Three Days on the Appalachian Trail – Part 1

More from this series: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Lessons Learned | Video

Saturday, December 14^th, 2013 – Day 0:

My buddy and I drove from Orlando up to Amicalola Falls State Park in Northern Georgia for most of the day. We stopped at a Wal-Mart in Cumming, Georgia to pick up food and last-minute supplies. We arrived at the park around seven at night, after the sun had already set. We ripped open the food containers and I packed what I needed – four packs of beef jerky, five Pop-Tarts, two Granola Bars, a box of Cheeze-Its (or at least the plastic bag inside the box), and a bag of Cheetos.

I adjusted my pack to fit everything that I needed which included: me tent, tent poles, and stakes, my sleeping bag, my food bag, my clothes back with camping clothes, my three-liter Camelbak water bladder, and my work laptop since I was on-call for the weekend. In the front pouch of my bag I had smaller items such as my headlamp, which I took out to wear since it was already night, a trash bag to use as a pack cover in case of rain, a poncho for me in case I needed it, the support phone for work, some nylon string, extra carabiners, and my toiletry bag. On the side pockets I had bug spray, sunscreen, a lighter, an extra Gatorade bottle with Gatorade in it, and my water filter. I also had my phone and GoPro camera in my pocket and in the hip-belt pockets of my pack I kept my toilet paper, the extra backing to my GoPro (waterproof), and a GU gel packet that I had left over from my marathon. I also had my boots and two trekking poles to walk with, plus a sleeping pad attached to the outside of my pack.

For clothing, I had a pair of long-johns for hiking and another for camping, a pair of thin shell pants for hiking and another for camping if needed, a polyester tee-shirt for hiking and a long-sleeve polyester shirt for camping, a wool sweater for hiking and an acrylic sweater for camping, a fleece/shell jacket for hiking and a pull-over fleece for camping, a pair of dress socks and running socks for hiking, a pair of Smartwool skiing socks for camping, and a thin tuque for hiking and a thicker one for camping.

It took almost an hour to get everything ready, park the car in the right spot, sign into the register and begin the trip. We planned to night-hike up the A.T. Approach Trail and camp at Springer Mountain Shelter if we could get that far – nine miles. There were two other shelters along the trail, the first one, the Amicalola Falls State Park Shelter, just outside the visitor center, not even 0.1 miles up the trail and the second, Black Gap Shelter, was 7.3 miles up the trail.

We began the trail and not even a minute in we could see two headlamps coming towards us. Once we met the hikers coming in the other direction, we chatted for a moment before heading our own ways. The two hikers, a man and a woman, had just finished a six-month thru-hike and were now just minutes away from completing the Approach Trail as well. We hiked up the beginning of the trail, listening to the falls which we couldn’t see in the dark, even with my headlamp. We came upon a sign that said “175 steps, Difficulty: Strenuous” and took a break before conquering the steps. They were hard, but not a complete ass-kicker.

Not much farther up the trail we saw another sign: “425 steps, Difficulty: Strenuous”. Now that was an ass-kicker. We got to the top, past the top of the falls, and continued on past a couple parking lots and into the wilderness. We came to a sign that said the average hiker would take six hours to complete the trek to Springer Mountain and continued on a little longer. We passed a fork that split between the blue-blaze trail that we were on (the A.T. Approach Trail) and the green-blaze trail to the Len Foote Hike Inn. We continued on the blue path for a little longer until we stopped to take a break.

It had taken us an hour and a half to do a mile and a half of the trail. Even if we stopped at the next shelter, it was still a good six miles away. I went to pull out the guidebook and realized I had left it in the car. We discussed the situation and decided to abort the night-hike and head back down to the first shelter at mile zero. We climbed back down the mountain, down the six hundred steps, and walked all the way back to the car. I dropped off my laptop to shed ten pounds, hoping that I would be able to fix any problems with just the phone. I picked up my ziplock bag which had the AT Tru-Hikers Companion, the map of the Southern Part of the A.T. in Georgia, the AT Data Book, and some paper and a pen to use as a journal. I put that in the front pouch of my pack and we headed to the visitor center. It was closed, but the bathrooms were open, so I went in and filled my Camelbak with tap water, since I had drank most of it.

The Amicalola Falls State Park Shelter had wooden walls on three sides and a screened wall with a door on the fourth side. Inside there were two sleeping levels – the bottom being split into two separate platforms while the top was one continuous platform. My buddy and I each took a separate platform on the lower level to sleep on. We got to the shelter around eleven and I quickly changed into my camping clothes and set out my sleeping bag. The night was fairly chilly as the wind seemed to find the cracks in the walls between the wooden planks. I got up a couple times during the night to pee and cracked my head on the low beam between the bunks… multiple times.

More from this series: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Lessons Learned | Video