People's Republic of Walk

My NEW BLOG

2011-06-06T13:08:00.000-04:00

Go My new blog.

It's switching gears a bit; a new form of fun.

J

Fwd: Last Florida morning

2011-03-12T09:18:00.001-05:00

Er, see below:

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

----- Forwarded message -----
From: "jeremyhauck@hotmail.com" <jeremyhauck@hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, Mar 12, 2011 8:59 am
Subject: Last Florida morning
To: "jeremyehauck" <jeremyehauck.pratrail@gmail.com>

Spring Break, alas, is over very, very soon. I'm getting ready for my day of travel (I have a layover in
ATL) by cramming pancakes and sausages down my gullet.

A year ago today I was waking up in my tent, getting ready to hit the trail and cross Blood Mountain in a cold rainstorm. Happy days, them.

I have decided to keep this blog dedicated to the AT and all things hiking, and to start a new blog on Philly, grad school, etc. and link to it from here.

Pennsylvania tonight.

Apancalypse now!

-jh

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

NEWS: This blog will be different

2011-03-03T17:01:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking long and hard about what to do here, now that all that hiking is done. There will be more trails, but in the meantime, there's life.

And I want to blog about parts of that that I feel like blogging about.

I'm thinking a broader set of concerns will be my topic here in the months to come. Certainly not as epic as climbing Mt. Katahdin, or going to bed in a rainy shelter in the woods in Georgia after a long time away from the trail, or doing the half-gallon challenge.

Instead, things like what it's like attending writing school after years away from Miami (Ohio), living in a big city for the second time (last was Prague, 2005-06), and eating brunch with my girlfriend at different hotspots all the time (cause brunch is a big deal in Philly, and for me personally).

So I hope to be uploading the first new posts and doing a little bit of redesign while I'm on Spring Break in Florida. Plane leaves at 6 a.m. tomorrow.

Cheers,

JH

Coming soon:

2010-10-11T21:44:00.000-04:00

a final data sheet on my hike. And then I have to figure out what I want to do with this blog.

As you can see from the sparsity of posts I've not been around here much. Grad school is occupying!

-ink

I'll see you in September

2010-09-01T02:17:00.000-04:00

New posts coming soon, guys, I promise!

I've got acres of words, stories and images to share from the trail, circa northern Virginia to Pennsylvania and then another round of New England hiking. At the same time I've recently [very recently] moved to South Philly to begin grad school. This has meant I've been busy with moving and setting up a life, however temporary, here, in this teeming urban environment. I swear there's but one tree, a sapling, on my entire block. Quite different from the Trail.

My absences will be shorter.

-Ink, the once and future

Upper Goose Pond

2010-07-20T13:14:00.001-04:00

[The cabin at Upper Goose Pond.]

I got off the bus in Lee, Ma. and stepped straight into a high-powered storm. I sprinted for cover but not before hitting a parking lot flash flood that soaked me to my calves. A taxi brought me to the trailhead and a 1.6 mile southbound hike brought me here, where a nice family is serving as caretaker.

Zero day today, pancakes for breakfast and Dalton tomorrow. Then a 20-mile-a-day dash to Manchester, Vt. by Sunday.

Warm welcome back to the Trail

2010-07-19T21:36:00.000-04:00

[Sudden thunderstorm hits Lee, Massachusetts, July 19.]

Now boarding: the Vermonter

2010-07-19T09:40:00.001-04:00

After like a month off in Pennsylvania, during which I got my grad school future that much more sorted out, I'm traveling trailwards again.

Here commences MA->NH '10!

I'm hoping for new memories, new friends and to catch up with my friends from this spring. Surely I'll be taking it easy because of the heat-I'm built for cool temps-and I'd like to savor lovely Vermont and rugged New Hampshire.

Harper's, 6/6/10

2010-07-03T13:01:00.000-04:00

Thru-hiker! Technically, at least. I did the 2,175 miles in under a year. Which makes it so.

[The ATC hq, the place I started a year ago.]

[Somebody toss me the mic!]

I briefly entertained the idea of re-hiking WV->ME and clock 3,000 miles, completing a traditional thru-hike. But, it got too hot, I have too much business to attend to to be ready for grad school [less than two months away!] and I require novelty to drive me. So I'm off the trail. I am coming back to hike a section I'm keen to hike, and shortly. That would be Dalton, Mass. to at least Rutland, but perhaps to Gorham or Andover.

I'll keep you in the loop. And I'm going to add more posts about upper VA->upper PA.

Happy 4th! This time last year I was celebrating at The Mayor's House in Unionville, NJ. Remember that?

Palmerton once again

2010-06-24T14:40:00.001-04:00

I've hiked beyond Harper's Ferry, beyond the half-gallon challenge and Duncannon to Palmerton, PA, which longtime readers of this blog will know became a special place for me roughly this same time one year ago.

I'm not sure how much hiking I've got in me today as I'm feeling much under the weather, despite a zero at my girlfriend's family's house yesterday and several days off this week.

I'm still alive, still itching to keep you up to speed with my journey and still thinking of keeping hiking north. At the same time I've got a lot else going on, not least of which is preparing for grad school in the fall, at Temple University.

Nowadays I walk the Trail content knowing that I'm a thru hiker, with the whole 2,175 miles of the AT done in under a calendar year.

To be continued...

June 6: V GA->WV Day

2010-06-06T07:58:00.001-04:00

[Bears Den Hostel, northern Virginia. An amazing place built in the 1930s. Of all the hostels on the Trail, only this one reminds me of the kind of hostels that are travelers' oases in Europe.]

Less than three months after starting in Georgia, I am within a matter of hours of hiking today from reaching Harper's Ferry, W.Va., at 19 miles from where I'm sitting right now.

Time to get another picture of me for the books at the ATC!

And I'm not stopping. I've decided to continue at least as far as Duncannon, Pa. There will be a viewing party there for the USA-England World Cup match in six days.

Update for Sunday, May 30: Waynesboro

2010-05-30T01:04:00.000-04:00

So I'm in Waynesboro, Va. staying at Grace Lutheran Church.

The church has us in the basement on cots. They have two computers and a big screen tv for us in the lounge, hot showers and other amenities.

I hear there are like three snorers in the common room tonight. So I'm either going to couch it in here or use the earplugs that Cheeseburger gave me.

I got in today at noon, headed straight for Ming Garden and then straight to Tailgate, a bar and grill, to watch USA take on Turkey in soccer. I bought a used Jack London book - "John Barleycorn" - and resupplied at Kroger. It's a great town; I wish I had time to zero here.

But I must hike on. I'm at mile 853 from Springer. Which means I'm roughly 150 miles from Harper's Ferry. Which is so, so hard to believe, that I've hiked from there to Katahdin and then from Georgia to there, and it's all coming to an end so soon - in the next week and a half. Ten days!!! Tomorrow, I begin the 100-mile Shenandoah National Park portion of the AT, renowned for its forgiving terrain and wayside lunch counters. After the Shenandoahs I'm practically there.

I'm having a lot of mixed feelings being this close to the end of my 2,179 miles of hiking the Appalachian Trail. As I wrote in the register of the Priest Mountain Shelter, this trip took on more importance than I ever thought it would when I was planning it. Now I can hardly imagine my life without the Trail.

It's late. I'm off to bed, dreaming of AYCE blueberry pancakes.

Crossing the James River, Bluff Mountain

2010-05-30T00:40:00.001-04:00

May 24, morning, Thunder Hill Shelter. It was raining hard outside the shelter, and had been during the night, too. Nobody wanted to go out in it. It was me, an older guy from Kentucky named Kentucky, an older guy from Germany named Eddy and a girl named Cowgirl and her dog. I felt sticky all over from sweat that hadn't dried off of me.

Of course, I hiked, as one does out here on the Trail. I've never yet zeroed at a shelter [though I neroed way back in lower NC].

I don't remember much of the day other than that I had NPR on the radio for a bit and told Cowgirl the good news, but she didn't know what NPR was. I definitely ate a lot of snack food for lunch at a crossing with a forest service road.

The James River, at 775 miles from Springer, has to be a highlight. Like the Susquehanna, the Hudson, the Kennebec, the Housatonic, the Nantahala and the Tye, one remembers the James, because rivers always stand out.

[The AT crosses the James River on a footbridge. May 24.]

You're supposed to jump off the bridge at a certain point and swim. But I was alone and why bother? After the bridge I hit Johns Hollow Shelter at about 5 p.m. Tents were up, a fire was going and people were hanging out for the night. I cooked mac and cheese. All the while I was debating, do I hike, do I stay? In the end, I hiked. It's hard for me to waste daylight when I'm full of energy.

So up the hill I went. Across Little and Big Rocky Row and Saddle Gap I was treated to beautiful evening ridge walking, with amazing vistas. A grouse fluttered across the trail and I wondered if I'd see more wildlife.

[Three ridges tapering from Apple Orchard Mountain into the James River, May 24.]

At 9 p.m. I hiked to the summit of Bluff Mountain, about which my companion book has this to say:

"Site of a monument to four-year-old Ottie Cline Powell. In the fall of 1890, Ottie went into the woods to gather firewood for his schoolhouse and never returned. His body was found five months later on top of this mountain..."

I shone my headlamp on the memorial marking the exact spot where they found his body. People had left stones stacked on the monument, which is pretty common for monuments along the Trail. I scanned around for a stone to place there but couldn't easily find one and moved out of the woods to the summit. The remnants of a firetower remained [Earl Shaffer camped there in 1948, I would later read]. I left my girlfriend a message as a fog bank rolled up and obscured the faraway lights of some town in the valley.

The moon was full. "OK, I've had enough of this," I thought, and hurried off to hike down the hill. I got a chill down my neck walking the switchbacks, broke into an all-out run. Sweat pouring off me, I realized how terrible it might be if I rounded a dark corner and literally ran into an unsuspecting bear, so I started chanting like a crazed Marine - "Hoo-Hah!"

I ended my night at Punchbowl Shelter, where I set up my tent. At about 11 p.m. I was startled by a limb crashing to the ground in the woods behind me [I was the furthest tent away from the shelter]. Not taking any chances on it being a coincidence, I went out in my boxer shorts to hang a bear bag. It was the end of a 25-mile day.

Hiking as a couple!

2010-05-30T00:01:00.002-04:00

From Lamberts Meadow I hiked 10 miles north, went back to the Howard Johnson and promptly checked into room 301. I did some eating at Pizza Hut, did some blogging in the hotel lobby and waited for my girlfriend, Ashley, who was driving down from Pennsylvania to do a section with me.

We'd been planning this for months. In fact, we took our first trip to REI together in the winter to get her a pack to begin the gearing up process. And she'd been following up ever since.

She got there that night. The next day we resupplied at Kroger and went back to the room to get the "hurricane" of food and equipment funneled into our packs. We were off to do some hiking.

Hiking with a partner is something I find I increasingly enjoy. We sang duets, and Ashley, a music teacher and former pop singer in her high school days, taught me about harmonies. She had me hum a 'C' note, and then she added her own voice in harmony. "Hear how it's pretty?" she asked, leading the way up the trail.

[Ashley dismounting a stile, just north of Daleville, May 20.]

[Cow! May 20.]

We played "Six Degrees," which I rocked at. We watched a train go by. We finished our first day as a trail couple at Wilson Creek Shelter, an 11-mile day, and set up the tent. Having Ashley in the tent made me sleep all the more soundly.

In the morning, we took it slow. I gots to have my coffee.

This part of the trail wound back and forth across the Blue Ridge Parkway in places where we could peer over the edge of the ridge on both sides and see into West Virginia, where the Allegheny range paralleled us, or onto the Peaks of Otter, a resort-encrusted mountain jutting to the east.

[I discovered a curious artifact on the trail very close to the Blue Ridge Parkway.]

After a long day [14 miles] we tented again at Cove Mountain Shelter. Ashley was out of it until we had dinner.

On our third day together we took it real easy. We hiked to Jennings Creek, walked a bit up the road and hitched a ride in the back of a pickup truck to Middle Creek Campground and went to the country store for some hot food and cold, carbonated drinks. We played air hockey in the store's "arcade" and then shot hoops at the basketball court. By court, I mean a 20 ft by 20 ft paved square with a hoop. As a bonus, the register was one of the rare ones to contain entries from the class of 2009. It was nice to read that people I've hiked with had a good time there a year earlier.

Afterward we hiked the mile or so back to the trail and started climbing. The sky opened up and dumped a torrent of fresh rain on us. It seemed like minutes later the storm was done and we were nearing Bryant Ridge Shelter, our intended destination.

"Getting in at 4:30, just like the old men do it," I said. The deluxe two-story shelter loomed above the creek and trail. And as a matter of fact four old men already occupied it.

There was so much room that I pitched my tent, without the rain fly, on the top level. Two young hikers, T-Funk and Rock and Roll, showed up later and set up across the room on the same floor. As we bedded down, a long, drawn-out fart ripped through the country for old men down below. It was material for comedy among us younger ones in the morning. Ashley suggested, in the register, a fireman's pole or a slide into a ball pit for getting down from the top level of the shelter.

The next day Ashley got to climb all morning as we made our way up to Floyd Mountain. It was 1,000 feet up in the damp hot air. And we had to hurry, because we had to meet a shuttle back to Daleville at noon where the Blue Ridge Parkway connects with a short side trail from Cornelius Creek Shelter. I ran the last half of a mile or so and bade the shuttle man wait, and soon we were headed south on the parkway. We spotted a wild turkey - the only one I've seen so far - on the side of the road.

We took strong advantage of Ashley's car and drove south from Daleville 20 minutes to Catawba, home of the legendary Homeplace restaurant. The restaurant is open only Thursday through Sunday - I'd missed it because of Trail Days. We put our names on the list and waited while a man with a Virginia drawl called out parties on the outdoor loudspeakers. Lots of people wore church clothes, it being Sunday. The restaurant's simplicity is its strong suit. It's AYCE, and the menu consists of fried chicken, country ham, roast beef and a smattering of fixins, including biscuits and some insanely good apple butter.

I felt rejuvenated by food.

[Me and Ashley at the Homeplace, Catawba, Va. The shot was at the end of a series on self timer, hence the pose. May 23.]

After resupplying at the Daleville Kroger again, Ashley drove me to the side trail to Cornelius Creek Shelter, where we parted.

I thought about stopping for the night, but changed my mind and summited Apple Orchard Mountain [elev. 4,225 ft] on my way to Thunder Hill Shelter, arriving just after 8 p.m.

After Trail Days: Daleville zero, trail maj and McAffee Knob

2010-05-29T23:11:00.001-04:00

I had a Trail Days hangover.

Instead of resuming my hike immediately after Trail Days at mile 693 from Springer, I got a ride from Zipper [AT '09] 20+ further up to Daleville, where the AT encounters a bustling Interstate junction. I split a room at the Howard Johnson, next to the trail, with a hiker named Shorts. Sipping beer and watching tv in the A/C after two days of sipping beer in Tent City and Damascus relaxed me miraculously. And then I zeroed the next day because I really needed to catch up on this blog. It was raining buckets all day anyway.

But I was in the process of laying my clothes out to dry on the sidewalk outside my room when I glanced into the adjacent room and saw some dude. "Wait a sec," I thought, recognizing the Fila hat that Tintin had bought in Abingdon before a group of us went to the movies. It was Tintin, Fredo and Tornado, slowly getting ready to hike out. They'd abstained from Trail Days in vain, it appeared.

On the day I was due to hike I was buying coffee and a Danish at the coffee shop next to the outfitter in Daleville, in the plaza down the road from the HoJo.

"Excuse me," a young man who looked likely to be a Virginia Tech student [Blacksburg is very close] said. "Can I pay for you, sir?"

I was momentarily speechless. The barista meanwhile swiped my card. "Can you cancel that?" he said. We shook hands, exchanged names. He asked how the Trail was. I left feeling blessed.

I got a ride back down to where I was on the trail from Creepy, who was returning a rental car to Pearisburg.

It was May 18, a rainy day on which to hit McAffee Knob, one of the most iconic landmarks on the AT. Hikers put almost as much effort into McAffee Knob photos as Katahdin ones.

Being on my own again, I set my camera to timer and hurried over there. Here's what I came up with:

[Me at McAffee Knob, May 18.]

I hiked on to Tinker Cliffs, another renowned overlook, and experienced another fogbank fail. I sang loud as I finished my 16 mile day into Lamberts Meadow Shelter, where I stayed with three people - a woman from Israel named "Kutsa" and two older section hikers - I didn't know. Someone had left cans of soda in the creek for trail magic.

To Harper's Ferry: 198 miles

2010-05-26T21:37:00.000-04:00

Argh. Can't upload photos. I'm at Dutch Haus B&B in Montebello, Va. American Idol is on so I'm on the computer.

I can't believe that my GA->WV '10 is now about two weeks from being over. I have fewer than 200 miles of hiking, or less than 10 percent of the Trail, between me and my finish point at Harper's Ferry.

Two weeks! 2,179 miles will be behind me!

I'm already thinking about the sections I'll be coming back for.

Trail Days!

2010-05-26T18:06:00.002-04:00

Remember how skeptical I was about hitching to Trail Days from central Virginia?

I'm a worrywort.

I hung around the gas station/deli at trail mile 693.4, just six miles short of Catawba, and had a nice breakfast of ham biscuit. I asked the ladies at the counter for a piece of cardboard and a marker so I could make a hitchin' sign. "Trail Days bound!!!" it said enthusiastically. Then I waited a bit and Long Shanks, Inferno, Cookie and Tic Toc and Lola and Sunrise showed up. Long Shanks made himself a sign and we moved to the road, a moderately busy highway [Va. Rte. 311] and stuck out our thumbs while the rest of the gang watched with interest from a picnic table behind the gas station.

Twenty minutes later we were in the back of a pickup truck headed to the intersection of 311 and Interstate 81 - that crucial road that would take us all the way down to Damascus, which was all the way down at about mile 500 [edit: mile 460] from Springer.

Once at the intersection, we decided we'd probably have the best luck if we set up with our signs and packs right where the on-ramp enters the interstate. I jammed my poles into the dirt and was lifting my sign when a car pulled over and picked us up. It was a young couple, hikers, heading the whole way from western Maryland of all places. Clutch ride! I couldn't believe our luck. To boot they had a great music selection to jam to.

As soon as we got to town we [Long Shanks and I] headed straight into one of my favorite town spots in the South: Quincey's Pizza. Huge beers, hot food, good times.

Tent City: A bulldozed wasteland at the end of Shady Lane, on the edge of town [the town is making some ball fields], ringed by a woods. At first glance, nothing was visible but a few people picking their way through the dirt and uprooted roots to get to the road into the town. At a closer look, dozens, maybe hundreds, of tents occupied the flat spaces between the trees and people were hanging out. Near the gathering of the Class of '09 was a group playing Dizzy Bat, a drinking game involving placing one's forehead on a bat handle and spinning around. There was "Alcatraz," a camp in a little island in the creek running through the woods; "Camp Riff Raff," a place for heathens, "Billville," etc. etc.

Some people from last year made it; many didn't. It was strange coming from where I came from, stealthing in the woods, two months in the woods, and seeing the people I'd met and known last summer - in the woods - who'd left their trail names behind and now wore them awkwardly after all that time down from Katahdin.

The Class of '09 held a reunion at 9 p.m. at Dot's Inn, a rustic, homely bar specializing in piss beer. It was good times. The buzz never left. Almost everyone has remained connected, even if only through Facebook. There was catching up to do and people to meet again or for the first time, in the case of people I'd met, say, for one day in Monson, or for people who'd been around but never at the same place as me. It was clear to me that people overall missed the Trail and looked back on it with fondness.

On Saturday I did town stuff until the parade.

I had no preconceptions about the parade. I figured it would be just a stupid parade. But no. Before it started, the hikers congregated near Sun Dog Outfitters and the coffeeshop. Nothing was happening for the longest time. Some people showed up in costume [Col. Mustard was Green Man]. Then we came under heavy water-balloon fire. Some young townfolk were absolutely winging the water balloons at us from the parking lot. It was pretty hilarious when they hit their targets.

And that's how it was for the next 30 minutes, or however long it took to walk the entire main street through town. Hundreds of hikers, armed with water balloons and water guns, walking through a gauntlet of even more heavily armed townfolk. Neither side showed mercy: Dads in their khakis and sunglasses were just as likely to get blasted by a skirt-wearing hiker as we were by little kids throwing their hardest from point-blank range. Hikers from the current class spotted on the street but NOT marching got it the worst. That's what happened to Greendog and Pixie: an absolute pelting.

I did not expect to have that much fun, and it was therefore all the more fun. I just wish I'd had more - many more - water balloons.

The talent show afterward was a bit of wash. Some terrible comedy, bad rapping and a bunch of mediocre bluegrass. I did like bits of the song "Hiker Funk" performed by Many Names.

Saturday night consisted of beer in Tent City, a fire in the woods and sitting inside a big pavilion tent chanting names at full volume, in order to compete with the Dizzy Bat people and their loud counting-down. "Zen! Zen! Zen!," "Fat Kid! Fat Kid! Fat Kid!" It drew the attention of Damascus's finest, who entered the tent, flashlights out, and kind-of surveyed the scene before moving on. Not sure what they were trying to accomplish, as it was clear that the entire acre was one big open container. But my night ended relatively early, myself having been sleep-deprived, sun-baked and buzzed all freaking day.

Next morning, the '09ers did breakfast at Dairy King. There were hugs goodbye, and then I put my pack in Zipper's car for the long ride back up to central Virginia. Trail Days 2010 had come to an end.

The wet days before Trail Days

2010-05-19T18:38:00.001-04:00

[Me on an overlook somewhere last week]

Really, when I look back on last week, the 60-mile stretch of trail from Rice Field Shelter to just before Catawba was a soggy blur of hiking.

I hit Keffer Oak, a famous 300-year-old tree:

[Keffer Oak, in a valley between Virginia fields, May 12]

I hit Dragon's Tooth, a famous rock outcropping at 691 miles from Springer:

[Dragon's Tooth, fogbank whitewall, May 13]

I did get to meet some cool new people, Inferno, Long Shanks, Shorts, Cookie and TicToc. But only Long Shanks and I planned to go to Trail Days...

Entering Central Virginia

2010-05-19T18:27:00.001-04:00

I stayed at Woods Hole two nights, having hiked on May 9 the 10 miles between the hostel and the town of Pearisburg and getting a ride from Neville in the afternoon.

I was officially in Central Virginia, roughly 625 miles from Springer and less than 400 miles from Harper's Ferry, my endpoint. Getting close to the end!

It took me forever to exit the town. The trail would cross a road, enter a patch of woods and then reemerge onto the same road a short distance away. Repeat a few times, then hike up to a ridge and you're on your way.

Aaaannnd I saw two bears. !

The terrain was perfect bear country: Ridge top, with sparse trees allowing for wide open viewing, comfortaby tall grass. I spotted a medium-sized bear in the near distance and made noise instinctively. As soon as I realized I was there it jaunted off to the side. What I should have done was crept closer for a picture, if I'd known how skittish this one would be.

Not 10 minutes later I saw a younger bear chilling in the grass. This time I did stay quiet, but to no avail: It stuck its head up, spotted me, and repeated the move the first bear had done.

But it was a huge success for me. In one day I'd doubled my bear count from two, in New Jersey, to four.

At Rice Field Shelter, the first out of Pearisburg, I found a nice, deep shelter with a fire ring, all to myself. The shelter faced a meadow beyond a fence where one could spy incoming hikers.

Another new couple, West Virginia rafting guides named Lola and Sunrise, showed up, as did Moose and Tetherball and Freeman. It was one of the rare nights everybody in the shelter was up until about 11 p.m. or so, Tetherball checking his feet, Moose on the phone, Freeman stirring food in his pot, bundled up; Sunrise and Lola in the corner writing in their journals.

The next morning everyone except Moose and Tetherball stayed in the shelter. The weather turned really bad: Wind blowing the leaves sideways, rain hitting the tin roof. The fog obscured the meadow and sometimes even the fence and stile in front of the shelter.

I sat on my mattress and made coffee and oatmeal, very, very slowly because Pearisburg didn't sell fuel canisters and my backup was a Sterno can. I read an entire issue of SPIN magazine and fell back asleep.

When I woke up the storm was breaking, leaving only the wind. A ton of new people were showing up hoping to stay in the shelter, so the four of us from the previous night made an afternoon dash north. It was after dark when I got to Bailey Gap Shelter, where I found Lola and Sunrise and Willie Walker already cozy in their bags.

My Sterno took like 40 minutes to get the water and my noodles even warm. I ate it even though it had nevery boiled. The shells were sticky and gummy, mixed with salmon chunks and whatever sauce packet I'd dumped in there. It was my worst trail meal to date. Very frustrating! But I slept well.

Woods Hole scenes

2010-05-19T18:07:00.000-04:00

[dog at Woods Hole, lobby]

[Pre-dinner hand-holding and introductions at Woods Hole Hostel, near Pearisburg, Va., May 9, 2010. From left: Willie Walker, [I forget, sorry!], Shorts, Rainbow Monkey and Freeman.]

[Woods Hole's biggest night ever! Something like 22 people in the room for dinner. I'm at the table next to a thru-hiker named Tetherball and a group of friends doing a section, whom I first saw at Dismal Falls.]

May 8: Woods Hole Hostel

2010-05-19T17:56:00.001-04:00

I got out of Jenny Knob Shelter good and early, around 8 a.m. I think, tired and with my underwear sticking to my skin with the moisture of the previous four days of nonstop sweat. The air at night had been oppresive.

At Trent's Grocery, .5 miles off the trail, I ate the breakfast special: French toast, eggs and sausage; a milkshake, three cups of coffee, a [microwaved] cheeseburger, a Monster energy drink, two zebra cakes and a little carton of fresh strawberries.

Less than an hour later I was sitting beneath a cascade of water at Dismal Falls, watched by a group of youngish hikers on an outing, my breath coming fast with the shock of the cold water. As I picked my footing across the slick surfaces of the creek bottom I felt awoken. When I sat down to put my shoes on I noticed a dozen or more tiny little leeches affixed to my legs.

When I arrived at Woods Hole Hostel, a rustic little homestead in the Virginia hills, in the later afternoon and stepped onto the wraparound deck, I was shocked to spot none other than Tintin at the computer. It seems that no matter how far ahead I think he and his companions, Fredo and Tornado, have gotten, they reappear when I least expect them to.

"What's up, fool?" he said in his Liverpool gangsta way.

So it was just the four of us plus an older lady section hiker named Tenderfoot joining the hostel's owners, Michael and Neville, for dinner.

Dinner at Woods Hole is an event.

We held hands around the table, Fredo on my left, Michael on my right. A cat sat in a chair nearby while dogs roamed beneath the table. We went around the table giving our trail name, where from and what we were grateful for. Then Neville showed us how to wrap our venison burritoes properly.

The young couple took over the hostel from Neville's grandparents, not too long ago. In fact this is their second thru-hiker season. They met when Michael rolled through as a thru-hiker several years ago.

The hostel is one of those unique places that you'd only ever find if you hiked the AT. An outdoor, solar-heated shower, a house populated by plants, dogs, walls made from wood more than a century old and a wood-burning heating system.

Afterwards we helped with the dishes. While the boys played cards in the common space below the bunkhouse, it was an early night for me. I slept snugly in my sleeping bag on a huge mattress. The bunkhouse was unheated, and the temperature dropped quite a bit.

May 7: A dose of trail magic, re-crossing I-81

2010-05-19T17:39:00.001-04:00

The trail crossses Interstate 81 again after Jenkins Shelter. Along the way I was thinking about how it had been a while since I'd seen any good trail magic. I stepped past a cache of trail magic, a collection of full gallon jugs of water and a trash bag with a note saying to put only empty jugs in the bag. I was full of water already, so I didn't stop. Bleh.

At the next road, the trail went down a US Forest Service road, all gravel. A minivan pulled up, slowed down and I saw the window come down to reveal a middle-aged man in the driver's seat, a black dog in the passenger seat.

"Hey, I'm a trail angel," he said.

"This is going to be good," I was thinking after that happy introduction.

Indeed, he handed over two cold sodas and told me to leave the empties at a designated spot down the road so he could pack them out after he finished checking on the jugs. He also brightened my day when he told me that it usually takes thru-hikers two months to get from Springer to that particular area. I'd been trying to shake the recent feeling that I was a lackadaisical hiker. I chugged the sodas while walking and felt as though I were sipping from the fountain of youth.

Down the road I passed a man named Blue, who I'd only met the night before, at Jenkins, heading up to the bridge over I-81. He was meeting a pizza deliveryman there.

I ended my hike at Jenny Knob Shelter and met a couple with a dog, a guy I hadn't seen since Bly Gap named Boston and an older lady who had just started the trail. Two other hikers I knew, Merf and Snickers, stayed there, too.

May 6: Evil Desert Trail

2010-05-19T17:24:00.002-04:00

I was meeting new people almost daily, because I'd picked up my pace considerably since Damascus. And rare for me, for my hike over the next few days, taking me to Woods Hole Hostel near Pearisburg, I was on a very tight plan: 14, 14, 18, 23 and arrive at the hostel nice and ready for a shower, laundry and bed.

My goal for the day hiking out of Lynn Camp Creek was Jenkins Shelter, 17.7 miles of nice Virginia ridge walk beyond me. Unsurprisingly I was the last out of camp, behind Willie Walker, Beans and Scat Tracker and Achilles, even though, at 10:15 a.m. I was beating my two previous days' starts.

And then, damn, the heat. It started not long after heading up Lynn Camp Mountain. On the way down the mountain, I was aware that water would be scarce on the next ridge, while a water source was supposed to be in the valley. That water source turned out to be puddles, really, and I [foolishly] skipped it.

So of course I ran out of water. It happens every now and then. Looking on the bright side, I realize it showed me what to expect if I run out of water again.

After about 14 miles hiking without water, dehydrated, spitting tiny white bits of saliva, rolling up and down the nasty ridge around a great valley called God's Thumbprint [where the Vanderbilts considered building Biltmore], I found a running stream crossing the trail. It was cascading perfectly for me to fill my filter reservoir. Hal-le-freaking-lulia. I sat down and mixed Gatorade and milk for a fruit punch shake, twice. It wasn't bad.

All day my mind had swirled upon milkshakes and smoothies of days past. As I walked I went through the steps I used to take to make a fruit smoothie in the Western Campus dining hall in college [edit: at Miami University]: One half banana, some frozen strawberries or blueberries, crushed ice, a scoop of ice cream and a cup of milk.

Then I thought about the orange sodas my grandmother used to make for me whenever I visited, which was often. "That's it," I thought. "Next town, I'm buying a 2 liter of orange soda and a half gallon of vanilla ice cream. We're making sodas."

I got to Jenkins shortly after and splashed myself with water in the creek.

[unpause]

2010-05-19T17:03:00.002-04:00

That was more of a pause than previously advertized. Now back to it...

[brief pause]

2010-05-17T14:15:00.001-04:00

OK, I have to go find lunch and take a break from the computer. Back soon for more updates.

Coming up: Hiking a desert ridge, Woods Hole, Pearisburg and beyond...

Spring bloom

2010-05-17T14:12:00.000-04:00

At some point there was a moment when it really struck me how freakin' green everything was, how green had come to dominate my field of vision for most hours of the day. And then I noticed new colors, and I stopped to take pictures. So here they are!

[New growth from the ground]

[Pink lady slipper]

[Hawthorne? Mountain Laurel?]

May 4 and 5: Crossing I-81, Cinco de Mayo

2010-05-17T14:01:00.000-04:00

At the Partnership Shelter I made my second cup of coffee from a sack of instant from the hiker box and eventually hiked out at the sunny hour of 11 a.m.

And I do mean sunny. The trail went straight up and over a hill and just blasted my energy in combination with the extreme heat and sun. I wiped my face often with a handkerchief I keep hanging from the strap across my chest. I took a bunch of breaks - I had to. One with Thin Mint, Creepy and Nobody [the last I'd seen Nobody was Bly Gap, waaay back] next to a forest service road. Another at a shelter.

I arrived at the intersection of the AT and I-81 exhausted from the heat and the hard walking. There, hikers have their choice of hiker-friendly establishments, including an Exxon convenience store especially suited to hikers [wide array of Ramen, computer] that included a deli, and The Barn, a roadside country eatery, and Happy Hiker Hollow, a very popular new hostel that requires reservations. In all I spent about three hours and $25 dollars, rolling between them, consuming in the process a milkshake, burger, hot dogs, fries and soda and more ice cream.

A crew of hikers walked by prepped and ready for Cinco de Mayo the next day.

[Cinco de Mayo gang heads across I-81, May 4, in front of Exxon. The Barn is in background. Not sure who all these guys are, but Greendog is at right].

Noticing my repeated trips to the store, the lady at the counter asked, "Have you run out of steam today?" I certainly had. Less than an hour after starting out, I had selected a spot on a rolling meadow for my tent and pitched it without the rainfly so I could fully experience the sunrise. A couple of farmhouses stood on other hills in the short distance; I could see cars on the Interstate still, and beyond them rose a smooth line of mountains.

[View in the morning of Cinco de Mayo.]

I heard a noise coming from the woods behind my tent. Exotic chickens?

I woke up deep in the night. Suddenly I realised I wasn't as warm as I should be. When I raised my head and touched over my sleeping bag my hands came back wet. Dew had attacked! "No shit?" I thought. "Is the rainfly for this, too?" Even my phone and camera were wet. So I found myself at 3 a.m. appending my rainfly and cursing in the lonely night.

I woke up before 8 and spent two hours letting stuff dry, writing, etc. I heard the chickens again several times. After 10 minutes of hiking I found the culprit: Cinco de Mayo! In the woods less than half a mile from my tent I walked into a large group of people lounging around a campfire; voices went up at my arrival: "Ai-ai-ai-ai-eeeee!!!"

Greendog asked me to do a shot with him, so I took the salt shaker and a lime wedge. I was a bit overwhelmed because everybody's attention was focused on me. "What do I do with this?" I quietly asked about the shaker. "Oh, wait," I said, recovering some sense. I licked the crook of my hand. "Yeah, did you really just ask that?" A girl asked. "No," I said.

After the shot I traveled a hot day over Gullion Mountain and Tilson Gap. At North Fork Holston River, where the trail crosses next to a farm, I took a long break with a young married couple, Scat Tracker and Achilles, and two older guys, Beans and Willie Walker. We dangled our bare feet in the rushing water from a low bridge and walked in the stream bed.

[old building next to crossing of the AT and North Fork Holston River, May 5]

[Achilles crossing a particularly high stile.]

I had dinner with Beans and Achilles and Scat Tracker at Lynn Camp Creek before tenting. It was a second consecutive 13-mile day for me.

May 3: Partnership Shelter

2010-05-17T13:19:00.001-04:00

I took my time in the morning, as I always do when staying at a hotel. I updated the blog in rapid time. The continental breakfast seemed all the more tired because it was the third morning in a row of little cups of juice and coffee, a waffle and cheap donuts.

After resupply and McDonalds stops, my parents dropped me off at Va. 603/Fox Creek. My mom gave walking around the parking lot in my fully-loaded pack a go, which was pretty amusing. It must have been close to 40 pounds. And then they were off to Ohio, six hours away, while I sauntered into the woods.

It wasn't long before I realized my backside was soaking wet; I feared the worst. Indeed, I plucked a freshly malfunctioning water bladder out of my pack. The best I could do is turn it upside down and keep it in the outside pocket of my pack as an emergency water reservoir. I'd use my two 20 ounce water bottles as primaries and resign myself to going longer without water and taking more breaks.

The hike went unbelievably fast. I couldn't believe my luck as I churned out the miles, free of hunger and spending only a total of 30 minutes not hiking in my quest for the Partnership Shelter. Somewhere in the hike I stepped into a cow pasture. "I'm liking Virginia, if this is what it's going to be like," I thought.

Eight hours and 23 miles later I walked into the shelter area and saw a crowd around a fire, empty pizza boxes and 2-liter soda bottles strewed across the ground. Partnership Shelter is renowned as one of two shelters on the entire AT where you can have pizza delivered. Myself and A.D. [Asian Dreads, Asian Dude?], a young, dreadlocked hiker famous for his guitar skills [and he grew up a county over from Frederick, Md.], went to the Mount Rogers visitors center, where a binder held info for hikers - shuttles, nearby hostels and hotels, pizza - and where hikers can use a free phone on the outside wall. It took a while to realize that the car honking on the other side of the building was the delivery woman stuck at the gate, but we got the pizza, and it was amazing.

Some weekend hiker fried in his camp pot some frog legs he'd harvested nearby that day. He seemed quite excited about it.

"There you go, eat you some," he said, offering some to A.D. "I figured an Asian would appreciate frog legs." A.D. picked them out, battered and greasy, from an empty pizza box.

I knew a lot of the hikers at the shelter - Thin Mint, Creepy, Greendog, Nobody - and others I recognized from brief previous encounters. The shelter has two floors and a shower; both floors were stuffed wall to wall, so I joined some other guys in cowboy camping under some pine trees near the fire ring [tenting around the shelter is prohibited].

I woke up in the night feeling drops.

"You're being timed, dude; you're being timed!" Nobody said from the dark ground nearby as I frantically put my tent up where I'd been lying. The rain pretty much stopped right about the time I got inside it.

[Partnership Shelter the morning I left, May 4.]

Update-a-thon 2010

2010-05-17T12:52:00.000-04:00

Holy crap. It's been hectic on the trail - too hectic for appropriate updateage of this blog, which I've been working on for almost year.

So I did a mad dash after my parents' visit [hikers were still talking about getting trail magic PBRs from my folks for days] from the Grayson Highlands/Mt. Rogers area to make up some distance before taking time off for Trail Days.

Now I'm back from Trail Days and taking a zero at a Daleville hotel before resuming my hike tomorrow from Va. Rte. 624, 693.4 miles from Springer Mountain. I desperately needed a day to decompress - my last zero before Trail Days was Damascus on April 28.

Stay tuned...

Trail Days bound

2010-05-14T00:08:00.001-04:00

It's almost midnight, I'm stealth-camping in the woods next to a Virginia highway and I have no idea how hitching to Trail Days tomorrow is going to work. I'm nearly to Catawba, at almost 700 miles from Springer, while Damascus, where Trail Days is going on right now, is just past mile 500.

Incidentally Damascus was the last time I took a zero. Or a nero. I feel a strong desire for a town day. I especially want computer time so I can write about and upload pictures from the last 150 miles.

The past three days were particularly hard. I ran out of fuel before Pearisburg [an O-ring in my stove is shot, causing leakage when attaching the stove to a fuel canister]. Pearisburg had no isopro canisters. I bought a Sterno can, basically a can of burning jelly which you see under the food at wedding buffets.

Long story short, I've been living on snacks for two days while hiking more than 20 miles a day. It's time for town.
I and another hiker, a guy from Montana by the name of Longshanks, will both be holding signs by a nearby gas station. "AT hiker to Damascus," or some variation of that. Strangely, it seems that most hikers around me are opting not to go to Trail Days.

Cloudwatching

2010-05-06T14:08:00.001-04:00

I'm doing another day of heatwave hiking in southwest Virginia. At the moment I'm finishing lunch at Chestnut Knob Shelter, elev. 4,409 ft. Onto Woodshole Hostel and Pearisburg over the next couple of days.

My 14th state

2010-05-04T16:54:00.000-04:00

This is it. For me, Virginia is the 14th of 14 states that the Appalachian Trail goes through that I've hiked. There's still the matter of doing the 4 or so miles from the end of Virginia to Harper's Ferry.

But stick a fork in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee -- they're done!

Parents visit III, back to the ponylands

2010-05-03T10:15:00.001-04:00

Sunday morning we had the usual for our continental breakfast: OJ, coffee, waffle, donuts, fruit cup, and then headed back to the trail, passing by a dozen little rural churches with filled up parking lots.

All three of us trudged up the service road to return to the Appalachian Trail at Massie Gap. We found the ponies immediately.

[My stepdad and rockstar pony, Grayson Highlands, May 2.]

[This baby pony was sleeping and couldn't be bothered.]

It was another 10-mile day for Mom and I in the highlands, making it a 20-mile section for her. That's no small feat for someone without much distance-hiking background. Although she did admit that hiking was more demanding than she'd expected.

At the end we started noticing messages written in the mud. One included my stepdad's initials: Had he hiked in and scratched them into the trail? One further down said "7 min 2 go". The message proved accurate, and indeed it was he who had left them. That night it was Chinese buffett for dinner and another night sleeping like a rock.

The day also saw me pass the 500-miles-from-Springer point. That means I'm 1/2-way done with the souther half of the AT, and 3/4 of the way done with my AT hike!

Onto middle Virginia, then Trail Days.

Parents' visit II, Virginia highlands

2010-05-03T09:58:00.000-04:00

My parents got a good look at life on the Appalachian Trail while they were here.

On Saturday morning we went to Ingles and got some snacks for a day's hike and some materials for trail magic. My mom tried her first Red Bull.

Mom and I hiked the breezy 2.5-mile stretch from the road where we met the night before down to Va. Rte. 600, where we met back up with my stepdad for a picnic lunch in the sun. He'd been handing out PBRs and Cokes to grateful thru-hikers.

Mom and I hiked to the Thomas Knob Shelter, standing at 5,400 feet elev. near Mt. Rogers, where we met hikers of all stripes: Weekenders, a ridgerunner, some thru hikers and a troop of boisterous Boy Scouts. On thru hiker, Merf, was adding a wild ramp to her noodles for dinner. Behind the shelter, the scout masters converged on the water source and pumped their filters like a tiny orchestra while their charges mingled with a small group of wild ponies.

The highlands are renowned for their wild ponies, introduced decades ago to naturally maintain the open fields on the highlands.

Then it started raining. The first drops out of the sky slammed the metal roof of the shelter. It tapered off almost immediately, giving us a window to hike on.

Soon we ran into those ponies again. Some were munching the grass. Others zoned out and stood in the rain like statues. We took our cameras out when the rain weakened further.

[Friendly ponies, Mom, May 1, Virginia highlands.]

A pair of ponies approached us and got all up in my grill.

We ended our day at Massie Gap under a gray, overcast sky, which gave the highlands a wild British isles aspect. My stepdad was very patiently awaiting us. Then, instead of turning left at US 58, we turned right, leading us to take a healthy 2-hr drive among the hollers of southwest Virginia, even through the streets of Damascus, on our way back to Marion. We had a late dinner in Marion.

Parents' visit

2010-05-03T09:34:00.000-04:00

[Mom and me, relaxing after Mom's second consecutive 10-mile day on the trail, Va. Rte. 603, May 2]

Hotel by night, trail by day. That's been my life for the past three days as my parents have been visiting me here in southwest Virginia.

On Friday I was planning on using my phone to help coordinate the meetup with my parents, who were driving from Ohio. The phone didn't register any signal until I began ascending Whitetop Mountain [around 16 miles into my hike]. At the top of the mountain I was passing by three hikers sprawled out next to a spring at 5,100 feet elev. "You're not Ink, are you?" a dude asked. I plucked my earphone out and answered. He told me my parents had just come by and had been waiting at the next road not five minutes ago.

At the road there was no sign of them. But finally my call got through and my stepdad turned the car around and sped back up the hill.

I was relieved. Our original meeting point was another 45 minutes of hiking north and it was getting late. I was tiring fast. They had been driving all over creation in this land of no cell service and unpaved roads hoping to find me, asking strangers for direction.

We all hugged and sat down to enjoy Mom's AT cookies and Dr. Pepper. We gave some trail maj to a hiker I know named Greendog, who came over looking for a place to set up camp. Soon we got back in the car and checked into a Comfort Inn in Atkins and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Marion, just off Interstate 81.

I took a shower, turned on the tube, called my girlfriend and slept like a rock.

Update for Thursday, April 29

2010-04-29T12:30:00.000-04:00

My fingertips are still numb from the other day. As I was cutting back and forth down the hill into Damascus, in the dark, on Tuesday night, I was listening to a radio station that played, on a five-minute loop, an info segment boosting the town that began with "Welcome to Damascus, the friendliest town on the Appalachian Trail."

I zeroed here yesterday. In the evening I joined a group including Creepy, Tintin, Kashmir, an older guy named Hyway and a younger dude named Tornado in hitching to Abingdon, a slightly larger small town 12 miles west of Damascus, for the cinema. It took about 20 minutes before a kindly couple and their toddler pulled their VW van over. Here it is:

[Tintin and Creepy, Damascus, hitchin'!, April 28.]

We saw the movie "Kick Ass," a surprisingly good flick.

My plan now is to hike 24 miles by evening tomorrow and meet up with my parents, who will be visiting for three days. I'll be doing some hiking by day and staying in a hotel by night, which I'm looking forward to. And my parents will get a real live boots-on-the-ground look at the Appalachian Trail and the life that lives on it.

Salut!

[Me in front of the Abingdon Cinemall, Va. Wicked Yoda riding a goose.]

Long live the hike

2010-04-27T23:05:00.003-04:00

Earned my dinner today.
Finally I broke the 30-mile barrier. I came very close - twice - last summer, but I put that challenge to bed today. The terrain was ideal. In fact there is already a standing challenge for thru hikers to do 40 miles in one day into Damascus. My feeling is that is ridiculous.
Hike start: 9:30 am, Vendenventer Shelter, Tennessee.
Breakfast: Pop Tarts, 20 oz. Dr. Pepper, multivitamin, gingko biloba capsule.
Snacks: Nutty Butty, Powerbar gels, energy shot.
Terrain: Rolling ridge walk with some up initially, levelling out after Iron Mountain Shelter [1/2 way point], trail weaving along hills but avoiding peaks. The trail itself was soft with some roots and stones. It was mostly wooded except for a meadow mile.
Weather: Shitty overall. Mild spells punctuated by cold wind and rain, sleet at one point. After 5 pm or so the rain stopped but the fog came and went.
Snack: Trail magic cache of oatmeal cream pies and a 12 oz. Dr. Pepper. Declined offer to warm up in truck at Tenn. 91, just before meadow; hands went numb crossing meadow.
Final food: Energy shot, Snickers, bread and cheese, peanuts at Abingdon Shelter, 6 pm.
Hike finish: 10 pm Damascus, Virginia.
Miles hiked: 33.
Now: Calzone and beer at Quincy's Pizza, tenting at The Place, a, church hostel.
Feet: Ache?

Days 145-147: Roan Mountain to Kincora

2010-04-25T12:03:00.001-04:00

On April 19 I tented outside the highest shelter on the entire Appalachian Trail: The Roan High Knob Shelter, standing at 6,275 feet elevation [Mount Washington is 6,288 feet].

The climb up Roan Mountain was a steep and sweaty 2,000-feet that reminded me of Katahdin with its small boulders and cool spots under the evergreens. At the top, the chill in the air immediately struck me when I stopped moving.

At the shelter I saw a fresh sign, made from a notebook page, saying that the majority of the hikers who had planned to stay there had pushed on to Overmountain Shelter. But since it was 6:30 p.m. and I'd done 15 miles, and Overmountain was a further 6 miles, I set up my tent. The only two hikers there were Megladon, a 19-year-old from Pennsylvania, and Beans, a seasoned hiker from Oregon. I knew that a group just behind me, Chewy, Thin Mint, Double Dribble and Whistle [brothers], would stay there, too.

Inside the shelter, an old fire warden's cabin with two floors, I saw a sad scene: Trash in the corners and on the floors from day and weekend hikers coming in from a nearby road. Not that I could see very well. It was dark as hell in there.

The next morning I woke at 8 a.m. and was on the trail at 8:30. That's not a normal wake-to-hike time period for me, let me tell you. I completed my morning as I hiked further down the trail: Privy stop here, water there, coffee and breakfast at the Stan Murray Shelter five miles on. While at the shelter, I browsed through the register. To my surprise I found a shout-out :)

In the afternoon I hit the Roan Highlands after passing the Overmountain Shelter by. The highlands were a welcoming sight.

[Roan highlands, NC, April 20.]

It started sprinkling. I threw on my shell and pack cover and made my way down the mountain and to US 19. A sign directed me to Mountain Harbor B & B and Hostel, .3 to the west. There I got a spot on the couch for the night. I was keen to stay at the hostel because it was due to rain. Also, I'd seen it listed as a couple hikers' favorite hostel in the 2,000-miler awards in Maine.

That night the husband and co-owner shuttled us in his pickup truck to Roan Mountain, Tennessee to resupply and pick up pizzas and sixers. For some reason, MC [Major Chafage], a hiker in his twenties from Brooklyn, decided to go shirtless in the back of the truck on the way back:

[MC and P-Nut, and we're heading back to Mountain Harbor with our Dollar General resupply, April 20.]

That night we put in Top Gun and sat back and enjoyed the company and Maverick and Iceman and a few cold ones. Until Hightower, a 6'8" hiker, broke his chair.

"You're still dangerous. But you can be my wingman anytime."

The next day we had an amazing home-cooked breakfast of French Toast, hot links, fruit etc. I hiked out at 11 a.m. just after Jurassic Park II ended and I finished my day at the Moreland Gap Shelter, 18.4 miles later. I would roll out of bed and mosey down to Kincora.

Update for Sunday, April 25

2010-04-25T11:28:00.002-04:00

I'm in Johnson City, Tennessee, with my girlfriend, Ashley, for the weekend.We stayed in our room at Days Inn last night and fell asleep during SNL. Tonight we have plans to take in some folk music at The Acoustic Coffeehouse downtown. Purely by coincidence bluegrass and folk music has been a staple of our dating life since I took her out to Cafe Nola in Frederick in November. It just seems to find us wherever we go.

Ashley arrived late at night on Friday to meet me at Kincora. Kincora is a legend of a hostel situated in the hills of Tennessee at 412.8 miles from Springer Mountain, just .2 miles off the trail. The name comes from a mountain in Ireland [the owner, Bob Peoples, has a heavy Boston accent]. The hostel is a simple structure attached to a house. The second floor is a bunkhouse; the first floor is a kitchen and common room with an additional small bunkhouse and a private room. Everywhere on the downstairs ceiling there are pictures of hikers from 1996 to the present posing next to the Katahdin sign; the class of '09's shots were near the front door.

I had plans to slack-pack that morning with about a dozen other hikers. But when I woke up and looked outside, saw the rainy, gray sky, and then I remembered my last slack-packing experience, which was also rainy, I decided not to. Besides, I find that slack-packing breaks my northbound momentum. I'd prefer to walk the Appalachian Trail as it's meant to be walked: With a full pack in one direction.

So I zeroed. During the day I took the free shuttle into nearby Hampton, TN I think three times. The shuttle inched down the mountain on a twisting road without lane markers, and often without guard rails, and deposited its riders in a plaza anchored by IGA.

In the evening, there was a bounteous feast. Honestly it was a great experience. I don't remember there being an impromptu hiker feast like this on my northbound hike in the summer of '09. Thin Mint cooked chicken Parmesan with spaghetti, while a hiker named 3 Bears made salad and a cake.

[From front left to right front: 3 Bears, Greendog, Pixie, Rummy, Patch, me, Creepy, Chef, Thin Mint, Little John, Tintin and Kashmir. Kincora, April 23.]

[Cake marking our progress along the Appalachian Trail, Kincora, April 23.]

When Ashley got there I had to abandon a game of Risk, hours long, in which I was just starting to dominate after having held Europe for the whole of the game and newly conquered North America. We stayed in the "Executive Suite," a room with a door and a full-sized bed downstairs. The walls were simple boards. Through one crack you could see the kitchen. Anytime anyone in the crowded bunkhouse overhead stood on the rickety floorboards we could hear it clearly. Not that I minded not getting a sound sleep. I'm used to that, being a light sleeper anyway. It was a good chance for Ashley to experience a trail hostel. Anyway, we were off to a hotel in Johnson City.

Scenes from trail's past

2010-04-17T12:40:00.001-04:00

My time is abbreviated here. I'm staying at a hostel in Erwin, TN, where the AT intersects the Nolichucky River. Since beginning the Smokies with Early Bear my miles have increased substantially: Last night I arrived here at 5 p.m. after an 18-mile hike, on top of a 21-mile hike the day before. I'm planning to head out today, which means chores, chores, chores and hike. To that end I'm going to flash through Standing Bear to Hot Springs in photos...

[Early Bear doing laundry at Standing Bear hostel. The washboard system really tied the place together. We arrived at the hostel late on a Friday night and did our chores in the morning. I cooked up the greasiest sausages and pancakes ever on an iron skillet and gas stove.]

[Sunrise at Max Patch, 392-acre grassy summit of a 4,629-ft mountain. EB and I hiked to the summit late at night and found the summit crowded with hikers cowboy camping, stargazing and waiting for sunrise.]

[People watching the sun come up at Max Patch.]

On our way down from Max Patch, Early Bear abruptly turned around and said why not go all the way to Hot Springs and end his section hike at the Rock Bottom bar and grill? It ended up being my first 20-mile day of this southern trek. We ate most of the appetizers on the menu. The next day Early Bear took me to resupply and then he returned to the real world.

The week of hiking from Fontana to Hot Springs, 108 miles, was very enjoyable. It went fast. Now I'm working to keep that momentum going as I progress north. In fact, I've caught up with all of the people I left behind at Fontana when I went to Asheville.

Nature's gallery

2010-04-17T12:19:00.001-04:00

In days most recent the trail immersed me in woods more interesting than I've seen on the trail since probably southern Pennsylvania last June. The shapes and textures of these recent trees beckoned me like pieces in an art museum, standing out twisted and moldy against a canvas of a green forest floor.

Between Spring Mountain Shelter, at 282.8 miles from Springer, and Flint Mountain Shelter, 304.1 miles from Springer, which I hiked Wednesday, and then again between Big Bald and Erwin [yesterday's hike] the trees beckoned me to stop and study them. It's been a transformative walk.

I thought I'd share what I saw. Cheers to these trees of the Tennessee/North Carolina border.

[The canvas.]

Good morning from Big Bald

2010-04-16T18:14:00.002-04:00

Camping here last night, at 5,500 ft. with strong winds blowing my tent, meant a gorgeous sunset but not a whole lot of sleep. Big Bald has a treeless summit with panoramic views. The sun is already hot; another 80 degree day is expected.

Through the Smokies in 4.5 days, a hiking primer, Part IV

2010-04-13T11:48:00.001-04:00

The next day we woke up and found frost on the ground. Whatever items of wet clothing we'd hung the night before were now frozen in the position they'd hung in. So my sock looked like a boomerang.

Then the sun came out and warmed the house up as we made breakfast. It was one of the better mornings on the trail so far, hanging out with EB, Shortay and High Noon and talking to a trio of retirees doing the trail in sections. Cheeseburger, a very tall German kid, warmed up his Nutella in boiling water in his camp stove.

[View from the trail somewhere near Guyot Spur, above 6,000 feet in elevation, April 9.]

It took an hour before my hands could hold my trekking poles without freezing. The first half of the day was almost as cold as the hike into Franklin had been. But the views were spectacular. The frost in the trees gave the trail a different look:

Later, around 5 p.m., I got my second wind where a side trail leads to Mt. Cammerer Fire Tower. I dropped my pack and trail-ran the .6 miles to and fro the tower, which Johnny Thunder had pointed out as a highlight. It felt sweet being able to run along the trail, dodging rocks and roots and getting my heart rate up.

The tower had been rebuilt to look the way it had in the 1940s. I actually looked down on an airplane flying over the valley floor 5,000 feet below.

[The western view from the Mt. Cammerer Fire Tower, April 9.]

At the end of the Smokies we hit Interstate 40. Again, the "I Am Legend" feel. I-40 has been closed since October because of a major rockslide that can't easily be fixed. So the road was deserted and quiet, much different, Early Bear said, than when he came through last year.

We were officially done with the Smokies. It took us 4.5 days.

That night we stayed at Standing Bear Farm and Hostel, a rustic little place with a shed full of snacks and things useful for hikers for sale, like tiny bottles of honey and single AAA batteries, and a bunkhouse, kitchen, cabin, privy and, best of all, a hot shower.

The shower was heated by a gas burner that we had some difficulty with. In general it was overwhelming arriving at the busy hostel after dark. But one of Curtis's [the owner] assistants helped us figure the burner out.

I have to say, that shower was one of the best in my life. Washing away nearly five days of Smokies was a trail highlight. It was similar to the shower I took in Gorham, NH after finishing most of the Whites.

We had heated up fries, burgers and rib sandwiches for dinner and were entertained by Lucky, a Viking-looking SOBO who drank an energy drink and said he planned to hike south to Charlies Bunion by the light of his headlamp that night, while listening to metal music. That's a SOBO for you.

Through the Smokies in 4.5 days, a hiking primer, Part III

2010-04-13T11:25:00.001-04:00

It was supposed to rain starting after midnight. Nonetheless, the rain waited until the very moment I started packing up my tent at Icewater Spring Shelter. I crammed everything into my pack and hauled it to the shelter. Though there had been more than 20 people altogether staying there last night, the place was mostly deserted at 9:30 a.m. on April 8.

The wind-blown rain soaked the dirt floor under the roof of the shelter as new hikers arrived.

We hit Charlie's Bunion, a spectacular rock formation that positions you over the middle of a deep valley with a regal view of the surrounding mountains, when the rain was still weak.

Just past the bunion we ran into Ridgerunner Scott. Ridgerunners patrol sections of the trail, back and forth, making sure people are leaving no trace and generally serving as guides to hikers and stewards of the land.

He strongly advised us not to go to Tri-Corner Knob Shelter, our intended destination for the day, because of a "habituated" bear. The bear had stolen a hiker's pack a couple of days before. Scott himself had chased the bear up a hill. "He knows what he's doing," Scott said of the bear. We had a great chat on the trail while the rain dripped off our shells and pack covers.

"Keep fighting the good fight," EB told him in parting.

After that I immediately lost Early Bear, who was hiking slower than usual because of a blister problem, because I was hiking in a manner to generate enough body heat to fight off the ill effects of the cold rain. At the next shelter, Peck's Corner Shelter, I wanted to take a lunch break. When I saw the sign saying that the shelter was .4 miles off the trail I changed my mind. I knew that if I stopped moving for much more than five minutes I'd want to be in my sleeping bag to stay warm, and that I would take off my boots and wet clothes to do that, and that once all that happened it would be very hard indeed to start hiking again.

I reached into my pack and plucked out a Trail Mix bar and a packet of Pop tarts and ate them right there.

The rest of the day was a blur of hiking. I met new hikers at Tri-Corner Knob Shelter - Shortay, High Noon, Cheeseburger - while I did camp tasks. The rain continued. When I drew out my sleeping bag the stuff sack was wet, and a little bit of dirty water fell out of the bottom of my pack when I hung in the rafters.

The hours passed, I got in my sleeping bag and still no sign of Early Bear. After dark he and another hiker, Bojangles, showed up in the shelter in their headlamps. They'd been kicked out of a packed Peck's Corner Shelter when section hikers with reservations showed up. Luckily there was just enough space on the bottom level of the shelter for two people. Barely. Neither of us got hardly any sleep in the tight conditions, with the nasty weather and some loud snorers.

The bear never showed up, though.

To be continued...

Through the Smokies in 4.5 days, a hiking primer, Part II

2010-04-13T11:00:00.001-04:00

The next day we hiked out of camp at 9:30 a.m. and busted out big miles in the scorching heat. The dust from the dry leaves in the trail kept me thirsty. I think we both ended up drinking four liters of water that day. That's a dog days-of-summer level of water consumption.

[Early Bear and me, atop Rocky Top, Tennessee, elev. 5,440 ft., April 6.]

Lunch on top of Rocky Top was a highlight. I boiled up some coffee and packed a small stone from Rocky Top in my pack, just so I can get to Harper's Ferry with a rock from Rocky Top.

Rocky Top, despite being immortalized in the Osbourne Brothers' song, wasn't much to look at. It wasn't all that rocky and it was pretty small, no different than dozens of places I crossed in Maine.

We hiked 17.2 miles and bypassed three shelters to stay at Silers Bald Shelter. There we met an older lady named Cody and an older dude named Rawhide, as well as a quartet of spring break boys. We liked Rawhide. He never moved from his sleeping bag on the bottom level until he hiked out the next morning. Though he said he was trying to quit smoking, he didn't do much else, and he had a cig for breakfast and seemed to feel alright.

The next day took us to Clingman's Dome, the highest point on the Appalachian Trail. At 6,643 feet in elevation, it's a couple hundred feet higher than Mount Washington.

[The thing on top of Clingman's Dome was built in the 1960s.]

Between Clingman's and Newfound Gap we hiked on top of our fair share of packed snow. It was feet deep. Every now and then a foot would plunge through a spot weakened by the warm weather. Hiking it took extra energy.

At Newfound Gap the one highway crossing the Smokies heads into Gatlinburg. Almost every hiker we met in the Smokies had stayed or was planning to stay in that town. Not us.

Just ahead of the gap, I said that it would be great if there were trail magic. Early Bear said, "Don't count on it."

But a thru-hiker's mom was there visiting her son, Bandito, and his hiking partner and they gave us Cokes [the best thing for trail magic, if there's nothing else: A cold can of Coca-Cola. It's unexplainable, but that's how it is], oranges and plenty of Swiss rolls.

On the way up the hill we stopped and let pass a swarm of park rangers wheeling a woman down to the gap. They used a stretcher supported by a lone mountain bike tire. The rangers in front were grim, the woman in the stretcher had her eyes closed, but the rangers in the rear were jovial and told us it was a sprained ankle or a broken ankle, something, and disappeared down the trail. That's what the ambulance in the gap must have been for, I thought. We continued to see the bike tire track for miles.

The shelter at Icewater Spring Shelter was packed to the rafters. The bear cables sagged under the weight of the many food bags already, and the patches of flat land around the shelter were dotted with about ten tents. Early Bear and I had no choice but to set up in an area with a sign depicting a tent with a hashmark through it: No tenting.

We had a great noodles dinner past dark, with the lights of Pigeon Forge glittering in the valley floor below and west, visible through the black stalks of Fraser firs.

To be continued...

Through the Smokies in 4.5 days, a hiking primer, Part I

2010-04-13T10:41:00.000-04:00

As my girlfriend, Ashley, departed Hot Springs for Pennsylvania on Monday, April 5, Early Bear [GA->ME '09] and I headed south in a shuttle driven by Gene Laney. While we were making a pit stop at a gas station, Gene told Early Bear how he had been 17 when the Tennessee Valley Authority built Fontana Dam, at the southern tip of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in the 1940s.

The Smokies, like the Whites in the north, have rules that differ from those that prevail along most of the Appalachian Trail. Mainly they have to do with the shelters.

There are 12 shelters along the 70 miles of AT in the Smokies. Because the Smokies get more visitors than any other US national park, backcountry hikers must submit reservation forms for the shelters. Tenting is prohibited, but if you are staying in a full shelter as a thru-hiker and section hikers show up with reservations, you must vacate, either to hike on or to tent outside. Early Bear experienced this.

Seven of the 12 shelters have privies. That's just something to keep in mind heading in.

Dogs aren't allowed; horses are. Though I never saw a horse, I saw plenty of footprints, and many of the shelters have places for parking horses. It gave the trail a more western feel.

We hiked out of the Fontana Dam visitors center at 1 p.m. The dam had an "I Am Legend" feel, or a "Silent Hill" feel, as Miguel put it before I went to Asheville: A huge, man-made place, a vast, empty road and a giant hole disappearing into the earth, and it's eerily quiet.

[Island in Fontana Lake, April 5.]

We headed up the mountain at 1 p.m. At the end of an unseasonably hot day we claimed spots in Mollies Ridge Shelter. Like all of the Smokies shelters, it had two levels accommodating about six people each and a roofed table area. We met some new hikers, one of whom wowed everybody with his tiny wood-burning stove and another who hung his hammock inside the shelter. Thankfully snoring was kept to the minimum. That wouldn't always be so.

To be continued...

Spring break in retrospect, Part III

2010-04-12T16:30:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, April 3, Ashley and I drove west to Hot Springs, NC. The Appalachian Trail passes straight through the town. In fact, the AT symbol is etched in the town's sidewalk, replacing the white blazes until the trail crosses the French Broad River.

We got a nice little hotel room with a view of a bank of daffodils with cats tackling each other while using the flowers as cover. Then we hit the hot tub. Hot Springs is a tourist town, and one of the main attractions is the mineral baths fed by spring water. You get your own hot tub next to a creek feeding the river, with a roof and a door, where you soak for an hour. It felt amazing. It was even better with the clear, fresh water rather than the chlorine bath you normally experience in a jacuzzi.

[Ashley hot tubbing in Hot Springs, April 3.]

We hit the Smoky Mountain Diner for dinner. Fried everything: Chicken, okra, fries, broccoli, etc.

Outside we saw this bus:

Early on Sunday morning we got suited up in wet suits at a river expedition company downtown. There were three rafts. Ours had three couples, including us, plus our guide. Our trip was to be nine miles, to be completed in about three hours. We'd hit Class I, II, III rapids and one Class IV rapid.

Somewhere more than halfway down the French Broad we hit a Class III rapid with a steep drop. Ahead of us we watched as the young man guiding one of the other rafts bounced off the rear of his raft and went overboard. This could be exciting, was the thought that went through my head.

Ashley and I were in the front of our raft. We went over hard. I bounced off my section of the raft [everybody sits on the raft, not in the raft] and landed in a pool of water in the front of the raft. Ashley had had the foresight to hold onto a cord. In the aftermath of the landing I looked back and saw that we'd lost three people: The two other dudes and the guide. All gone. It was me, Ashley and two women, one of whom was suddenly panicking: "What do we do? What do we do?"

Our raft kind of made that decision for us, in the short term. We drifted into a calm spot at the edge of the river. Meanwhile our fellow rafters and their paddles were floating downstream, where the two other rafts collected them temporarily. We had one more steep drop to go down, and we got the courage to just do it. Thankfully the raft did most of the work and we picked up our guide and the other two dudes.

Later that day I found out I'm accepted at Temple University and waitlisted at Notre Dame. That was exceptionally good news. I still have yet to hear from half the schools I applied to for the fall.

Early Bear joined us for dinner. He said he had scheduled a shuttle for us from Hot Springs to Fontana in the morning. I didn't like the price, or the 7 a.m. departure, so I told him I got a guy, a "hiker's friend from beginning to end." In the morning, EB and I boarded Gene Laney's shuttle, and Ashley drove back to Pennsylvania. She'll be coming down twice more to see me before I finish up at Harper's Ferry in June. I can't wait to see her again.

Meanwhile, EB and I had some serious hiking to do in the Smokies...

Spring break in retrospect, Part II

2010-04-12T15:42:00.004-04:00

[Bluegrass jam at Jack in the Woods, a tavern in downtown Asheville, on Thursday, April 1. Musicians would pop up on stage and replace each other periodically.]

[Us, random place in Asheville, random time.]

I forgot to mention Chocolate Love. We stopped at this little shop on Wednesday, March 31, Ashley's first day in Asheville while we were walking around town. I didn't know what I wanted but I was sure it would have to have something to do with ice cream. At the server's suggestion I had a beer float: Vanilla ice cream in a locally brewed stout, which tasted like Guiness.

[Perfect hiker drink! Ice cream in a stout beer, Chocolate Love, Asheville. It felt good to be in town clothes.]

[Ashley having chocolate custard, Chocolate Love.]

On Friday we met Johnny Thunder and Freefall at a cafe downtown and went for a drive into the mountains above town, along the Blue Ridge Parkway and into Pisgah National Forest. We stopped at an overlook, and I peeled out in the gravel in Ashley's manual transmission car while Johnny whooped Dukes of Hazard style.

We got out in Pisgah and hiked a few miles on trails near the Parkway. It was summer-hot but the trees had yet to start budding. In the afternoon the four of us road walked down to our car. On the way we walked through a tunnel through the mountain, with cars passing close by in the darkness.

[Freefall, Johnny Thunder and Ashley. Tunnel walk!]

The road provided the best view of the Biltmore Estate, the Vanderbilts' summer estate from the Gilded Age, short of paying the $60 entrance fee. The estate was miles away in the valley.

That night Johnny and Freefall had us over for dinner: Vegan lasagna with toast. Johnny and Freefall have taken organic living to heart: They don't drive, they have a garden and they eat vegan. I was impressed, and I think Ashley was, too. I think it's a good thing that our generation is starting to embrace a way of life that feels better than driving all over and eating fast food without caring about where the energy or food comes from. Even in the hostel, Sweet Peas, each light switch had above it a laminated sign asking guests to conserve energy by keeping the lights off as much as possible.

For dessert we returned to Chocolate Love, by way of downtown Asheville, where we happened upon a drum circle in a small park. It was kind of nuts.

[Friday night drum circle in downtown Asheville, April 2.]

This time we had about a 45-minute wait at Chocolate Love. It's a hot night spot apparently. But again it was delicious. We thanked Johnny and Freefall for their hospitality. I'm sure I'll see them again soon, when they bicycle from Asheville to Damascus, VA for Trail Days.

To be continued...

Trail fail!

2010-04-11T19:53:00.001-04:00

Stickery ambush on the top of Snowbird Mountain. I've just left Standing Bear Farm [hostel] and Early Bear and I are headed to Hot Springs.

Spring break in retrospect

2010-04-10T14:13:00.001-04:00

After a drinky night at Fontana Village, spent with many of the same people whom I gathered with outside mine and Tintin's hotel room in Franklin, I got a shuttle ride to Asheville, NC with Gene Laney, 82, whose business card reads "A Hikers Friend from Beginning to End." I got mildly carsick twisting along the hills. The ride from the middle of nowhere to Asheville took nearly two hours.

In Asheville I stayed at a brand new hostel called Sweat Peas. I spent an hour or two waiting for it to open at Malaprops bookstore. Outside it was sunny, warm and young buskers stood on almost all of the corners, including just outside the bookstore, where a young bearded man played a mandolin for passersby.

At night I realized why the hostel gives guests a fresh pair of ear plugs upon check-in. Just below the hostel, which I shared with maybe five other people, a dueling piano night took place in Lab, a hopping brew pub. The pub owner also owns the hostel. The music traveled easily up through the floor.

The next day, Wednesday, March 31, Ashley arrived after noon. We booked a private room in the hostel, actually more like a windowless cell, but comfortable, and walked through the sunny streets. We ate the lunch buffet at the much-heralded Mela, an awesome Indian restaurant five minutes' walk from the hostel. The chicken masala was every bit as good as Miguel [class of 2010] said it would be. Then we got me a haircut. It was due. I was, as Ashley pointed out, getting the mad scientist look.

That night we met Johnny Thunder GA->ME '08, LT '09, at Barley's, yet another brew pub. Ashley and I did the alpine slide with Johnny and his girlfriend, Freefall GA->ME '08, in Rutland, VT last year when Ashley came up to visit me. Ashley gave them a ride while she was waiting for me to come down from the mountain to the Inn at Long Trail. That's when Ashley and Johnny realized they were in the same graduating class in college. Small world!

Anyway, the three of us went on to win 2nd place in the pub trivia contest. We dominated the whole game until the final round, when another team jumped from like 8th place to first with a 15-point wager. Our $15 prize made a nice dent in our bill for pizza and beer. Johnny gave me a bunch of tips for things to do and places to see on the southern half of the AT.

On Thursday, we went to REI and got outfitted. I got a warm jacket for the Smokies and inquired about swapping out my defective sleeping bag. Ashley got a pillow and a pack cover: She's getting prepared for the two AT ection hikes we plan to do this summer.

Next: Massages! We got a 30-minute couple's massage at a spa just around the corner from our hostel. I ordered the deep-tissue, she had the Swedish. It seemed over too quickly.

We switched to a downtown hotel that was the same price as the hostel, but which included a view, a private bathroom, fridge, TV and more space. It was a no-brainer. That night we caught a bluegrass jam at Jack In the Woods.

To be continued...

Hi!

2010-04-07T18:14:00.001-04:00

So yes, it's been more than a week since I blogged here. I was on vacation in Asheville and Hot Springs, and I'll be posting all about that soon.

But for now, I'm doing the Smokies in one stretch with Early Bear. At the moment we're at a popular parking spot at Newfound Gap, where the road goes into Gatlinburg, receiving trail magic.

Perfect warmup for the 900 feet of climb coming up.

Smokies!

2010-04-07T17:46:00.001-04:00

Waking up at Fontana

2010-03-30T08:09:00.001-04:00

Crazy night last night. Asheville bound.

Fontana stop

2010-03-28T21:00:00.001-04:00

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

NOC

2010-03-26T19:47:00.001-04:00

I don't know about this place.

Two weeks!

2010-03-25T21:50:00.001-04:00

Two weeks, two states, 119 + 9 miles and zero shaving.

Sunset from Wayah [wolf] Bald lookout tower

2010-03-25T20:53:00.001-04:00

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.

What's next on the AT

2010-03-24T14:08:00.000-04:00

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

Trail scenes

2010-03-23T14:55:00.002-04:00

[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

2010-03-23T14:44:00.001-04:00

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.

Good morning, North Carolina

2010-03-20T10:02:00.001-04:00

[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.

Why I love zero days

2010-03-18T16:10:00.001-04:00

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

2010-03-18T11:15:00.003-04:00

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!]

Day 113 on the trail: Zero day in Hiawassee

2010-03-18T10:49:00.007-04:00

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.]

"A footpath for those who seek fellowship with the wilderness"

2010-03-18T10:24:00.001-04:00

Next up on the AT

2010-03-14T11:41:00.000-04:00

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.

Photo dump

2010-03-13T11:07:00.002-05:00

[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...

2010-03-13T10:57:00.001-05:00

...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.

Jellytellarito!

2010-03-11T19:31:00.003-05:00

That's the name I came up with for the meal I've had for lunch two days now. Grape jelly and Nutella in a burrito shell.

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.

The journey begins...again

2010-03-09T16:35:00.000-05:00

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

Monday

2010-03-08T09:16:00.001-05:00

Waiting for my train to Georgia. It's supposed to get up to 59 degrees today in DC.

Union Station

2010-03-08T07:35:00.002-05:00

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.

Countdown: 66 hours until I leave for Georgia

2010-03-06T00:36:00.002-05:00

Everything's about good to go!

The top AT memoirs

2010-03-01T15:53:00.001-05:00

According to a recent poll I started on Whiteblaze.net, the top five AT thru-hiking memoirs are:

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]

Walking with Spring recounts a WWII veteran's 1948 thru-hike. AKA the first ever thru hike. First printed privately in 1981; 160 pages.

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.

Wednesday notes: Heading to the ATC, "A Walk in the Woods" etc.

2010-02-24T10:49:00.001-05:00

I'm a member at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, so I'm off to Harper's Ferry this morning to get the maps for Georgia through southwest Virginia at a discount. I'm also going to ask the assistant on duty what weather I can expect in Georgia.

I've got my Irish drinking songs playlist ready on my iPod - The Pogues, Flogging Molly, The Clancy Brothers, The Young Dubliners and Dropkick Murphys- for March 17. It's something to look forward to. And fyi, Irish/Scottish stuff makes for great music to hike by.

Right now my hiking gear is a messy pile in my bedroom. I've settled on hiking in my old, hopelessly soiled Cap 1 baselayer rather than buy new, because the local outfitter didn't have my size during their huge sale last week. I also dug up a forgotten, barely worn pair of soccer shorts while emptying my dresser which I'll adopt as my primary hiking shorts. As far as other stuff I still need, I got an 18L bear bag, Sea to Summit, with 50ft of nylon cord at Cabela's Monday. All bright orange.

I've also started a lively forum discussion about ranking the extant AT memoirs over at Whiteblaze. Check it out if you're really into reading about the trail and you're exasperated when you browse Barnes and Noble for new stuff and find only the trusty old "A Walk in the Woods."

Which I recently read the first few bits of again. I skipped all the stuff about trail history, geology and the US Forest Service [Bill Bryson hates the USSF] and read just the trail narrative.

Here's a key passage set in Gatlinburg, Tenn. after Bryson and his buddy, Katz, come out of a blizzard in the Smokies:

Katz needed bootlaces, so we went to an outfitter's, and while he was off in the footwear section had an idle shuffle around. Pinned to a wall was a map showing the whole of the Appalachian Trail on its long march through fourteen states, but with the eastern seaboard rotated to give the AT the appearance of having a due north-south orientation, allowing the mapmaker to fit the trail into an orderly rectangle, about six inches wide and four feet high. I looked at it with a polite, almost proprietorial interest - it was the first time since leaving New Hampshire that I considered the trail in its entirety - and then inclined closer, with bigger eyes and slightly parted lips. Of the four feet of trail map before me, reaching approximately from my knees to the top of my head, we had done the bottom two inches.
I went and got Katz...One thing was obvious. We were never going to walk to Maine."

The first time I read that I was like, 'Shit. Really?' and felt deprived of an adventure, since I was reading it with an eye towards hiking WV->ME. Gatlinburg is just about 200 miles into the 2,179-mile hike, mind you. What "A Walk" lacks in that aspect, Bryson more than makes up for it in the breadth of his research and in his laugh-out-loud style.

But it's not the only book on the AT out there. I'll try to post a top five list here once the Whiteblaze discussion wraps up.

Anyway, have a happy Wednesday! Signing off.

Update for Sunday, Feb. 21 continued

2010-02-21T19:57:00.001-05:00

Thought I might as well list the items I got at Giant tonight, re: first Ga. resupply. It's a good snapshot of what trail food is.

Breakfast

Powdered milk, enough to make 8 quarts, 80 calories per prepared cup. I'll separate these into baggies and mail the extra ahead to Neel's Gap.
Post Just Bunches cinnamon granola/cereal, 17 ounces, 2,000 calories in the box. Can eat with the milk as cereal or dry as granola.

Breakfast/midday

Pop-tarts, 15 ounces. Frosted Wild Berry, 210 calories per poptart. A personal favorite since 1985.
Nature Valley chewy trail mix bars, 6.7 ounces, 120 calories per bar.

Lunch/midday

Enchilada-size tortillas, 8 count, 16 ounces, 160 calories per tortilla. Beats bread and bagels because it doesn't mold up or crush.
Nutella, 13 ounces, 2,000 calories in the jar.
Smuckers squeeze grape jelly, 20 ounces, 1,400 calories in the tube.
Clif bars, 3 count, 2.4 ounces/bar, 250 calories per bar.
Dried fruit [pineapple, papaya and mango], 6 ounces, 560 calories in the bag.
Pepperoni stick, 3 ounces, calories ?.

Dinner

Ramen noodles, 6 count, 18 ounces total, 380 calories per brick. I eat two bricks for dinner.
Knorr sides, 2 count, 9.7 ounces total, 680 calories in one and 500 in the other.
Tuna pouch, 4.5 ounces, 175 calories.
Salmon pouch, 5 ounces, 120 calories
Cans of deviled ham and chicken spread, 2 count, 4. 25 ounces each, 260 calories [chicken], 360 calories [ham].
Block of cheese, 8 ounces, 880 calories. Cabot Horseradish, another personal favorite.

Altogether around $40. I'll be packing 158 ounces of food, or about 10 pounds. That's five days' worth, more than usual, for sure, but I've carried more before.

Update for Sunday, Feb.21

2010-02-21T17:30:00.000-05:00

My initial resupply for Amicalola Falls SP visitors center to Neel's
Gap, roughly 5 days.
Also my first post from my new Droid.

Georgia on my mind

2010-02-19T12:53:00.003-05:00

...and leaving on a night train to Georgia and all that. It's an inspiring state. For me, however, going to Georgia in 17 days will be my first trip to the Deep South since a week on Edisto Beach, SC in 2005, and my first time going to Georgia that didn't involve driving through or laying over at ATL.

I've got some loose ends to tie up at home and a few last gear essentials to get before packing for the hike. And then it's Week 1 on the trail: One foot in front of the other, just like last June, and getting reoriented.

My first decision as a hiker upon reaching Georgia will be whether to hike or not to hike the Approach Trail.

Nobody I met WV->ME '09 made an urgent case for doing so. It's not like anyone's more impressive for hiking 2,187.9 miles instead of 2,179.1 miles. But I will have the time, since I'm starting fairly early in the season, and I think it'll be good practice for me.

The first white blazes marking the Appalachian Trail appear on Springer Mountain. Like Mt. Katahdin in Maine, the peak lies within a state park with no direct road service to the top. At minimum it's a one-mile hike from a forest road to the peak.

The Approach Trail starts 8.8 miles south of Springer at the visitors center of Amicalola Falls State Park. By the time the trail reaches the peak of Springer [elevation 3,782 feet], it has crossed four roads, passed two shelters and climbed 2,000 feet in elevation.

By contrast, my first day in Maryland took me from 263 feet, over the Potomac River, to a high point of 1,600 feet, over 16 miles of hiking.

Georgia has 176 miles of AT plus the Approach.

The Appalachian Trail in Georgia means 5 things: 1. Chattahoochee, 2. Mountains, 3. Black Bears, 4. Newbies and 5. maybe snow?

Chattahoochee. A 74-year-old national forest in northern Georgia.
Mountains. The trail in the south hits its first 4,000-footer, ominously-named Blood Mountain, 28 miles after Mile 0 and goes on to tap four more 4,000-footers: Blue Mountain, Rocky Mountain, Tray Mountain Kelly Knob. By contrast, my first 4,000-footer on the northern half of the trail was Moosilauke - two months into my hike! The hiking in Georgia is less of a roller coaster than New Hampshire. The lowest the trail gets after Springer is 2,500 feet.
Black Bears. Companion: "With the loss of habitat from development in the mountains, black bears are roaming farther in search of food. To combat this problem, the GATC and the USFS are placing bear cables for hanging food at the shelters most affected." Normal black bear rules apply: Make noise so they hear you coming and get out of the way, no eye contact and back off if you surprise them and stand tall if they charge.
Newbies. Last year the received wisdom that the Recession would send a tumult of hikers onto the trail proved unfounded: It was just like any other year, according to a conversation I had at the ATC in Harper's. That means roughly 1,200 hikers starting the trail in the spring. The peak is March 15 or so. I met hikers in the northern half who started anywhere from March 2 to May. Last June I started hiking and met seasoned hikers who had internalized the thru-hiker culture, etiquette, and ethics. The also-rans had already also-ran and left the trail. This time? Not so. Should be interesting. Stories I heard over the summer lead me to believe so.
maybe Snow? Pictures and stories from the Class of '09 show knee-deep snow in places in the south. A lot of winter camping, sitting around shelters in boggons and bubble coats, with early sunsets and campfires sounds like an acceptable change of pace.

You know what? It seems like the thru-hiking memoirs I've read read at their most vivid in the Georgia chapters ["A Walk in the Woods," "On the Beaten Path"]. I should go back and read those chapters in addition to the trail journals online.

Guten Freitag!

Gear data v1.0

2010-02-17T14:08:00.012-05:00

[Those bored to death by geartalk, skip this post!]

Taking a cue from McBride's post on Whiteblaze, I thought I would write up the list of gear I took along on my WV->ME '09 hike and juxtapose it with things I'm carrying on my GA->WV '10 hike.

Which starts in three weeks, by the way.

So here goes:

Pack

Gregory Baltoro 70. Comfortable, user friendly pack. BUT: It leaned to the side on my back, had too much room, and then the mainstay broke away from the pack in New Hampshire. I finished the trail [Gorham, NH to Katahdin] with a loaner Gregory Palisade 80. After the hike I returned the Baltoro to REI and swapped it for the pack that I'll be using this spring, the Osprey Atmos 65. The Atmos 65 seemed to be the pack of choice among thru-hikers.
No pack cover, used my shell jacket as a cover after I realized my pack was water permeable and then bought a L Osprey pack cover in Port Clinton. Not having a pack cover is not an option.

Shelter

Wal-Mart tarp. I didn't feel comfortable sleeping in it during a buggy buggy summer [or in rain], so I hiker-boxed it in Port Clinton and bought a proper tent, the Big Agnes Seedhouse SL2, along with the footprint. Big Agnes vied with MSR as the tent brand of choice on the trail, and I saw many Seedhouses. The outfitter in Port Clinton arranged for the tent to be waiting for me in Delaware Water Gap. The tent arrived just in time: Before the mosquito alley that is New Jersey through Massachusetts. The tent is bulky and still a bit heavy [around 3 pounds] but the independence of being able to sleep wherever you can clear a 5'x10' space and escape snorers, bugs etc. makes having the tent more than worth it.

Sleeping

Kelty Light Year +20, three-season down bag with 650 fill goose down., 2 lbs. 6 ounces. Waay too hot in the summer - I used it as a mattress during June/July - but comfortable enough later in the trip. The down is spread a bit thin in places.
Sleeping bag liner. I picked up a Sea to Summit silk sleeping bag liner at Cabela's in Hamburg and it was a lifesaver in coping with the summer heat. I would sleep in this on top of my sleeping bag on top of my sleeping pad.
Thermarest Ridge Rest sleeping pad, size R-Men's. I found this comfortable enough from the get-go. It's very light, indestructible and fits well in the loops at the bottom of any pack.

Kitchen

Set of aluminum camp pans from unknown brand [gift]. Having more than one pan proved redundant since, in the woods, people eat out of whatever pots they cook with; sent all but one home. The remaining one's handle broke down in Vermont. I replaced it with a GSI Pinnacle Soloist pot in Manchester Center, VT. The new pot made me feel much better, more professional maybe, about cooking in the woods.
Plastic camp cup. Got rid of it when I switched to the GSI pot, which came with its own cup/bowl that included a layer of insulation.
Spork. Broke on some peanut butter in Maine. Replaced it with a metal spoon that Pine Ellis gave to me. I'll be getting a new Spork.
Stove. I used the Primus Classic Trail Stove the whole trip. It's not the fastest-cooking stove out there but it was stable and failproof. Eight ounces and pocket-sized.
Fuel. By the end of the trail I was using big 8 ounce canisters of butane+propane and replacing them before they ran completely out. The 4 ounce canisters, because the canisters serve as the base for the stove and pot, make the setup too unstable, and they run out too abruptly.
I packed a bandana or a tiny pack towel to wipe the pot after each use. I used a slip of newspaper to line the bottom of the teflon pot for when I packed the canister in there with the bowl.
Lighter. I replaced this once I think.

Tech

Garmin eTrex Legend HCx handheld GPS device. I found myself spending too much time stopping on the trail to study the map on this. Although it helped in gauging the distance/time/ETA to the next destination point, it proved redundant because of the Thru-Hiker Companion's level of detail. After a while, I learned to gauge my time and distance quite accurately just from timing myself over and over again. I also frankly felt uncomfortable with an expensive gadget in my pack. I sent it home in Pennsylvania or earlier.
Wristwatch. I started with one from Target, not sure which brand. A spring shot out of the band somewhere around Massachusetts and after that the watch dangled awkwardly. But having a watch that told me what day and date it was, had an alarm and an indiglo night light was crucial. I picked up a slightly better watch, a Timex Expedition, from Target for this spring.
Phone. Started with a three-year-old Samsung basic phone+camera. It got rain-damaged in Vermont and never worked again. Lost contacts, pictures, etc. Ashley sent her old phone, which happened to be the exact same model, to me in New Hampshire. Unfortunately the battery was much weaker and I generally had to hike with the phone off and keep calls quite short. This past weekend I bought an HTC Eris Droid smartphone, with 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi, 8GB of memory for music etc., and I just ordered a battery that more than doubles its battery life to go with it. I'm stoked about hiking with this thing. Verizon seems to be the way to go with service on the trail.
Tunes. I started with none and regretted it all the time. I bought a Sony Walkman radio with a belt clip in Bennington Vermont. Having it was very good, although I listened to more than a fair amount of Glenn Beck, country music, Taylor Swift and ESPN football talk because that's all there was in some spots. Also, I ran through several sets of earbuds because they kept falling out. I'll be using some Sony active style earbuds with loop hangers this time. I'll also have music on my phone, and I'm debating whether to also bring my 8GB iPod Nano.
Camera. I started with the Canon Powershot digital Elph, 7.1 Megapixels. It held the 2,000 or so shots I took on the trip. After rain damage in Vermont, however, it never regained its ability to take auto-focus pictures, flash or show a display on its viewing screen - it was all manual, no flash photography. This spring I'm taking my new camera [Christmas gift], a Canon Powershot SD1200 IS Digitatl Elph 10 Megapixels. It has an 8 GB memory card that holds 4,000 photos or 1 hour of video. So that's a big upgrade. I'll be protecting it with plastic bags better this time.
Chargers. I pulled my camera and phone chargers out of my bounce box in Boiling Springs and kept them with me the rest of the trip. Having chargers on hand is a MUST.
USB. Ditto camera charger.
Flashlight. I started with a $1 Wal-Mart flashlight, thinking I could skimp on light, but found out quickly why thru-hikers buy headlamps - night hiking and using both hands while cooking or reading at night. I bought a Black Diamond Gizmo in Boiling Springs, Pa. and used it daily after that.
Batteries. I'll be keeping probably 5 or 6 spare AAA or AA batteries as backups for my radio and headlamp.

Clothing

Pants. I started with two pairs, REI Sahara convertibles and NorthFace convertibles. I immediately sent home the REI pants and subsequently returned them for cash. The NorthFace pants I used as camp/town pants and only hiked in them during storms because, due to a lack of roominess in the seat, they caused chafing more often than not. I have given them away and now I'm looking for a new pair of pants for the trip. I'm looking more for weather resistance than convertibility this time.
Shirts. Started with three synthetic shirts: North Face T, T from Sports Authority and a long-sleeved New Balance shirt. Immediately sent home the New Balance shirt and alternated between the other two before soon sending home the North Face shirt. My parents mailed me a long-sleeve wicking baselayer from Rocky which I alternated with the other shirt until I lost the Rocky. Bought a Patagonia Capilene 1 longsleeve baselayer in Manchester Center and used only that from then on. I'm looking for a new Cap 1 longsleeve baselayer now.
Midlayer. I used a Patagonia fleece [discontinued model, got it on discount] the whole trip and will use it again. It was my second skin at camp and in town and very often my pillow.
Midlalyer 2. I had my Capilene 3 top and tights sent to me in Maine. They make for very warm sleeping and were good around cold shelters. I'll be starting with them in March.
Shell. Marmot Mica jacket. I didn't need it very often, but when I did it was a lifesaver [see Baldpate, Tropical Storm Danny]. Seven ounces of pure wind and waterproof armor.
Shorts. I started with one pair of Kappa soccer shorts, thinking I'd be in my pants more often. I soon started wearing the shorts daily. Almost all thru-hikers use soccer shorts; some use kilts/skirts. The Kappa shorts wore completely out and I got a new pair of Adidas shorts by mail as a gift, which I finished the trail in but which are now worn out. I'm now looking for a new pair of soccer shorts for the trail.
Socks. I started with four pairs of wool hiking socks and immediately sent home one pair. I generally hiked with three pairs, but dropped down to two pairs by New Hampshire. I went through three pairs, I think. My favorite socks were my Smartwools and my REI hiking socks. The huge, puffy Rocky socks felt good at the end of the trail. This time I'll go with three: One puffy pair, one Smartwool and one low-cut REI pair.
Sockliners. I started with two pairs and used them daily with little exception for the entire trip, with nary a blister after Maryland. I'll be taking two pairs with me this spring.
Underwear. I started with three pairs and sent one home. I used two pairs of Under Armour Heatgear synthetic boxers and they were perfect. For much of the trail I also packed a pair of cotton boxers for something to wear in towns and hostels while my laundry was on. I'm probably going to go with the 2X synthetic 1X cotton this spring.
Winter gear. I got a cheap Carhardt boggon in Maine and wore it sometimes in the 100 Mile Wilderness. I'm debating whether to take it and gloves to Georgia, or whether I should get a light fleece boggon from Mountain Hardware or REI.

Footwear

I started with a 2-and-a-half-year-old pair of Vasque Breeze boots, size 8.5. These proved too small. The Gore-Tex was good in walking through puddles, though, and they had good traction. I replaced them with Solomon XT Hawk trailrunners, size 9.5, in Manchester Center, Vermont. I'll be starting with the Solomons in Georgia while keeping a pair of New Balance running shoes at the ready should the Solomons wear out.
Camp shoes. I started with none and immediately regretted it. I pulled my sandals out of my bounce box and kept them with me for the rest of the trip. My sandals were also my footwear of choice in towns and at hostels. They're completely worn out, however, so I'll have to replace them before Georgia.
Gaiters. I bought a pair of Outdoor Research ankle gaiters when I bought my trailrunners. I used them daily until the 100-Mile Wilderness, where the trail was dry and not-so rocky. They were a bit frustrating because the strap kept loosening and making the gaiters hitch up past the top of the shoe. Definitely bringing them with me.

Trekking poles

Leki Makulu Summit. These suspension poles made a lot of clanging noise. They also took a great deal of abuse and stopped sliding midway through the trail. After a 30-minute repair session at the Frederick outfitter, the Trail House, these poles will be making the trip to Georgia.

Bear bag

I used an 8L Sea to Summit bag as my main food bag. It was too small. I'm going to get a 15-20L bag this time. Truth be told, I very rarely hung a bear bag on the northern half of the trail. The bears are more unafraid down south, though.
Cord. I used some nylon cord from Wal-Mart. I cut it up to use it as a laundry line and bear bag at the same time in Massachusetts. I'm going to get a new 60ft line.

Water

MSR Hyperflow Microfilter. The best filter ever. Until Massachusetts. After that, it was the worst gear purchase I made. It never again worked as advertised and the company seemed unable to fix the problem. Hiker forums and product review comments are filled with complaints on this Backpacker 2009 gear of the year award-winning product. After returning from the trail I took it back to REI and got cash back.
Aquamira. Holmes gave me an Aqua Mira set in Maine and I really liked it. I'll be using just Aquamira to start off with in Georgia. The difference between it and a filter is that you have to wait 30 mins while Aquamira treats the water before drinking it.
Bucket. This is a priority purchase for me before starting the trail in Georgia after spending too much time making multiple trips to the water source at camps. Having a foldable, synthetic bucket means that, when you get to camp, you go to the water source only once, quickly fill it and hang it somewhere. You have water for cooking, cleaning, teethbrushing and drinking until the next day. I'm getting a 10L Sea to Summit bucket.
Bottles. I started with two Nalgenes, 2L each, that I had dangling from caribiners from my pack. They either broke or were too heavy. I'm taking two used Powerade bottles [20 ounces each] this time.
Bladder. I started with none and got exasperated with having to de-pack everytime I needed a drink on the trail. I bought a Deuter 2L bladder in Port Clinton and used it daily for the rest of the trip. It was a bit difficult to refill while on the trail, since I had to take a bunch of stuff out of my pack to get to it. I resolved that issue by also carrying empty Gatorade bottles and just filling those after my bladder water ran out.

Pages

Books. I carried the 2009 ALDHA Thru-Hiker's Companion, ripping out whichever pages I didn't need. I also ripped up a novel with the intention of having subsequent chapters mailed or bounced ahead to me but never read beyond the chapters I started with. Along the way I picked up some paperbacks at hostels; some were better than others [I read Jack London's "The Sea Wolf" but not the half of an airplane novel I split with Col. Mustard after Glencliff, NH]. This time I'll be starting the trail with two thin paperbacks: Hemingway short stories and T.S. Eliot. I'm debating whether to rip up my 2010 ALDHA Thru-Hiker's Companion or not. Probably not.
Magazines. I started having New Yorker issues sent to me. I fondly remember becoming entirely engrossed in Ian Frazier's travelogue, Travels in Siberia, and not leaving a shelter until after noon. No plans for magazines this time.
Games. I carried some Sudoku puzzles after Connecticut, which I ripped out of a book I bought. I lacked the attention span to finish many puzzles. Maybe not even one. I won't be starting with any games.
Journals. I started with and completed a composition notebook, sent it home, and picked up a thicker, book-like journal. I'll be starting with this journal because there's still room left as well as two really thin Moleskin journals to follow.
Maps. Started with none. Used some hiker box maps in Vermont, I think it was, and loved them. In Maine I picked up the complete map set and really enjoyed having the day's elevation profile at a glance, as well as seeing the locations of water sources relative to shelters, etc. I'll be using maps at least through the Smokies, but I haven't got them yet.

Toiletries

Toothbrush. I didn't saw the handle off as the ultralight hikers do. I'm packing a little plastic cap to enclose the bristles.
Floss. A little waxed floss dispenser is crucial.
TP. A full roll at a time, without the cardboard roll in the center, packed in plastic in easy reach suffices. It's best to err on the side of having too much - it's no fun asking other people for spare or resorting to leaves.
Hand sanitizer. A small, 2-ounce bottle makes for healthy living.
Razor. Originally, I had my Gillette Mach 3 Turbo razor in a bounce box, but I soon kept the razor with me for trimming purposes. It's great to have a beard but uncouth to let it roam your face as it will.
Emory board, clippers. I pulled these out of the bounce box, too, because it's good to be able to groom spontaneously.
Dr. Bronner's. This stuff was awesome when it was possible to take stream baths in the summer. When that ended, the utility of Dr. Bronner's did, too. So hiker box.
Anti-chafing. I cycled through zinc powder, zinc ointment, Gold Bond, Easy Glide and Vaseline [I couldn't settle on one solution and sent stuff home]. I'll probably go with just Vaseline this time, in tube form.
Sunscreen. Unnecessary. Abandoned on Day 2.

Miscellaneous

Wallet. Kept in my pack.
Knife. Simple Buck pocket knife. Used sparingly, typically to cut cheese or pepperoni.

I'll be back later with a weights estimate and a simplified gear list for Springer, without all the explanations, and maybe something to break up the text on this post. In the meantime, I'm going to be visiting a university that I've applied to. And then the same thing tomorrow. Busy times!

Countdown: 26 days to GA->WV '10

2010-02-12T20:08:00.002-05:00

I've already booked a bunk for the first hostel on the NoBo AT: Hiker Hostel, near Dahlonega, Georgia.

For $70 you get the thru-hiker special: Shuttle from the airport/train or bus station in Atlanta, stay overnight, breakfast and a shuttle to the beginning of the AT.

Look soon for a "What's ahead in Georgia"-type post.

AT '09 wrap-ups, new blog look

2010-02-10T12:43:00.005-05:00

I like me a good blizzard. Maryland is getting so much snow so fast that even the plow trucks are grounded. My car is parked in a downtown parking garage [made free by the city] for the rest of the week maybe. I hope to get out just to get out and be in the shit later. Before that, though, I'm updating the look of this blog.

You'll notice a new gadget on the side of the blog that groups posts by category, mostly by state.

I've also tweaked my profile.

I'm taking down the "Other hikers I knows' blogs" from hikers I met on my WV -> ME '09 hike in order to clear up room for the new class. Soon I'll put up blogs that make sense to link to here.

I'm going to give you excerpts from the last entries on these '09 blogs, which should inspire anyone who has adventure on his or her mind. They certainly inspire me.

Enjoy:

-Chance, on summitting Katahdin in the dark, early Sept.:

We finally reached the top around 5:45 am just a few minutes before the sun came up over the horizon. It was one of the most beautiful sunrises i've ever seen. I can't believe the amazing weather that we've had the past few days. The sky was perfectly clear for our summit and we could see for miles. Rocket, Union Break, and Daddy Longs Legs were all at the top with me. It was such an amazing feeling. I think that in days to come i will be sad that the trail is over, but at the summit i was just exstatic and filled with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. Five and a half months of walking and i've finally reached my goal. There was only a time or two i thought i might not make it, but Katahdin was always so far away that it wasn't even something to think about. Here it is now and I just climbed it.

-Katchup, on coming home after finishing the trail:

On Thursday my mom planned a day of pampering for the both of us. After breakfast we headed down to the spa for manicures and pedicures. I laughed when she told me because I was immediately reminded of a conversation myself and the divas had somewhere in New York about getting a pedicure by a small Vietnamese women. "No help for you" we joked about our calloused, dirty feet. Yet there I was soaking my feet in some kind of mineral bath, relaxing in a massage chair as this little Vietnamese woman worked her wonders. The callouses are still there, but my toes are clean and pretty :)

After our manicures and pedicures we headed off to do the next obvious pampering event; getting ourselves stabbed a million times with a needle. Yep that's right, my mom and I went and got tattoos together. Never in a million years would I have thought that this is what I would be doing when returning home from the trail. And not only was I getting a tattoo with my mom but she helped me design mine. I would have thought that it was all a dream but the million needle stabs in my arm were way to realistic.

-Zipper, reflecting on her flipflop hike after completion:

December 19, 2009
I’ve been home for a month – so now I have a little bit of perspective on this fantastic experience. So what are the big take aways? People have asked me how this experience has changed me, and that’s a really good question. It’s so strange how I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz – did this crazy journey actually happen now that I’m back in my own bed in Kansas – or New Orleans? It’s good to be home and I’m happy in my familiar world – so what’s changed?

...I have a lot more faith that things will work out. Or that I can handle what happens. Granted, I think I had an easy relatively uneventful hike in terms of things that were scary. I never thought I was going to die. That first day in Maine was pretty scary for a couple of hours, but I never went for a long period of time being frightened or physically deprived. I was healthy and safe, for the most part. But that’s true for many of us most of the time and we still can be pretty good at worrying. I come from a long line of worriers, and I did worry plenty on the trail, but I also kept going and didn’t let worries stop me. So hopefully I’ve reinforced something I already knew – as Mark Twain said, most of the worst things in my life never actually happened. And whatever does happen, even if it’s difficult or scary, we deal with it one step at a time.

-Early Bear has launched an impressive new photography Web site. Yours truly makes two appearances, including one from the first really really hard day on the trail.

Happy trails!

Photo dump: Some end-of-trail life for February

2010-02-09T20:45:00.008-05:00

Here are some shots from the end of my WV->ME '09 hike to peruse while you're cabined up this fine February monstersnow.

[Getting into the ride to the 100-Mile Wilderness, outside the Lake Shore House in Monson, ME, Sept. 14. Blog post here. Photo by Early Bear.]

[The arm shows the results of falling off the bog log in the 100-Mile Wilderness on my way to the Nahmakanta Stream campsite, Sept. 18. Blog post on that here. Photo by Holmes.]

[Day 103 on the trail: Hiker Christmas morning at The Birches, Sept. 21, 2009. Early Bear, Wis-Pee, me, Holmes. Blog post here. Photo by Lil Dipper.]

Check back often!

Dayhike: Windsor Furnace to Port Clinton, Pa.

2010-02-01T19:35:00.021-05:00

To kick off the 5.5-week countdown to the point where I begin the southern half of the Appalachian Trail, I planned to do an overnight hike from Windsor Furnace to Pa. Rte. 309, in central Pennsylvania, this past weekend.

Then a blast of Arctic pain arrived. The forecast for the overnight temperature for Saturday, Jan. 30 called for 15 degrees F but feeling something like 5 degrees. My sleeping bag is rated at 20 degrees: No go. I know what it feels like to shiver in a shelter so violently that sleep becomes impossible, and I didn't fancy such a night in Eckville shelter, where I planned to stay.

I also wanted to be cautious because, this time, I was planning a hike for two.

My gf, Ashley, and I turned the overnight hike into a day hike. Instead of hiking 15 miles north from the Hamburg reservoir/Windsor Furnace, we would hike 6.5 miles south, to Port Clinton.

[Ashley! Heading south to Port Clinton on the AT.]

Readers of this blog will know Ashley from when I hit Palmerton, Pa. in late June, and then Rutland, Vermont in late July :) You'll probably be seeing more of her here, btw, because we're serious now.

So we'd avoid the 15 degree death chill by not spending the night outside. But we still needed to bundle up in warm-warms in the face of a 20-degrees-and-overcast, January day.

[Me, sign marking the AT near Windsor Furnace, 965.7 miles from Mt. Katahdin, Jan. 30, 2010. Rocking the camo pants.]

We started at about 1 p.m. I anticipated the hike taking 3 hours, with a glorious entrance to Port Clinton - a town I have fond memories of from the summer - ahead of the early sunset and with a hot sandwich and a huge, "small" fries and cold lagers waiting for us at the Port Clinton Hotel. Here is my post on my previous Port Clinton experience.

It was a tad surreal setting foot on the trail again, headed in the wrong direction, with no leaves on the trees.

Winter gripped even the water sources in his frosty hands:

The hiking went swimmingly easy. The ups were brief. The ridge blocked the wind from the west for most of the trail. All in all, it was a refreshing day.

The hotel was as hiker-friendly as I remember it. Afterwards we made a requisite stop at the Port Clinton Peanut Shop, one of the very few candy-specific stores along the trail.

[Ashley, caught a millisecond after ordering, Port Clinton Peanut Shop.]

Stay tuned...

[Pause button pressed]

2009-11-19T20:40:00.006-05:00

As I'm in the thick of applying to grad school, I'll not be posting new entries about hiking, unless I take a day hike here, an overnighter there. Check back in February or March, when I'm due to start preparing for the second half of the AT, from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. Then this blog will fire up again in style.

However, as new photos from this summer continue to trickle in from other hikers on the trail, I'll be posting them and linking them with their appropriate entries from earlier in the blog. The first example is below.

It was a blessing hiking with you and reporting back to the rest of you. Here's to the next big walk,

-Jeremy 'Ink' H

[first touch of the sign, Sept. 21, 2009]

Update: Winter crash lands on Fall

2009-10-17T15:00:00.006-04:00

...and I've crash-landed back into the civilized world.

First, though, I trickled south by bus and train from Maine to Maryland. Along the way I got to see some big East Coast cities. Even before that, I tried the "Summit Sundae Challenge" at Millinocket's Appalachian Trail Cafe.

Fourteen scoops of ice cream, a giant-sized Snickers bar, an enormous homemade doughnut and a pack of M&Ms. The challenge? Eat it all in under 90 minutes. The prize? an awesome T-shirt. With the ice cream, Snickers and doughnut gone, I was staring down the barrel at goop and M&Ms, with like 45 minutes to go on my 90-minute time limit. I couldn't do it. Every time I ate another cold M&M I felt one more M&M away from losing all my shit on the table.

So that was the first thing I ate after getting down from the summit of Mount Katahdin. The rest of my time in Millinocket I spent with Early Bear and another hiker hanging out at the Appalachian Trail Lodge [my final hostel on the north half of the trail] and bowling and picking out songs on jukeboxes.

Then it was time to leave Maine. Stop 1: Boston. When? During rush hour. It worked out. We got a hotel next to Fenway Park.

After lunch in the Green Monster [yes, there's a restaurant in the wall at Fenway Park], we three hikers hiked around the stadium and wandered onto the set of the movie "The Town," which is directed by Ben Affleck and scheduled for release in September 2010. It took me a second to realize what was going on - police cars and an ambulance with bullet holes, young dudes walking around with tool belts. Obviously the movie's going to be some kind of crime drama. Like "The Departed," it promises to be heavy on the Boston.

[On the set, road outside outside Fenway Park, Boston]

[Crew members ready for the next shot on the set of "The Town," Sept. 24, 2009]

Stop 2: New York, where I saw batman manhandling tourists:

Back in a bit.

Seize the day

2009-09-22T13:52:00.011-04:00

Climbing Mount Katahdin on a Class I day [excellent weather, all trails open], Monday, Sept. 21, 2009...

[Starting off, 8 a.m., with 5.2 miles to the peak, Sept. 21, 2009]

[Lil' Dipper and Holmes, ascending Katahdin]

[Early Bear ascending]

[The ridge]

[Another busy day at the top]

[When I got to the top, some of the day hikers urged me on. I kissed the sign when I got to it [there's a foto of this, I hope to have it this week]] and then I settled down for this relaxed shot. The sunglasses were a hiker box find, if you were wondering :)]

[Part of Early Bear's photo shoot]

[Lil Dipper's turn on the sign]

[swordmaster Ink]

More on all this later. But, yes, my WV>ME '09 hike is finished. Love ya!

Sept. 20: Last night, last supper, last shelter

2009-09-22T13:33:00.003-04:00

It was 10 miles or so from Rainbow Stream Campsite to Linda's Store at Abol Bridge. I sat down at a picnic table along with Holmes and Watson, a hiker named Nina, Tord M. Johnson [Tord is the creator of Rock and Crawl, an AT cartoon strip everybody's been enjoying in the trail registers along the entire trail] and a parks official/AT ridgerunner.

After six days in the woods, a couple of burgers, even microwaved ones, as it were, and a couple of Long Trail Ales hits the spot.

Entering your last night on the northbound AT feels like being ushered in to the launch facility for a space shuttle flight. You have to start hiking the 10 mile trail to The Birches, the final shelter, before 5 p.m. because you have to register there [and pay $10 cash only] before 9 p.m.

The ridgerunner escorted me and Holmes to a point where we had to sign in before entering Baxter State Park. Watson had to go to a dog sitter in Millinocket because no pets are allowed in the park. The ridgerunner handed me a pair of binoculars to study the top of Katahdin. He pointed out the approach: Up the horn on the left, past Thoreau Spring, across the middle section that juts out and finally to the tiny speck that is the pile of rocks 30 feet from the sign.

Through the binoculars, I could see a very tiny cluster of moving specks. The top was busy, it being a weekend and a sunny day. The Knife's Edge trailed off the peak to the right.

I already knew from trail registers that I would be summiting along with Early Bear and Lil Dipper. From the register at the edge of Baxter I learned that Wis-pee would be up there, too, and Holmes had increased her pace to arrive at The Birches on the 20th.

Great crew to summit with, if you ask me. After all, my first night on the AT I spent in a shelter in Maryland with none other than Early Bear. Full circle! And entirely by coincidence.

At The Birches, it was just us, along with an older hiker named Chris and Wis-pee's girlfriend, with the beers we'd packed out from the store, a good fire and the final night of noodles or chili or whatever in our pots. It truly felt like any other night on the trail. But it wasn't: We had entered the final stage of the final leg of the home stretch. Our names were in the books, our dates with Katahdin were booked. The next day, Monday, we would finish our hikes on the AT...

To the end

2009-09-22T12:37:00.006-04:00

Over the days following my big 24 Katahdin crept closer and closer into view. I had caught up with Holmes and Watson; Early Bear Lil Dipper and Wis-pee were still ahead.

[Me crushing Katahdin from the safe trail distance of 36.4 miles, atop Nesuntabunt Mountain, Sept. 19, 2009.]

I cowboy-camped on Sept. 19 on a pre-made bed of leaves at Rainbow Stream Campsite. With the moon in its new moon phase, the night sky glittered with stars. The fire crackled, and I could hear loons crying over Rainbow Lake which hit the shore about 100 yards away. It was time to contemplate being in the wild for more than three months.

It was also time to contemplate getting out of the woods. Baxter Peak on Mount Katahdin lay just 26.4 miles away, and there would be just one more night of camping.

There is no more beautiful state on the trail than Maine, and I hiked it during a fortunate spell of weather. Since I entered Maine on Aug. 26, I'd had only a couple hours of drizzle aside from the Tropical Storm Danny day. Every other day, the sky was blue and the birches stood out white along a dry trail.

I got the fire going again next morning at 6 a.m. in preparation for a 20 mile day. These days, I was starting off the morning with the equivalent of four cups of coffee in the form of Folgers singles [you steep them like tea bags].My pack weighed less and less each day, so it became easier to fly along the trail.

I got a couple more shots of Katahdin on the way to The Birches, the final campground on the AT northbound.

[Katahdin from 21 trail miles away on Rainbow Ledges, Sept. 20]

At Abol Bridge, the boundary between the 100-Mile Wilderness and Baxter State Park, the mountain really dominates the view.

[Mt. Katahdin from Abol Bridge, 14.5 trail miles away, Sept. 20].

Day 100/Sept. 18: Getting the miles going again

2009-09-22T12:14:00.003-04:00

I got up at 6:30 a.m. in the East Branch Lean-To by myself [an older SoBo was tenting nearby], got the fire going again and hit the trail at 7:40 a.m. for a big day. And a big day it was: For the first time since July 20 [Day 41] I hiked more than 21 miles in one day.

I did a fast-paced, 24-mile day over the easiest, flattest section of trail since at least Vermont and arrived at Nahmakanta Stream Campsite at dinner time to catch up with Holmes and Watson at the fire.

Watson, the dog, stared at me while I cooked up some chicken and rice wraps. It was too messy so I ate them out of my bowl.

Along the way to the trail I fell into a bog, after slipping on a bog log. I put all my weight on my left foot on the edge of a wet og log, and my foot slipped, stripping the bark off the underside of the log. My foot went in past my sock. My right knee hit the boards, and my right hand, wrapped around the handle of my trekking pole, punched in up to the forearm.

Bog log got me good.

[Photo later - used backup snap-n-shoot and have to develop the film yet.]

Also, when I tried to dry my socks out, the fire got too close and singed the bottom of one into black. Another pair down!

Day 99/Sept. 17: First Katahdin sighting

2009-09-22T11:49:00.006-04:00

A flash of black fur left the trail ahead of me and flitted into the dense woods as I hiked down the north slope of White Cap Mountain [elev. 3,650], where I had finally seen Mount Katahdin from a distance.

[Mount Katahdin, 70 trail miles away, from White Cap Mountain. White Cap was the highest point until Katahdin at that point. Between my hand and the summit, the woods teemed with hikers.]

I stopped hiking at about 4:30 p.m. because I had been dreaming of cooking up a big meal of mac & cheese with pepperoni all day. It felt great to be done in the daytime for once!

Sept. 15-16: Waking up in the Wilderness

2009-09-22T11:29:00.004-04:00

I started the morning at Wilson Valley Lean-To by doing a food inventory after breakfast [Cheerios and coffee] and hiking out late, at 11. Before dawn, though, I did wake up and look over at the shelter to see three French-speaking hikers getting a big fire going.

A sample of the food inventory in my 60-pound pack:

Drinks:

- 10 Carnation instant breakfasts
- 1 baggie of powdered milk
- 23 Folgers singles packets
- 7 Gatorade packets
- 9 Crystal Light packets
- 13 tea bags

It turned out that I had dinners for 8 days - 2 too many - and a pound and a half of cheese. Yum!

The day's hike took me over Barren Mountain [elev. 2,660] which gave me a workout with my very heavy pack, and I ended up looking for a place to set up my tent after dark, tramping along the trail with my headlamp on.

I found a place near three other tents next to West Chairback Pond, off a side trail. There was no moon, so the stars and planets reflected brightly off the pond's surface when I pulled some water out of it to cook with.

In the morning I got up, stood up outside and saw gray skies and my breath frosting in the air and got back in my sleeping back. Did some journaling, made a fire next to the pond and started hiking after 1 p.m. [!]

Which meant it was inevitable that, 6 hours and 11.6 miles later I'd be looking for a flat spot for my tent with my headlamp again, near the Carl Newhall Lean-To.

Day 96/Sept. 14: Entering the Wilderness

2009-09-22T11:17:00.002-04:00

On morning number 3 in sunny Monson, we had a hikers' breakfast at Shaws' Lodging. I only got the No. 2 because I didn't feel like being rolled down the trail to start off the 100-Mile Wilderness.

After breakfast Early Bear, Lil' Dipper, Holmes and I went back to the Lakeshore House and packed up. Slowly, though, since L.A. Confidential was on. Then we all weighed our packs in preparation for a week without resupply. My pack weighed in a 60 pounds.

"Welcome to the 60 Club!" said a hiker named Morningwood, high-fiving me.

We shuttled out to the trailhead at noon or 1 p.m.

Towards evening we encountered Big Wilson Stream. It required fording. The boots and socks came off, and the awkwardness of walking through cold, flowing water with slimy rocks for footholds commenced. When I had finished, I trained my camera on the next hiker to ford the stream, as Early Bear had done before me.

[Wis-pee finishes fording Big Wilson Stream with a flourish, Sept. 14, 2009.]

Then it was .7 miles to the Wilson Valley Lean-To for Holmes and Watson, Wis-pee and I while Early Bear and Lil' Dipper kept hiking. I finished the night with a delish pot of double-Ramen + horseradish cheese + tuna by the fire and tented.

During the night I hear a lot of scampering in the bushes nearby. It sounded like squirrels were doing gymnastics. One bounced off my tent, scaring the crap out of me.

Update for September 22, 2009

2009-09-22T10:04:00.002-04:00

I'm in Millinocket, ME. Just finished breakfast at the Appalachian Trail Cafe. Zeroing today. Read above for the past week's AT hike later today.

:)

Crossing the Kennebec

2009-09-14T10:05:00.002-04:00

I crossed the Kennebec River Sept. 9. Kennebec is an Abenaki tribe word meaning "long level water without rapids."

The river is the biggest unbridged river on the AT. In the 1980s a woman attempting to ford the river drowned, and shortly thereafter a free ferry service took hikers from one shore to the next.

The canoe even has a white blaze on it. When I went across, at about 2:30 p.m., the river was flowing high. The rower steered up along the south bank and then shot into the middle, with me paddling in front, and angled the boat so that it was pointing upstream and we were drifting down and to the right towards the landing.

As it happens, had I arrived about a week earlier I might have been in a news story in the Bangor Daily News about the ferryman, who told me to call him "Hillbilly Dave."

Here's the story. In the pictures you'll see why "Hillybilly."

BTW, the hikers rowing in one of the photos are Slapshot and Raddlephoot.

100-Mile Wilderness is next

2009-09-14T09:26:00.005-04:00

Been slacking around Monson since Friday evening. Today was the famous all you can eat breakfast at Shaws', where you order by number - a 2 means two pieces of French toast, two eggs, two pieces of bacon, two pieces of sausage and some home fries.

At the moment everyone's packing up their resupplies and mail drops and calculating how much food they'll actually need for the rest of the trail. Unneeded stuff goes in the hiker box.

Saturday and Sunday morning, the folks from Whiteblaze.net hosted a hiker feed behind the abandoned elementary school here in Monson.

[Dave [last name?] the operator of Whiteblaze.net, helps with the flapjacks, Sept. 13, 2009.]

Had a chill Sunday after that. Ran into a nearby town, Greenville, via a shuttle from Shaws' with Zipper and two SoBos, for a huge [$85!] resupply. One final hurrah at the Lakeshore House, on the edge of Lake Hebron:

[Pub at the Lakeshore House, a laundromat/bar/hostel on the waterfront in Monson. From left, Wis-pee, Early Bear, Lil Dipper, Zipper, Nutmeg, Billhoot and Ink]

Biig photo dump, from Rangeley to Monson, Maine

2009-09-12T12:55:00.007-04:00

[Some stairs. In Maine. Yeah.]

[Bears. Outside the Stratton Motel, Sept. 6, 2009]

[East Carry Pond, Sept. 9. Is where I swam and realized I have little arm strength.]

[Alpine moss]

[Summit of Moxie Bald Mountain, elev. 2,629. The Laurentide Ice Sheet shaped the rocks when it was melting more than 14,000 years ago.]

[Folk jam session, Monson General Store, Sept. 11.]

Update for Sept. 12: Monson!

2009-09-12T12:49:00.002-04:00

I'm zeroing in Monson. I'm headed shortly to the baseball field up the street for the trail's end hiker feed sponsored by Whiteblaze.net.

One hundred and seventeen miles to go. My projected summit date is Sept. 20.

After I leave this kickass town, the last trail town on the AT, I will be entering the 100-Mile Wilderness.

100-Mile Wilderness, says my book: "Signs at each end of this section proclaim this area's remoteness and warn the unprepared hiker to stay away, but don't be intimidated."

Nevertheless, I'll be packing two full canisters of fuel and a bunch of food.

BTW, a hearty trail "Thanks!" to LP and Sis for much-appreciated packages! I just picked them up at Shaw's Lodging today. I've already sampled the candy.

Cheers,

Ink

3 Months!

2009-09-10T09:45:00.003-04:00

I'm at Northern Outdoors in Caratunk, ME, with 150 miles of trail to go before the top of Mount Katahdin.

It's a brewery slash lodge in the middle of nowhere. Moose head on the wall and T-shirts for sale. Snowmobile parked outside. No USB ports again [seriously?], so the photos will have to enter the blog later this week.

It looks like I won't be participating in the trails end hardcore work project that I mentioned earlier. It's just too far to Monson for me to hitch, and damn if I didn't get a bunch of answering machines when I tried to inquire about a shuttle. I really wanted the chance to give back to the trail and be able to say, "You know the X shelter in Maine? I helped build that."

But I'm consoled by an easier goal of going to the hiker feed in Monson on Saturday and Sunday that I've been seeing flyers about.

I started this hike exactly three months ago today. I've hiked more than 1,000 miles of the AT at this point, which feels pretty good :)

So here's an image from trail's past, which I just received by email...

[From left, Sunbeam, Huck Finn, Half Moon and Ink represent OHIO, somewhere around Delaware Water Gap, Pa. Sunbeam and Half Moon are fellow MU Ohio grads; Huck Finn and Half Moon realized they went to the same high school.]

PRW News Ticker: Sunday, Sept. 6

2009-09-06T10:42:00.006-04:00

- I'm in Stratton, ME, with 200 miles to go to the big K. Stealthed last night at the road. Picked up my Patagonia thermal layer and some cookies and magazines this morning after breakfast at the Stratton Diner. Wis-pee, Blacklist and three other hikers I don't know have hiked out. I'm thinking about doing laundry and shower then hiking out 15 miles.

- Jimmy Buffett song "Cheeseburger in Paradise" in my head all day yesterday. "I like mine with lettuce and tamatah; Heinze 57 and French-fried potatahs!" Will soon eat what he sings about. At the diner.

- Had coffee break on a boulder in a branch of the Carrabassett River yesterday evening, just before hiking over the south and north peaks of Crocker Mountain.

- Chance has summitted Katahdin. Which means a few other people I've met prolly have, too.

- Heard rumour of a trail festival thingy coming up Sept. 11-13, where you work your ass off on the trail the 11th and jam band the rest of the time. Will look into it further because that sounds pretty fab.

- Hoping for a post-summit rendezvous at Bar Harbor. Will see if that gathers steam. That way it'll be my birthday somewhere fun.

- This computer sucks because I can't upload photos.

- My writing is coming to resemble trail register entries.

- Maine on the braine. Caratunk in 3 days.

- Football season: Go Bungles!

Update for Thursday, Sept. 3: Trail magic score

2009-09-03T15:48:00.005-04:00

So last night I spent the night in a hotel. I got a couple of showers, some A/C, a bed and some bad TV.

It was trail magic. Big trail magic. And it was good.

When I made it to the road leading to Rangeley at 6:40 p.m., out of water, knees and feet throbbing and ready for some nourishment, I spotted Wis-pee having a Gatorade and talking to a couple next to a Suburban. I had hiked 17.7 miles; the last time I'd hiked more than 15 miles in one day was before Hannover [Aug. 6].

The couple were Steady, a '93 thru-hiker who went on to triple crown [also hiked the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail], and her husband, Steve. They are from Tulsa, and are vacationing around the country. They'd been in Rangeley for two weeks and have been giving drinks and rides to hikers coming through.

So they took Wis-pee and I to dinner in town. I don't remember being so full, after eating salad and a ton of pizza. They also took us to IGA to resupply, which was wonderful because the store is a mile out of town, and there hasn't been anywhere to get long-term supplies since Lincoln, NH.

While we were shopping, Steve came up and handed us keys: He got us a room at the same hotel they were staying at. It was one of the kindest gestures, the kind that, as Wis-pee said, you hear about happening to other hikers but never to yourself. We couldn't believe our fortune!

It topped a pretty fantastic day on the trail.

I got out of camp at 11 a.m. yesterday at Bemis Mtn. lean-to. What can I say? I slept in, had tea and did some journaling. It was a perfect morning to wake up in the woods.

I realized that if I gunned hard for Rangeley, I would have probably the greatest chance I'll get to get back to the kind of hiking I was used to before the Whites make me work for every mile. The terrain was said to be nice and flat.

Along the way I saw a garter snake that wanted to play. It left the trail, then came back towards me, in a nonthreatening way. Katchup and Grommet had seen it, too.

[inquisitive garter snake on the trail, Sept. 2, 2009.]