And so it Begins

Our journey started in Maine where my brother-in-law, Joe, took us to the airport in Portland to catch our flight to Charlotte, NC. We were picked up at the airport by our good friends, Gary and Cheryl. They brought us to their house for the night and drove us to Amicalola Falls State Park the next morning. We arrived shortly after noon and got all checked in. We are hiker numbers 688 & 689. Our packs got weighed and mine was 40.8 lbs and Amy’s was 36.5 lbs. Mine has 7.5 lbs of our food and Amy’s has about 5 lbs of our food. We both had 2 liters of water in them as well. That’s over 4 lbs of water each.

After checking in, Amy and I hiked up the falls section of the approach trail, the only portion of the approach trail we didn’t hike last spring when we checked out the area. This section includes 600 steps as part of the hike due to the near vertical ascent at the falls.

We’d been debating going to the Springer Mountain parking lot located on a fire road about a mile north of the summit for our start. This would avoid the approach trail and get us to mile 0 of the trail much quicker and essentially move us forward one day. While we were checking in, Gary talked to one of the rangers about it and he obtained detailed instructions on how to get there. We discussed it while enjoying the warm weather and gorgeous views on the deck of the lodge and made the final decision to go for it.

Day 1 – Springer to Hawk Mountain Campground: mile 0 to mile 7.4

We left the lodge at 6:00 am to head to a Huddle House for breakfast. The lodge restaurant doesn’t open until 8:00 am and we definitely didn’t want to wait that long and reviews of the place were questionable. We then drove the winding roads to the Springer Mtn parking lot, the last 6 miles on a dirt road. We arrived at about 9:00 AM and hiked south(?) for 1 mile to get to the summit of Springer Mountain and officially begin our thru hike. Gary and Cheryl joined us on the trek up Springer and helped us get our starting photos. We then turned around and started north. When we made it back to the parking lot, we said goodbye to the best trail angels anyone could ask for.

We learned during our brief training session that the section of trail from Springer to Hawk Mountain was fairly easy. The approach trail that we skipped, not so much. We made good time on this relatively easy section and setup camp at Hawk Mountain campground, a set of relatively new tent sites about 0.7 miles south of the Hawk Mountain shelter.

During the hike, we met 2 ridge runners. I’d heard of them and wondered if they were volunteers or not. Turns out they are paid and they sign an 11 week commitment. The spend 4 days and 3 nights on the trail walking back and forth between two shelters or campgrounds. Each patrolled section is between 5 & 10 miles.

Other highlights of Day 1 was a side trip to Long Creek Falls, our first blue blaze side trip purely for the scenery. The falls were worth the few hundred yards of extra walking. We also came across a military vehicle on the side of the trail. This might sound like an odd occurrence, but let me explain.

This section of the trail is very close to a base where army rangers train. They do a lot of night training and you can hear explosions and gun fire during the night. I heard some of it but Amy slept through it all.

Day 2 – Hawk Mountain Campground to Gooch Mountain Shelter: mile 7.4 to mile 15.7

The hiking on day 2 was more difficult than day 1. This was expected as we were told to expect that during our orientation before we started. Nothing too extraordinary happened on day 2. We saw some of the same people over and over as we all took breaks at different times. We saw another troop transport and met a representative of an organization that protects the rights of long distance hikers. Not sure if the organization was for the AT specifically or any long distance trail.

Our campground for night 1 was sparsely populated and it seemed like we were camping alone. Night 2, not so much. There were signs that said to make room for 2 tents per pad. Most pads had two tents on them but we were lucky enough to have a pad to ourselves. Benefits of a 3-person tent vs a 1-person tent. Takes up more room.

Day 3 – Gooch Mountain Shelter to Lance Creek campground: mile 15.7 to mile 23.9

Day 3 brought our first unobstructed views so we stopped to rest for a bit to take it all in. Sights like these makes it real. We really are doing this! We saw an interesting bus RV as we passed through Woody Gap. We found out they were doing some trail magic but we didn’t get any. Fellow hikers did and chatted a bit with them. They were evidently a bit cultish. The RV was made from two buses to get the unique roof profile.

We continued on and had a couple more awesome views along the way. We setup camp at Lance Creek where we hooked up with our first tramily (trail family). We met Nick and Kylie, Vincent, Jerry, and Yota. Nick and Kylie were planning to get up at 3:00 am to hike 5 miles to Blood Mountain shelter before sunrise. We gave it some thought and decided to join them.

Day 4 – Lance Creek Campground to Baggs Creek Campground: mile 23.9 to mile 35.6

Nick and Kylie convinced all of us to do the early morning hike and we had quite a little fellowship hiking in the dark. Amy and I were the slowest and made it about 20 minutes after the rest but still in time to see the sunrise. We hung there for a bit and then commenced the 2.4 mile hike down to Neels Gap and Mountain Crossing outfitter.

Vincent knew someone nearby and arranged for him to bring a cooler full of beer to the gap and we all had pizza and beer. We bought a bit of resupply and other items along with our frozen pizzas that they cooked for us. It felt good to move on through the building where the trail passes through because this location is a common place where hikers call it quits. Many will take their boots and throw them into the big tree.

We hiked another 4.3 miles to finish of the day at Baggs Creek Campground and were joined again by our little tramily. The win was pretty high that night and we woke with our heads literally in the clouds.

Day 5 – Baggs Creek Campground to Blue Mountain Shelter: mile 35.6 to mile 50.1

As you can see this was an extra long day for us at 14.5 miles. We had booked a hostel for Monday, 3/7, and wanted to catch their 7:30 shuttle at Unicoi Gap (mile 52.5). We looked at our maps and saw that the terrain between the first shelter 7.3 miles out and the Blue Mountain Shelter looked fairly easy, relatively speaking. Most of the terrain was indeed easier but there was plenty of up and down and by the time we reached our destination, we were beat!

Along our hike this day we came across a couple examples of unmanned trail magic. First one was very welcome, a lawn chair with big jugs of water. We refilled our water bottles and were glad we did as water was scarce in this section of the trail. The second example was a couple cokes and a couple cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. We did not partake here but, Jerry from our group grabbed a coke and downed it.

We saw some daffodils along the trail as we struggled to reach our goal for the day. We made it to Blue Mountain Shelter around 5:00 pm. Water supply was about 0.1 miles before the shelter, so we stopped there to fill our bottles. We setup quickly, cooked our instant potatoes, ate dinner and went to bed. 4:00 am comes early.

Day 6 – Blue Mountain Shelter to Unicoi Gap: mile 50.1 to 52.5

This is what you call a nero, a near zero. A zero is when you take a day off and hike zero miles of the AT. By hiking 2.4 miles this day we don’t have to call it a zero. We got picked up at 7:40 am by Gordon of Around the Bend shelter where we have a private room with a queen bed. It is awesome! We immediately took showers and got our laundry done.

A shuttle took us into town along with 10 or so other hikers staying at the hostel. We ate lunch at Universal Joint, right across the street from our drop off at Outdoor 76, an outdoor outfitter. We bought a few things at the outfitter and then the shuttle took us to Walmart where we did most of our resupply.

It was a good choice to come here today as the afternoon has been rainy. We get shuttled back to the trail head at Unicoi Gap in the morning at 7:00 am. We will hike two days to get to Dick’s Creek Gap that is 0.6 miles from this hostel. We will return for another overnight stay before we leave Georgia and enter North Carolina.