I’ve already written lengthy posts on my trip to the Appalachian Trail, complete with still pictures, but I’ve finally completed my moving-picture compilation. The video is below along with links to all the other posts I’ve made on this topic. Enjoy!
More from this series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Lessons Learned
More from this series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Lessons Learned | Video
Tuesday, December 17th, 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. Continue reading
More from this series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4 | Lessons Learned | Video
Monday, December 16th, 2013 – Day 2:
The sun finally rose around seven and I quickly got up to greet the day after a long cold night of mediocre sleep. I quickly got up to meet the day and cure myself of cabin fever – or sleeping bag fever. I walked outside to retrieve my bear-bag from the line where I had left it and rummaged through it to find breakfast – Cheeze-Its! I wanted the Cheetos pretty bad and I had told myself to finish off the Cheeze-Its first so I didn’t have too many open bags.
I watched the sun rise over the mountains while eating breakfast, thoroughly enjoying this experience. The sky turned from a faded blue to a bright red and slowly all the colors blended in the sky like a rainbow, except with a muted green. I saw some of the other hikers slowly emerging from the shelter to take on the day as well. I put the Cheeze-Its away and pulled out a Pop-Tart to take in the copious amounts of carbohydrates that would help fuel my hiking this morning.
I walked back to the shelter with my food bag in one hand and my open Pop-Tart package in my pocket and climbed the ladder into the loft. I finished my breakfast and began packing my gear up while my buddy arose from his slumber and did the same. I took some time to review the guidebook and make cliff-notes in my journal for later. Looking at the guidebook, I found that the next three shelters were Stover Creek Shelter 2.6 miles away, Hawk Mountain Shelter 7.6 miles away, and Gooch Mountain Shelter 14.9 miles away. Considering it took us all day to hike nine miles the day before, I figured Hawk Mountain would be our final destination, though it we made it there quickly, we could always adjust.
We headed down to the creek to fill our water bottles and my Camelbak bladder. I tried to use my filter, but it refused to pump, then I realized it had frozen in the night and there was still ice inside it somewhere. The freezing had also cracked the filter, making it potentially useless. I tried to clear it, but nothing I did would make a difference, so we filled up our containers and used a few drops of peroxide to hopefully kill anything that was in the water – though I hadn’t seen or heard any wildlife in the area since we arrived and it was pretty cold out. We headed back to the loft to finish packing. Continue reading
More from this series: Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Lessons Learned | Video
Sunday, December 15th, 2013 – Day 1:
I awoke at 8:30 the next morning after a fairly good night’s sleep. My buddy and I packed up out stuff to hit the trail. My buddy finished packing first and headed out while I finished up. Once packed, I headed back the couple hundred yards to the start of the trail to get some quick pictures and video before heading on. Just as I passed the shelter again on my way up, I met two guys coming down. They asked “Are we almost to the top?” and I laughed and said “Yeah!” Unfortunately, they weren’t joking. They had hiked to the top of the falls and somehow got turned around and came back down. They decided to go take a seat on the picnic tables to contemplate their lives while I headed on up the trail.
Hiking during the day allowed me to see the falls that I had only been able to hear the night before. I was also able to see just how steep of a climb I had been walking yesterday and would have to hike again today. I stopped for photos at a few times and eventually to shed my jacket and sweater which were causing me to overheat. As I made my way up the path, I heard my name yelled out and looked back to see my buddy coming up the path – he had gone back to the car to change out some gear. I thought I had been trying to catch up with him, but he had been trying to catch up to me.
We continued on past all the steps – again – and back into the wilderness. We were treated to many scenic vistas of mountains through some mild fog and leafless trees. Being from the flatlands of Central Florida, it’s always a treat to see the topography of more mountainous regions. As we hiked through the day, we were passed by many people coming down the mountain, which we would make small talk with. We stopped for breakfast and each of us had a Pop Tart, which I followed up with some Cheeze-Its and a granola bar. The path up the approach trail was exceptionally steep at many points, both ascending and descending mountains.
More from this series: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Lessons Learned | Video
Saturday, December 14th, 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.
On October 30th, instead of watching the Red Sox win the World Series like a good fan, I took the day off of work and headed down to Tampa for an Appalachian Trail Conservancy Membership Drive that included a showing of the movie Appalachian Impressions. I’ve been a fan of the Appalachian Trail for several years after a friend put the idea in my head of hiking the whole trail in one go – a thru-hike. During a road-trip that included heading up to Georgia, I had visited Vogel State Park and during a hike there, I had come oh, so close to the Appalachian Trail, but had to turn around due to time constraints and a waning sun.
I had gone to the Athens Theatre in Deland, a much shorter drive, several months ago to see a screening of the movie Mile… Mile and a Half, a documentary of a group of friends hiking on the John Muir Trail. I had thoroughly enjoyed that movie and when I saw the membership drive for the Appalachian Trail contained a movie, I became pretty interested. I requested the day off from work and purchased my ticket to the movie – which was actually just a donation of anything over thirty dollars. I forked over fifty as I believe in what the ATC is doing to protect and maintain the trail and I feel that money is better spent protecting a great piece of nature than some material possession.
On the day of the event, after hitting Wekiva Springs to complete a long swim for my Triathlon training – I completed three miles in two hours and ten minutes, double my personal-best distance that I had set the previous week. Then on the drive into Tampa, I finally hit fifteen thousand miles on my car. I had a feeling that this was going to be a good day. Once in Tampa, with some time to kill, I hit the beach at Honeymoon Island State Park for a half hour before heading back inland to find the theatre.
The event was held in a typical movie theatre, nothing special about it. Prior to the movie, we had a few speakers from the ATC talk about what they do and the Editor of the AT Journeys magazine read a moving story about a father and his son who had started a hike on the trail before stopping due to the father’s injuries. The son came down with cancer shortly after and wasn’t given much of a chance, but he made it through and they made their way back to the trail. A former thru-hiker also spoke about his experience on the trail and read a few entries from his journal, which mostly consisted of lists of food consumed.
The actual movie was interesting, being segmented state by state. The first half of the movie covered the first half of the trail – from Springer Mountain in Georgia to the midpoint in Pennsylvania. It would talk of many of the well-known or important parts of the trail from popular shelters to popular hostels, to every state line. Many thru-hikers were interviewed and their comments were interspersed with the narration to tell the story of the Appalachian Trail and what it takes to thru-hike it.
During the intermission, one of the speakers did a few rounds of trivia with prizes while many of the viewers left to use the restrooms. After the short break, the movie resumed with part two, picking up from the midway point and continuing until Mount Katahdin in Maine. The scenes, the comradery of the hikers on the trail, and the changing topography all made me want to walk into work and quit to go out and hike the Appalachian Trail. I guess that would make the movie a success, as I can’t imagine its objective being the opposite – to keep me off the trail. I still have yet to pass a single white blaze, but I feel it calling out to me. One of these days.
I’ve had a fascination with hiking and long trails for a few years now. I had never been much of an outdoorsman, but while having lunch on my birthday with some friends, one friend brought up the idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail. He said it was long and might take a month to complete. I was fascinated by the idea – it was a challenge based on its scope, but easy in small doses. Upon further research, I found that my friend didn’t know what he was talking about. The idea stuck however, and here are seven long trails that I’d love to hike from end to end.
7: E8 European Long Distance Path
This European footpath travels through Ireland, a country I’ve already mentioned being at the top of my to-visit list, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. I’ve picked this path mostly because it passes through Ireland, although having never been to Europe before, getting to pass through so many countries is also enticing.
6: New England Trail
My original home, New England, always calls out to me. I try to return as often as possible to visit family and friends and get to enjoy the change in scenery, from fall foliage to winter blankets. It’s a short trail covering only 220 miles through southern New England.
5: Continental Divide Trail
The youngest of the Triple Crown routes, the Continental Divide Trail isn’t exactly complete at this point, which leaves it mostly to experienced hikers. The trail follows the Rocky Mountains through the heart of America, from Mexico to Canada through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. The CDT is one of the longer paths at 3100 miles.
4: Pacific Crest Trail
Another of the Triple Crown trails, the Pacific Crest Trail travels through the west coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington. At 2650 miles, the PCT is about an equal length from the longer CDT and shorter Appalachian Trail.
3: Florida Trail
The trail of my current home-state, the Florida Trail racks up about 1400 miles, but has multiple sections where you can choose to go an Eastern route or a Western route. One such fork in the road goes around Lake Okeechobee on either side. Another such fork splits between Kissimmee and Ocala making up an Eastern and Western corridor. I actually live and work less than a quarter mile from the Eastern corridor, which has made it somewhat familiar to me.
2: John Muir Trail
I really hadn’t considered this trail until I saw the movie “Mile… Mile and a Half”. It’s a shorter trail at about 210 miles, but hits beautiful scenery through California from Yosemite to Mount Whitney. It has a short hiking window of July through September due to the amount of snow in the higher elevations, which can even linger into the Summer months.
1: Appalachian Trail
“The Green Tunnel” stretches from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, stretching about 2200 miles. It typically takes about four to six months to complete and is considered a social trail due to the number of thru-hikers, section-hikers, and day-hikers. The trail runs through fourteen states, including five of the six New England states, which holds a special place in my heart.
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