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.