Three Days on the Appalachian Trail – Part 4

More from this series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Lessons Learned | Video

Tuesday, December 17^th, 2013 – Day 3:

I woke up around seven and tried to quietly make my way out of the shelter and pull down the bear-bag, which was difficult since the cabling squeaked and it was just feet from the shelter. I got my bag down and walked away from the shelter to open it, as to not wake anybody who was sleeping. I dug to the bottom to get one of the last packs of Pop-Tarts out and ate it for breakfast. I also took the last granola bar and stuffed it in my pocket to eat on the trail while walking.

My buddy got up and ate the last pack of Pop-Tarts and we watched the sun rise over the mountains on another beautiful, clear, winter morning. The plan was to head back South today and see how far we could get – Springer Mountain Shelter, Black Gap Shelter, Amicalola Falls State Park Shelter, or to the car. We both had been craving Chicken Parmesan from Olive Garden for a couple days, so the thought of that certainly played into the equation at some point.

Our three comrades from the shelter awoke one by one while I was packing up my gear and my buddy was refilling our water bottles. I changed back into my hiking clothes, at least what I wasn’t still wearing of them, and got my bag fully packed. We wished our new friends farewell and hit the trail at 8:30 heading Southbound, which was really north to begin with. We were hiking at a fast pace this morning, especially on the flatter terrain. We quickly passed the logging road and made it to a creek where we stopped to refill our water bottles.

While we refilled, the older AT Club gentleman passed us, but he stopped a few hundred yards up the trail at a bridge. We passed him and then a little while later, I stopped to take a pee and he caught up again. We all hiked together for a bit, but my buddy and I outpaced the older gentleman until we stopped to take a break and he passed us. We followed him for a bit until we came to an area with some blown-down trees and lots of branches in the way. I tried to remember this area from the day before, but it didn’t seem familiar – I had remembered us having to climb over a single tree at some point, but here we had to climb over two trees and the branches of other trees seemed awfully close.

Eventually we came to a river with logs going across it, which we were a hundred percent sure we hadn’t crossed the day before. We doubled back and I climbed a hill to see if the path laid beyond some trees that were blocking what looked like a path, but that wasn’t the way either. The older gentleman went on and said he would signal us if he found the trail. My buddy and I waited and discussed our options until we heard the man yell that he had found the trail. We hesitantly headed in his direction, crossing over the logs in the river and making our way up a hill to reach a very faded white blaze on a tree. This area was definitely a part of the Appalachian Trail at some point, though we were thinking it was an old section of the trail that had been rerouted elsewhere.

The older man continued on while I checked the map to see if I could find an old trail somewhere – I couldn’t. He came back and said that this wasn’t the trail, but he had found it, so we continued on until we reached the trail. He thought we should walk to the left, so I pulled out my compass and checked. We had come from the north, there was no trail heading south, so we had to choose east or west on the true AT path. The man headed east and after thinking it over, we followed. About a hundred yards down the path, we came across a bridge which looked familiar. I was ninety-nine percent sure that we had come the same direction the day before, so we turned around and headed back the other way.

We continued passing white blazes, though I still was not a hundred percent confident in my direction, though we were heading south up a mountain through a series of east-west switchbacks. We passed several sights that I thought looked familiar and I thought we had come the other direction when seeing them the first time, but many of them were common sights – downed trees, rock formations, etc. Eventually I heard some rustling behind me and saw the other man – he had turned around at some point too, figuring this was the correct direction. We made our way across mountains and streams and the man passed us just before we made it back to USFS 42 – less than a mile from Springer Mountain Shelter. Now I was sure we were going the right way, though we had passed the other shelter at some point, possibly during our unintentional detour.

The AT Club gentleman was packing his stuff into his car at the parking lot, so we wished him farewell and trekked on up Springer Mountain. Around 12:30, we stopped at the Springer Mountain Shelter to eat lunch. I had finished the Cheeze-It’s the night before and started on the Cheetos, so I continued by eating about half the family-sized bag of Cheetos and a couple pieces of beef jerky. I refilled our water bottles and my bladder, all of which were completely empty. The next portion of the trail had a few water stops, then a long stretch without water, so my plan was to drink from my bottle and refill it until we hit the long stretch where I would drink from my bladder and use the bottle as my emergency reserve. Since I couldn’t see the bladder and it was a pain to pull out of my pack, I could avoid having to refill it early and then once it was empty during the long drought, I would know that I only had a single bottle left.

I took some time at the shelter to read the log and sign into it, then I packed everything up and we headed out, back to the trail. We had heard somebody yell shortly before we left, though we didn’t know who or what for. We climbed the last 0.2 miles of Springer Mountain and summited to end our journey on the Appalachian Trail. There were three people already at the top of springer – a young hiker and an older couple who were there to give him a shuttle ride. The older man asked me if I was a thru-hiker and I said no – must be the beard. We looked out through the trees and saw for miles the rolling hills and mountains of Georgia laid out below us. It was the most spectacular sight of the entire trip and worthy of many photos.

We talked with the others for a bit – the young guy had just finished a thru-hike and must have been who had yelled earlier. We offered him our congratulations and a packet of beef jerky since we were sick of eating jerky. It had taken him six months to complete the whole trek and he was waiting on a couple friends who were behind him to complete it as well. We took in the view one last time, bid adieu to our mountaintop companions and started on the Approach Trail one more time. I checked our time to keep track of our pace – it was 1:50 when we left the summit. By 2:20 we were already at Black Gap Shelter, a 1.5 mile trek in half an hour. We were hauling at a clip normally reserved for walking down a flat street with no pack on, so we decided to press on for the base of the mountain.

We quickly came to Nimblewill Gap and then to our water stop. My buddy descended the steep mountain side to fill both our bottles from the creek while I admired the view. He returned and we donned our packs for the next portion of the trail which had a long waterless trek. As the trek turned from downhill scampering and flatland walking to uphill climbing, our pace took a hit. We were still going at about two miles an hour, but we had to make frequent stops on the uphill to catch our breath.

We made it to one campsite and I checked the water remaining in my Camelbak – somewhere just below a liter. I also took the opportunity of the break to inhale the granola bar I had been carrying, plus I pulled the bag of Cheetos out of my food bag and carried them with me. They were almost gone and I was intent on finishing them off. We continued up and down mountainsides for a while and every time we stopped, I’d munch down on another mouthful of Cheetos until the bag was empty. We watched the sun set over the mountains, then we would climb a mountain and watch the sun set again as we descended. I must have seen about five sunsets on this day alone.

I pulled out my GU Packet, which I had been saving for the home stretch, and ate about half of it before giving the other half to my buddy. We continued on in search of water as our resources dwindled. My buddy ran out of water, so I gave him about a third of my bottle shortly before my Camelbak ran dry. We kept pushing on, thinking the next water stop was just around the next mountain. I knew we would find a campsite followed by a downhill which would lead to a road with water, all in less than a half-mile span of trail. Every corner we turned, I thought I saw the campsite, but it was only a mirage formed by a downed tree or a rock – much like an oasis in the desert that isn’t really there.

Eventually we did find that campsite, scrambled down the trail, came to a road and just beyond it a river. My buddy filled his water bottle there, but I still had a third of a bottle left and it was a short distance to the restroom where I could fill it with tap water instead of having to filter it. Once we reached the restroom, I went in to relieve myself, refill my water bottle, and pull out my headlamp for the last decent. We headed down the path past the top of the falls and then down the six hundred steps. We reached the bottom and wound our way down the path and back to the car. We arrived at the car at six and packed our stuff away and used the restroom at the visitor center.

As I came out of the restroom, I heard movement in the nearby woods and saw the figures of three deer walking by about 20 yards from me. The deer hopped a fence and strolled across the road to the woods on the other side. I made my way back to the car and we were off, starving and craving some chicken parmesan. Once we got signal, I looked up Olive Garden and found one in Gainesville, Georgia. After a forty minute drive we made it there and began mowing down food. The service was great, even for two smelly hikers. Once we were done eating, I got my second wind and drove for an hour and a half until we got past Atlanta and stopped at a rest-stop on I-75 to rest for a bit. The adventure was over.

More from this series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Lessons Learned | Video