Bucketlisting: The Appalachian Trail

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure where my fascination with the Appalachian Trail began.  Like everyone else, I've seen the terrible Bill Bryson movie but that wasn't it.  Maybe a documentary, as that seems to be where I spend most of my Netflix time.  Either way, I ordered the book, "Lost in the Woods" by Kyle Rohrig and instantly knew, I had to go there.

Since I don't have months of time to spend away from my job or family, I knew section hiking was my only option.  I had to see these views that the books and documentaries talked about.  I needed to meet thru-hikers and hear their stories.  Who are these people and what possesses them to walk for months, sleep in rat infested shelters, and basically seclude themselves from reality for an undecided amount of their life?  After convincing my wife that I wouldn't die and persuading one of my life-long best friends, Jesse, that this is a great idea, we set our sites on a spot halfway between our houses called Winding Stair Gap in North Carolina.

Picking up my 40lb backpack on a Friday morning, my wife sympathetically offered the encouragement of, "Baby..  you're going to break your back."  Yes, yes I am.  Jesse's wife just repeatedly pleaded, "Don't die."

We each left our homes early on Friday morning.  I made my way through the first couple of my four states.  I expected Chattanooga to be more congested, but it actually had nothing on my terrible stretch of Alabama Highway 431.  In short order, I found myself winding between sky-scraper mountains alongside the Ocoee River.  It was beautiful and so remote that I could only get two radio stations, Hispanic and Classical.  I was just beginning to get into it when I lost those too.

Finally, I made it to the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC), our meeting point.  By some miracle, I had enough cell service for Jesse to let me know that he was 14 minutes out.  Perfect!  We left my truck at the NOC and started the one hour trek to leave his vehicle at Winding Stair Gap.

Upon arrival, we loaded up with our gear and began the search for the "white blazes," the trail markers for the AT.  For my wife, it's Cinderella's Castle at Disney World.  For me, it was the white blaze.  It's the ridiculous and overwhelming feeling when you finally get to that place you so badly wanted to be.  We walked about 10 feet and then had to take the touristy white blaze photos.

The first day's agenda was to reach Siler Bald Shelter.  It was a four mile hike with pretty substantial elevation.  We had no idea what to expect.  I love the outdoors, but my hiking experience generally involved a few hours at the state park.  I've never walked into a forest counting on only the supplies in my bag and my own two feet to get me through multiple days and many miles.  It quickly became evident that "walking" was not what we were doing.  Hiking in these mountains means spending 5 to 8 hours a day on Mother Nature's stair climber.  

About half way up, we stopped for a breather at our first overlook.  It was impressive.  There was a lady there who was getting ready to head back out and her only advise was to see Siler's Bald.  "It's one of the best things we have.  You need to see it."  Roger that.  

Onward and upward.  It seemed like no time until we had reached the sign.  "Siler Bald Shelter."  We were excited to see what it was about.  We hung a right and headed off down the trail.  "It's got to be right here.."  "Right... here."  "Any minute now."  Geez..  Lesson number one: Apparently, shelters don't have to be close to the trail.  It's at least half a mile to Siler Bald Shelter, but we're finally here and it's wonderful!  What a rat hole.  It's everything I expected and hoped it to be.  A three-sided shed with bag hooks to keep mice out of your bag, the notebook inside to leave your name or some story or witty comment, and a long-bearded hiker named Darren and his beloved sidekick, Mack.  We start to settle in and get to know these guys.  I told him what the lady had said about Siler Bald and Darren said someone had written in the book that it was the prime spot to see a sunset, so plans were made.  We'd hike up around 8 o'clock.

Around 5 or 6pm, several other hikers made their way to the camp.  First words, "Did you guys see that huge rattle snake?  It was on the bank, head high..  as big as my arm!"  Apparently, we just missed it.  Everyone who came in after us said the same thing.  "As big as my arm!"  One guy, named Mike I believe, had a video on his phone.  Sure enough, as big as my arm.

We hung out and hydrated our dinners while gathering names and stories and finding out who was headed where and how long they'd been hiking.  It was a cool afternoon.

All in all, probably 20 hikers showed up.  We set up our tent and ate our dinners.  I realized at this point that my first mistake was packing too heavy.  I had tried to buy light weight things and pack right, but there were all those last minuted items that I might need, so I had amassed about 40lbs of gear and most of the others were 25-30lbs.  I didn't know it at the time, but my second big mistake was eating the Chili Mac with Beef on day one.

We decided it was close enough to time to start walking to the bald.  What a climb..  It was like climbing half a mile of rocks, only to be greeted with another half mile of smooth dirt mountain.  Once we got to the top, it all became worth it.  There are lots of pictures.  None will ever do justice to the moment when you climb a mountain and suddenly realize that you are on top of world and can see a 360 degree view of God's creation.  The wind blowing across your face.  The sun setting over the mountains.  The cool thru-hikers who let us chill on the rocks with them talking about where they're from and where they're headed.  It was amazing.  Siler's Bald was the most amazing place I've been and my favorite moment of the hike.  We all wished that we had decided to camp up there.  Darren said that he's only going to be there once and he couldn't miss the opportunity to see the sunrise up there.  We wished everyone well and headed off back to camp.  We spent most of the night sitting around the campfire with a guy named Nate who had quit his job in Nebraska and was hiking to New York.

The next morning around 5am.. well, you remember that chili mac?  Let's talk about privies.  Apparently, a privy is an outhouse with more mice and less door,  Anyway, we'll move on.  

I knew that day two was scheduled to be tough.  We would plan to make it from Silar Bald Shelter to Cold Spring Shelter approximately 11 miles away.  11 miles..  People run 11 miles.  I've walked 11 miles.  I've carried a heavy backpack.  I've climbed steep hills.  I'm not sure at what point it dawned on me that I've never done them all at the same time, but it was probably at some point that day.  

We climbed for what seemed like an eternity.  Somewhere around mile 5, I started to feel it.  The dreaded leg cramps that I'd tried so hard to avoid.  My right thigh locked up.  I tried to limp through it, but it refused to be conquered.  I fell to the ground trying anything I thought would ease the pain.  Jesse had walked on ahead.  Nate had just caught up.  I told him to tell Jesse what happened so he agreed and walked on.  I chugged my precious filtered water and remembered that I had a couple of GU's (electrolyte goop, basically) in my bag, so I downed the first one of those.  Eventually, the cramp eased up and I was able to walk out.  We all met back up at some dirt road and checked the maps.  "Oh, good...  it's only another mile and half straight up."

What seemed like days later, we arrived at the Stone Tower.  The first thing I saw was Jesse, Nate, and another couple standing in front of the coolest looking leafless black trees.  As I got closer, the sad reality sat in.  All the trees were victims of a forest fire.  Story has it, that a man got mad at his and set the place on fire.  I haven't fact checked it, but whatever the cause, it was a tragedy. 

The next part of the day seemed to be okay.  There was a lot of down hill and water hunting.  Of course what goes down you know, must go up.  So, here we are again, climbing endless mountains.  At one point, there was a sign stating that our destination was 1.6 miles ahead.  Now, it's around this point that we discovered a cold, hard fact.  AT miles are like dog years.  1 AT mile equals roughly 7 regular miles.  Two hours later, as we limped into camp, everyone basically agreed, the sign was a complete LIE.  The place was pretty crowded, though.  We met back up with Darren and Mack, Nate, Ed Beard, Sean, and a guy Darren called Chicago.  It was a cool night and a well deserved break. According to my Fitbit, I had taken 42,430 steps and burned 4,996 calories. Jesse passed out almost immediately, maybe around 5:30 or so.  Due to where we'd had to move the tent, we were going to have to sleep sideways so that our heads weren't lower than our feet.  That meant our heads and feet were touching the sides of the tent.  That wouldn't have been a factor except that I was woken up something probably around midnight with cold rain beating the side of the tent on my forehead.  It was intense.  We're 4,926ft high, 3ft from the edge of the cliff and there's a storm.  Lightning was flashing, rain was pouring, and thunder was crashing so loud!

I woke up pretty early on Sunday.  Jesse had been asleep forever so he was up early as well.  We weren't excited with the prospect of hiking in the thunderstorms all day.  We also knew from the maps that we were looking at a big climb followed by a 7 mile downhill knee-killer.  We got all of our gear loaded up and packed the tent in the rain.  Several others were waking up for an early start also.  We were all fitted with rain gear, even the trail dogs.  Mack was styling in a hefty garbage bag.  He seemed to be just fine with it.

About ten minutes into the hike, we realized that it wasn't even raining and we were just going to melt in our gear so we stopped at some overlook to take it off.  I also realized that I hadn't eaten so I grabbed a protein bar.  We were getting relatively comfortable with the flatish/downhill hike when we were hit with yet another march to the heavens.  Wesser Bald is at 4,267ft and atop that is an observation tower.  Jesse asked if we were going to climb it and reflecting back on some wise words, I figured, "You're only here once."  It was very worth it.  The views were yet again amazing!  Darren and Mack were already up there eating lunch.  Jesse ate and I figured I'd try to hold out a little longer.  We headed off on the start of our 7 mile downhill trek to the ending point at the NOC.

Shortly thereafter, we were tracked down by Darren and Mack.  We walked with them for a while and were enjoying the conversation so much that we were actually keeping up.  I hated to stop for lunch so we just kept walking.  We made it to the Jump Off.  Wow.  I had heard it referred to as the Fall Off, but I wasn't ready for that.  Imagine a bolder sticking off the side of a 4,000ft mountain, one that you would name "The Jump Off."  It's like that.  We stopped for a minute to take some pictures, find our manhood and jump down to the landing.  Made it.  On we go.

Only a few more miles to Rufus Shelter.  I figured I'd eat there.  By the time we got there, I couldn't eat.  I had walked 11 miles on 270 calories and had lost my appetite.  Also, the thought of a burger or pizza at the NOC was sounding far superior to anything left in my bag.  One more mile.  We decided to push on through hoping that it wasn't 1 AT mile.  For once on this journey, the destination was closer than we'd even hoped.  It felt like we had just left when we spotted the rooftop of the NOC.  People were talking and laughing and food was being served.  We hiked out the 12 miles in five hours and forty-eight minutes.  We ran into Nate again for a minute and said our goodbyes, wishing him a safe trip to New York.  As bad as I wanted food, it was Memorial Day weekend and people were waiting for tables at the restaurants.  We were all ready to get home and had long rides ahead so we hopped in the truck and headed home.  

Did I find what I was looking for on the Appalachian Trail?  I think so.  I had a great time, saw the amazing views that were on my bucket list, met incredible people and made great memories with one of the best friends anyone could ask for.  Best wishes to Darren and Mack, Nate, Ed Beard, Sean, and Chicago.  I wish them all the best and to anyone who wants to stand on top of the world, Vince Lombardi said it best, "The man on top of the mountain didn't fall there." 

-Bruce Hudgins