board. He's a friendly Southern fellow who makes our lives easier down here.
So now I'm in Hiawassee. I've already resupplied [I bought some dried veggies and a little jar of pimento, so a new lunch wrap recipe is imminent]. Later I'm going to cover my calves and my left heel in muscle cream and relax my legs. Ashley said last night my Achilles problem is a sympathy injury for David Beckham, whose Achilles rupture was heard 'round the world this week.
There's only about eight miles left of Georgia; so far, I've hiked 76.3 miles. That's Week 1 behind me!
Hiawassee:
[Side of a Main St. auto body shop in Hiawassee. Signs of Bible Belt culture abound: No taverns, Christian speech prominently displayed.]
They stayed in their tent while I, after arriving in the evening on the back of a 13.4-mile trek, went about the series of necessary camp tasks that comes with hiking the AT: Get water, hang line for bear bag, change some clothes, set up tent and set up camp stove. Then make dinner, brush teeth, hang bear bag. Next, hang laundry to dry, gather things, make bed. Efficiency grows with repetition.
Most people I have been seeing at camp this past week were staying at the Tray Mountain shelter, six miles south, but I wanted to be close enough to be able catch the morning shuttle into Hiawassee, mainly because my food supply was down to fig newtons and grape jelly, and a pack of Lil' Debbies that Two Dogs [AT '07] handed out as trail magic at Indian Grave Gap [just before Tray Mtn.]
Which is how it should be. If you're doing it right, you're supposed to be out of food whenever you hit your next resupply point.
I set my alarm and started hiking before dawn on Wednesday, jamming on my iPod and rocking my headlamp up Kelly Knob [elev. 4,276 ft.]. New band to check out, if you haven't: Glasvegas, of Glasgow, Scotland.
[View of the rising sun from the AT just past Kelly Knob, northern Georgia, March 17.]
I got to the road at 9 a.m. At 9:30, Ron Haven, whom Baltimore Jack called the "Donald Trump of the AT" because he owns three hiker-friendly hotels in Franklin, NC and just bought the Hiawassee Inn, pulled up in a yellow short bus to drop off some hikers and pick new ones up. I jumped on board. He's a friendly Southern fellow who makes our lives easier down here.
So now I'm in Hiawassee. I've already resupplied [I bought some dried veggies and a little jar of pimento, so a new lunch wrap recipe is imminent]. Later I'm going to cover my calves and my left heel in muscle cream and relax my legs. Ashley said last night my Achilles problem is a sympathy injury for David Beckham, whose Achilles rupture was heard 'round the world this week.
There's only about eight miles left of Georgia; so far, I've hiked 76.3 miles. That's Week 1 behind me!
Hiawassee:
[Side of a Main St. auto body shop in Hiawassee. Signs of Bible Belt culture abound: No taverns, Christian speech prominently displayed.]
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Next up on the AT
Christian youth from a Savannah bible college are serving hamburgers for breakfast outside the Walasi-Yi.
The next stretch of trail will take me 30-some miles to Hiawassee. I'm going to go extra slow because my left Achilles is inflamed. Hopefully I'm there on Wednesday.
The cookout last night? Called the Blaze of Glory party unofficially by the staff here, it celebrates the beginning of the thru-hiking season. The food was incredible: Barbecue chicken, venison stew, jumbalaya, red velvet cake, etc. etc.
I was the 202nd thru-hiker to register at Amicalola Falls State Park visitors center. I don't know how the people who start at Springer are counted. But this week will definitely see hundreds of additional hikers start the trail.
The next stretch of trail will take me 30-some miles to Hiawassee. I'm going to go extra slow because my left Achilles is inflamed. Hopefully I'm there on Wednesday.
The cookout last night? Called the Blaze of Glory party unofficially by the staff here, it celebrates the beginning of the thru-hiking season. The food was incredible: Barbecue chicken, venison stew, jumbalaya, red velvet cake, etc. etc.
I was the 202nd thru-hiker to register at Amicalola Falls State Park visitors center. I don't know how the people who start at Springer are counted. But this week will definitely see hundreds of additional hikers start the trail.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Photo dump
[Me at the start to the Approach Trail, March 10. Josh, Leigh's husband and co-owner/operator of Hiker Hostel in Dahlonega, drove a bunch of us up Springer Mountain in his Suburban, swerving through deep, muddy ruts as we passed by Army Ranger cadets. The Frank B. Merrill training camp is close to, nay, right next to, the trail in Georgia.]
[Section of Georgia trail. One of the rare moments it was safe to get out the camera.]
[Evidence of a controlled burn.]
The first few days...
...have been rainy. Yesterday I counted three unique storms on my way from Gooch Mountain shelter to the Walasi-Yi outdoor center at Neel's Gap.
There was still ice at the top of Blood Mountain. I took a Gatorade break near the Blood Mountain shelter, a frightening stone structure with plastic sheets blowing in the empty windowsills. Sloshing down the two miles of downhill, soaked head to toe, gave me a flashback to when I headed into Rutland last summer. This time my electronics were still intact at the end of the day.
Another memory, from when I was a newbie last summer: Sitting under the Port Clinton pavilion on a June morning, I'm talking about how I need to get a pack cover. It's been raining quite a bit. Half Moon says, "You don't have a pack cover?" giving me a skeptical look. I can appreciate his point of view now.
On my first day, I saw a hiker waiting at the bottom of the 604 steps straight up Amicalola Falls with his 70 pound pack, as though he were waiting for it to sprout legs and hike itself. Further on I passed a big fat man in a big fat pack hiking in flip flops. At the first shelter, where I ate lunch, two guys were in their sleeping bags in the afternoon, and one of them said they'd run out of fuel. He seemed to feel aggrieved that I didn't offer to cook them both dinner; I left them to their misery. Some people are just helpless.
Other people, like a German woman and her 12-year-old son who started with over-heavy packs, have been doing everything right and possess the spirit of self-reliance, but they just have too much stuff. People like them will find help and good advice and come back stronger.
At Neel's Gap the staff is renowned for giving newbie hikers the "shakedown," where they weigh your most likely overweight pack, go through it discarding anything they see as frivolous and set you straight. I got the "You're looking trim already" seal of approval when I walked in the door yesterday, so that's cool.
I'm splitting up a cabin with Cheeks and Mojave Rain, a couple who met on their '07 thru-hike, got married, and are now practicing for their PCT '10 hike. I met them on my first night at Stover Creek shelter.
Last night we had hiker feast in the hostel here at the Walasi-Yi, Mexican cuisine prepared by Baltimore Jack and Miss Janet. Baltimore Jack is something of a trail legend, having completed a ridiculous number of thru-hikes [7? 8?].
[Miss Janet and Baltimore Jack, March 12. Baltimore Jack is wearing a T-shirt that says "Bill Bryson is a pansy ass." Enormously helpful guy.]
Cheeks scavenged the hiker box and emerged with a gem:
[Cheeks AT '07, PCT '10 with a sweet 1980s-style headlamp, Walasi-Yi.]
And, view from the cabin. It's a good deal. The hostel here is a bit of a dungeon and a lot of hobo-looking people have congregated there.
[View from cabin porch at Neel's Gap, March 13.]
Now I'm going to go read Winton Porter's book before the trails kickoff shindig this evening. There's also a huge cat downstairs and a lot of dogs roaming through the outfitter store that look petable.
There was still ice at the top of Blood Mountain. I took a Gatorade break near the Blood Mountain shelter, a frightening stone structure with plastic sheets blowing in the empty windowsills. Sloshing down the two miles of downhill, soaked head to toe, gave me a flashback to when I headed into Rutland last summer. This time my electronics were still intact at the end of the day.
Another memory, from when I was a newbie last summer: Sitting under the Port Clinton pavilion on a June morning, I'm talking about how I need to get a pack cover. It's been raining quite a bit. Half Moon says, "You don't have a pack cover?" giving me a skeptical look. I can appreciate his point of view now.
On my first day, I saw a hiker waiting at the bottom of the 604 steps straight up Amicalola Falls with his 70 pound pack, as though he were waiting for it to sprout legs and hike itself. Further on I passed a big fat man in a big fat pack hiking in flip flops. At the first shelter, where I ate lunch, two guys were in their sleeping bags in the afternoon, and one of them said they'd run out of fuel. He seemed to feel aggrieved that I didn't offer to cook them both dinner; I left them to their misery. Some people are just helpless.
Other people, like a German woman and her 12-year-old son who started with over-heavy packs, have been doing everything right and possess the spirit of self-reliance, but they just have too much stuff. People like them will find help and good advice and come back stronger.
At Neel's Gap the staff is renowned for giving newbie hikers the "shakedown," where they weigh your most likely overweight pack, go through it discarding anything they see as frivolous and set you straight. I got the "You're looking trim already" seal of approval when I walked in the door yesterday, so that's cool.
I'm splitting up a cabin with Cheeks and Mojave Rain, a couple who met on their '07 thru-hike, got married, and are now practicing for their PCT '10 hike. I met them on my first night at Stover Creek shelter.
Last night we had hiker feast in the hostel here at the Walasi-Yi, Mexican cuisine prepared by Baltimore Jack and Miss Janet. Baltimore Jack is something of a trail legend, having completed a ridiculous number of thru-hikes [7? 8?].
[Miss Janet and Baltimore Jack, March 12. Baltimore Jack is wearing a T-shirt that says "Bill Bryson is a pansy ass." Enormously helpful guy.]
Cheeks scavenged the hiker box and emerged with a gem:
[Cheeks AT '07, PCT '10 with a sweet 1980s-style headlamp, Walasi-Yi.]
And, view from the cabin. It's a good deal. The hostel here is a bit of a dungeon and a lot of hobo-looking people have congregated there.
[View from cabin porch at Neel's Gap, March 13.]
Now I'm going to go read Winton Porter's book before the trails kickoff shindig this evening. There's also a huge cat downstairs and a lot of dogs roaming through the outfitter store that look petable.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Jellytellarito!
It's been a rainy couple of days on the trail.
The picture is of my socks smoking in the Stover Creek shelter, where I slept last night, just two miles north of Springer Mountain.
At approximately 2:47 p. m. on Wednesday, I hiked past white blaze No.1 of the AT.
Heading for a party - trail maestro and memoirist Winton Porter's birthday - at Neel's Gap tomorrow.
And the trail so far is heaven. Smooth ups and downs and every step on soft earth.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The journey begins...again
Dahlonega, Georgia, the Atlanta-tourist enclave I find myself in the day before I start my GA->WV AT hike, feels a world apart from say, Millinocket, Maine.
Which it is. More than 2,000 miles of Appalachian Trail separate the two towns.
Coincidentally, the owners of the hostel where I'm staying tonight and the owners of the AT Lodge in Millinocket are bffs. Leigh at Hiker Hostel told me on the way from the Gainesville, GA train station to the hostel how the Millinocket couple [who gave me and the hikers I summitted Katahdin with a ride out of Baxter State Park] helped her and her husband get through the first couple of thru-hiker seasons, in 2004-06.
Here's me today:
[Me, airing out the tent for the first time since September, Hiker Hostel, Dahlonega, Georgia, March 9, 2010]
I slept last night in 30-60 minute intervals aboard the Amtrak Crescent [NYC to New Orleans] train. I woke up this morning to see red dirt, shacks and a big prison rolling by, by dawn's early light.
The air here feels different. I just ate a pimento cheeseburger.
The well-staffed and amenity-rich hostel is full of folks, and has been for two weeks, they told me. It's fun for me to size the newbies up.
[The mountains among us, from a hill above the hostel]
The Georgia section of the Appalachian Trail courses along the southern end of the Blue Ridge, into the Nantahala range, in what was for thousands and thousands of years Cherokee country.
My favorite explorer, Hernando de Soto, and his men were the first to meet the Cherokee, in the 16th century. The Cherokee and European settlers got along until the Revolutionary War. Relations soured when the Americans waged a slash-and-burn campaign to intimidate the Cherokee from fighting on the side of the British. The Cherokee's story virtually ends with the Trail of Tears march in the 1800s to Oklahoma reservation country.
[Statue of Cherokee in front of the Lumpkin County Courthouse]
Dahlonega claimed fame thereafter as a Gold Rush town.
See:
I have to go because the library is closing. But I'll be back very soon. Happy trails!
-Ink
Which it is. More than 2,000 miles of Appalachian Trail separate the two towns.
Coincidentally, the owners of the hostel where I'm staying tonight and the owners of the AT Lodge in Millinocket are bffs. Leigh at Hiker Hostel told me on the way from the Gainesville, GA train station to the hostel how the Millinocket couple [who gave me and the hikers I summitted Katahdin with a ride out of Baxter State Park] helped her and her husband get through the first couple of thru-hiker seasons, in 2004-06.
Here's me today:
I slept last night in 30-60 minute intervals aboard the Amtrak Crescent [NYC to New Orleans] train. I woke up this morning to see red dirt, shacks and a big prison rolling by, by dawn's early light.
The air here feels different. I just ate a pimento cheeseburger.
The well-staffed and amenity-rich hostel is full of folks, and has been for two weeks, they told me. It's fun for me to size the newbies up.
[The mountains among us, from a hill above the hostel]
The Georgia section of the Appalachian Trail courses along the southern end of the Blue Ridge, into the Nantahala range, in what was for thousands and thousands of years Cherokee country.
My favorite explorer, Hernando de Soto, and his men were the first to meet the Cherokee, in the 16th century. The Cherokee and European settlers got along until the Revolutionary War. Relations soured when the Americans waged a slash-and-burn campaign to intimidate the Cherokee from fighting on the side of the British. The Cherokee's story virtually ends with the Trail of Tears march in the 1800s to Oklahoma reservation country.
[Statue of Cherokee in front of the Lumpkin County Courthouse]
Dahlonega claimed fame thereafter as a Gold Rush town.
See:
I have to go because the library is closing. But I'll be back very soon. Happy trails!
-Ink
Monday, March 8, 2010
Union Station
Breakfast at Union Station, watching the working lives of DC flow by. I caught an early ride to the metro with Matt on his way to work. Once it's warmer I'll meander over to the Smithsonian. They have an Earl V. Shafer exhibit at American History, I think.
I had the best home cooking last night at Matt and Maggie's while watching the Oscars. It was a perfect impromptu sendoff.
Already I'm missing Ashley. But I know I'll see her in a few weeks when she comes to spring break with me in the South. It'll be a nice complement to our bright days in Vermont last summer.
Eggs are getting cold, must go.
Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. Get it now.
I had the best home cooking last night at Matt and Maggie's while watching the Oscars. It was a perfect impromptu sendoff.
Already I'm missing Ashley. But I know I'll see her in a few weeks when she comes to spring break with me in the South. It'll be a nice complement to our bright days in Vermont last summer.
Eggs are getting cold, must go.
Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. Get it now.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
The top AT memoirs
According to a recent poll I started on Whiteblaze.net, the top five AT thru-hiking memoirs are:
AWOL on the Appalachian Trail recounts a middle-aged engineer's 2003 thru-hike. Published 2006; 236 pages.
Walkin' on the Happy Side of Misery is a retired marine and four-time thru-hiker's account of his first thru hike in 1990. Published in 2001 [originally self-publihsed]; 554 pages.
As Far As the Eye Can See recounts a 1979 thru hike. Originally published in 1990; 192 pages.
A Walk in the Woods is a travel writer's tale of a botched thru-hike in the late 1990s. Published in 1999; 274 pages.
The diversity in these memoirs isn't in the authors, almost all of whom wrote or hiked and wrote as middle-aged, white men, but in the eras of the hikes - 1948, before anyone knew about the trail; 1979, the first wave of the modern thru-hiker and then through the 1990s and early 2000s.
- Walkin' on the Happy Side of Misery, J.R. Tate [8 votes]
- AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, David Miller [6]
- A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson [3]
- As Far As the Eye Can See, David Brill, tied with
- Walking with Spring, Earl V. Shaffer [2 each]
AWOL on the Appalachian Trail recounts a middle-aged engineer's 2003 thru-hike. Published 2006; 236 pages.
Walkin' on the Happy Side of Misery is a retired marine and four-time thru-hiker's account of his first thru hike in 1990. Published in 2001 [originally self-publihsed]; 554 pages.
As Far As the Eye Can See recounts a 1979 thru hike. Originally published in 1990; 192 pages.
A Walk in the Woods is a travel writer's tale of a botched thru-hike in the late 1990s. Published in 1999; 274 pages.
The diversity in these memoirs isn't in the authors, almost all of whom wrote or hiked and wrote as middle-aged, white men, but in the eras of the hikes - 1948, before anyone knew about the trail; 1979, the first wave of the modern thru-hiker and then through the 1990s and early 2000s.
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