Still trying to catch up, but I'm getting closer!

While coming off of Blue Mountain into Unicoi Gap just north of Helen, I hit a patch of ice and tweaked my knee. It hurt, but wasn't a big deal, or so I thought. I didn't have too much trouble with it until the following evening. In camp at Deep Gap, I started limping real bad. I had had trouble on a few down hills that day, but just chalked it to being sore from hiking. At Deep Gap I took off the zip off part of the pants leg and saw that my knee was about the size of a grape fruit! I limped out the next day and made the decision to bail and wait until summer to finish the AT in Georgia.

On June 5th, a friend and I headed back to Dick's Creek Gap where I got off in April and headed out. The air temp was staying in the low 70's to upper 60's. Perfect for hiking!

We headed for Plum Orchard Gap Shelter, 4.5 north of Dick's Creek. It was an easy walk with one real big climb out of Cowart Gap.



We reached Plum Orchard and set up camp around 5 pm. We stayed with three others, a college student out for about a month, and a mother and daughter on a two week hike.

Slept good in the hammock, but I did get a little cold! I brought my summer setup, the one I would use at the farm or in the Okefenokee Swamp, not one suitable for the AT where we were over 3500 feet. It got down into the upper 40's at night. Kinda chilly coming from the 90's of south Georgia!! Lesson learned!!

Headed out the next morning, June 6th, for the NC/GA border at Bly Gap and the famous tree. The border actually sites just south of the gap, ~.1 mile or so. Crossing that point meant that I had hiked all the trail in GA! WHOOOO HOOOOO!!!!!! It took a year almost to the day for me to finish. Last June I had started out from Amicalola Falls to hike the trail to NC during the month of June. One year later, I made it!




About a tenth of a mile later, we reached Bly Gap. To my surprise, we were a little behind a trail crew... the gap had been mowed (with a sling blade, but still!!).


After a brief rest at the gap, we headed north to Muskrat Creek Shelter, that nights home away from home. Right off the bat, we had a climb up Courthouse Bald of around 1000 feet in about a mile. Switch back after switch back!


We made it to the shelter around 3pm and set up camp. It was in the low 60's, upper 50's and would drop in to the LOW 40's that night. I slept in the shelter (first time in over a year) on the floor. Not a good night's sleep, but at least I was warm. Meet two teachers from Texas who were on their way to Fontana Dam and then Gaitlinburg TN.

The next day we head back to Dick's Creek. The morning was cool and crisp and we headed out in a cloud. Great way to end a hike!

I thought about trying to play catch up and post everything I have done over the past year in one big blog. That would take all night, and Fall Break is over and I need my sleep. SO, I'll hit some highlights and pretend that everyone knows what I'm talking about.

Last blog occurred WAYYYY back in January of this year. At that time I had experienced my first real hang in super cold weather. Didn't work to well for me! Took and hour or so of hiking to feel my left leg completely (honest!). After coming of the mountain, I vowed that would never happen again and I began the trip down the road of down underquilts for my hammock. I ordered 9.3 ozs of down, and after roughly 6 hours of sewing and tinkering, I had an uq.

Fast forward again. Spring Break 2009. April, and its the tail end of thru-hiker season. I put in at Hogpen Gap and headed north on the AT.



Real easy walk until the snow started. It would snow almost continually for the next 48 hours, and leave around 3 inches on the ground in North Georgia and, I would find this out later, 8 inches in North Carolina!

I hooked up with a group of firemen out of Clearwater, FL. and informally walked with them over the next four days.



We stayed at Blue Mountain Shelter, Trey Mountain Shelter, and Deep Gap Shelter. It was probably the best hike that I have done. Meet lots of great people, including a medic from the Israeli Army who had just finished up hiking in Nepal and along the Himalayas (he was averaging 18 to 20 miles a day!).



I finished up a Dick's Creek Gap with a knee that I had hobbled and limped on for two days. I couldn't put any weight on it going down hill. It took almost two weeks before I could really walk on it without limping.

New Years Eve Party...

So I'm part of a group of hammock campers. One of them had the brilliant idea a few years ago to start a NYE get together on top of Springer Mountain in Georgia. Now for those of you that don't know, Springer is the southern start/terminous of the Appalachian Trial. So every year a group of people, both tenters (called ground dwellers) and hammockers get together and spend NYE on top of the mountain.

This was my first year in a hammock during winter. In case you didn't notice, this NYE was REALLY, REALLY cold! I took my hammock, clothes and whatnots up to the top of Springer to hang with these people and welcome in the new year. What I wound up doing was getting into my hammock and sleeping bag and ALL the clothes that I brought with me (6 layers on my chest, three on my legs and three pair of socks) and at 8:30 started praying for the acceleration of global warming, or at least localized global warming!!

No ones really sure what the final low was that night on the mountain, but this is known... at 8:30 thermometers were reading between 18 and 22 degress F dependent on location on the mountain and ridgeline exposure, at ~10:00 it was down to 8 degrees at the shelter (which was about 50 yards from me) and that the winds were sustained at 25 mph with gusts into the 40 mph range. All I know is it took an hour of hiking the next day to feel my left toes completely!

I spent New Years doing day hikes and bagging waterfalls. What a way to welcome in the new year!

(P.S.- I'll post pics once I get them loaded from the camera...its still frozen in my pack which is also frozen.)

Ok, to get everyone (all three people that read this!) caught up... Over fall break I put in at Neels Gap in North Georgia, just north of Dahlonega. I hiked from Neels Gap to Jarrard Gap...only to find NO WATER!

So I roughed it down the Jarrard Gap trail and went to Lake Winfred Scott Rec. Area! It was rough, I had to walk all the way across the road to get to the bathrooms. Someones got to suffer...

Notice the road in the background!

I left around 7:15 the next morning and covered good ground. I reached Preaching Rock at 11:30 and then Woody Gap at 12:00 where I ate lunch. It was a perfect day! Good wind that kept you cool, but warm enough that you could still wear shorts and a t-shirt. The view from Preaching Rock was increadible!

Preaching Rock Woody Gap Parking Lot

After lunch I headed on to Gooch Gap and then the Gooch Gap Shelter. Second best shelter that I have been to with Stover Creek still being the best!

I spent the night at the shelter and then I walked out to Suches and caught a ride to my car. Overall, a fun trip.

Ummmm... I forgot my password???

So I have been to lazy to post anything. Giving in to pressure from those around me, I am going to post something. Actually, I have a lot to post. I have been hiking with my wife and kids over the 4th of July, then I went and almost finished the Pine Mountain Trail (I lack just under two miles...grrrrrr! Three hour drive for two miles!). And finally, over fall break I attempted to hike from Neels Gap to Amicalola State Park.

Well, I'll start with the 4th of July trip. We went to FDR State Park and camped for three nights. Took the wife and kids and had a great time. We got there on the fourth and went into Callaway Gardens for the fire works. We spent a couple of hours going through the butterfly atrium. We had a lot of fun. Turns out butterflies are attracted to red, the color of shirt that all four of us were wearing! We had them following us around the enclosure. It was actually a lot of fun. The kids loved having them land on them! That night we watched the fire works from the lake, after spending an hour in the van because of a massive lightining storm. True to form and the past three fire works displays that we have watched, my son was soon fast asleep during the ENTIRE show!

The next day we did some hiking around the area on some of the trails in the campground. They had a puppet show and "survival" demonstration...one of those in-case-you-left-your-ipod-and-have-no-cell-coverage survival demonstrations. We left from there and drove to Columbus to find a Wal-Mart (no vacation would be complete without the mandatory offering/mad scramble to the local Big Box Mart- see jibjab.com for a complete understanding of this).

From here we decided to take the short hour and a half drive to Providence Canyon where we raced another late summer afternoon thunderstorm to the bottom of a slot canyon, throwing all flash flood caution to the wind (disclaimer: while lots of fun, at least until your daughter starts screaming because of the lightining, I DO NOT recommend this approach to slot canyons). We had lots of fun and mud!

Our last day was spent sitting around and doing nothing, and cleaning up the campground. Overall, it was a fun trip.

Splinter

Dad and son: To the woods?

So I took my son camping for the first time this weekend. We had a GREAT time!!! We had a new tent that we are now using for family camping, and I wanted to try it out before we took off as a family to get in some bag nights. So my son and I went to the in-laws farm and spent the night.

I think taking my kids and introducing them to the outdoors (even the safe kind at the farm) is really important. Hopefully as the grow up they will develop an appreciation for the outdoors (in what ever form that takes, albeit I would like for them to hike and backpack... but then again I'm biased on that idea).

Just my opinion: to many kids, and adults for that matter, only see the outside in so far as walking to the car or to the mailbox. They never experience the outdoors or the woods. The hardest, and most rewarding, part of being on the AT or backcountry is the solitude. I have hiked in places where I havn't seen anyone in days, with the only sound being the wind moving the leaves on the trees or small animals as they race away from the path when you pass through. This trip with my son, he and I sat in the tent and watched as lightening flashed far out on the horizon (don't worry, I called my wife and checked to see where the storm was: a little over 30 minutes driving time away). That's one of those life moments that you don't want to pass up. As my son grows, I hope that these times he will cherish and as we grow older, our relationship will deepen.

Anyways...

Supper was hotdogs and trail food: Ramen noodles and hickory smoked tuna (from a sealed pouched). Not bad...not great, but filling.

We still had LOTS of fun!!! He slept all night and keeps asking when are we going camping again. Here's hoping...

Bad Trip to the AT

The first blog should be an introduction to the blog and at least tell a good story. This one won't be! This trip had been in the works for, ummm, three days before I left. I was originally going to the Pine Mountain Trail, but had a change of plans at the last minute which opened up the opportunity to go to the Appalachian Trail.

I was originally going to hike from Amicalola Falls State Park to the North Carolina/Georgia border and then meet my wife and kids and have a family vacation. Then I was asked to teach a week of summer school for another teacher who would be gone to a week of training. That left me with a little less than two weeks to hike, so I cut the trip distance in half. Still doable, still plenty of time. Then I got a call: training for two days in two weeks. My trip was cut in half again. Ok, I can still hike the same distance, but I would need a shuttle.

The shuttle would be hard to set up. In fact, it wouldn't be set up. I figured then that I would hike in a total of 17.1 miles to Hightower Gap and then turn around and go back to the car at Amicalola. That would make a good 7 day trip, with a total of just over 34 miles hiked plus side trips to waterfalls.

I didn't figure in the heat, in the mid 90's to almost 100 degrees. The approach trail (8.8 miles) from Amicalola to Springer was a lot harder than I thought and silly me hiked it with a 40 pound pack in 4 1/2 hours with only on real rest stop (should have taken closer to 6 1/2 to 7 hours).

Once I had drunk plenty of water and got something to eat, I was feeling good and ready to go at a slower pace. I only had 2.8 miles to go to get to the shelter and it was 1 o'clock. Even at a slow pace that would be easy.

Then my bladder failed (not me personally, the one in my pack). Two liters of water flooded my pack. Luckily a kind individual offered to take me to my car as water dripped out of my now saturated pack, down my legs and onto the ground. I didn't think twice. The trip took two hours to get back to my car (it should have only taked 45 minutes. The GPS sent us the wrong way so we doubled back and went the way the guy driving knew. Fine with me. I had time to sit and be mad!)

I went to my sister's house in Roswell, GA. and got everything dried out and a new hydration bladder. The next morning, with a dry pack I was ready to try again... till I realized I was locked out of her house and my pack inside. Two hours later, after making it through construction, traffic and one way streets in downtown Atlanta, I was back at her house getting my gear. By now it was 11 A.M. Time to head to the mountains.

I got to the trail a little after 2, checked my gear, drank some water, ate some beef jerky, and I was off. I was moving at a slower pace, my car was a day closer to me so I could still make it to Hightower Gap and back in the same time, the temps had dropped to the mid 80's, and there was a boy scout troup just ahead of me. Things were looking good. Then I lost the boy scouts (no one to talk to that night), the bugs came out (they would be the final undoing when I stopped for the night), and I went to the wrong camp site.

I back tracked to the shelter I had passed (Stover Creek Shelter) and got ready for the night. It was a good shelter with plenty of water, a privy, and bear cables. It looked like I had the shelter to myself, a mixed blessing, so I was going to hang my hammock in their for the night. As I was getting supper ready and my hammock hung up, these carniverous bugs came out. I don't know what they were, but I was high on the menu that night. You can read the bible in brail on my legs right now. When one bit me on my ankle, I decided that enough was enough. I wanted to go home.

Now don't get me wrong. I have hiked numerous miles from Glacier National Park to the Boundry Waters in Minnesota and around the Black Hills of South Dakota, to various trails in the Smokies down into Georgia and Florida. I have canoed in the Okefenokee Swamp and down the Sawanee River. I have hiked in Torreya State park and came back with 50+ mosquito bites (I counted each one). I love to hike and don't mind being in the woods alone, but enough is enough. I put everything up, walked out of the woods and at 6:30ish, I left the AT and headed home. 5 and 1/2 hours later I parked in my drive way. I have had tough trips before, but this was just a bad trip.

I am going to section hike it during fall break this year, so I have lots of time to plan and set up shuttles and what not. I might even bribe someone to go with me. But most importantly... maybe I won't be on the menu this time!