Backpackin'
Brownkatz & Brownkatz on Backpacking, Hiking and Camping.
Danger Lessons
“No,” I told her, then later thought that wasn’t quite true.
And I probably should have talked to her about those jeans.
This was last October and Mudpie and I were on the last part of the descent from Georgia’s Blood Mountain back to the parking area near US 129, just north of Neels Gap. Blood is the highest mountain on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, and this was another trip to practice for our planned hike of the entire AT. We had climbed up this route two days ago, camped two nights near the Woods Hole shelter on the AT, and today took the Freeman Trail around the mountain to where it connects with the path up Blood. This was our third trip on the AT in Georgia and, like each of the other two, and each other backpacking trip we’ve taken these last three years, it had its lessons.
Slightly harder ones, this time.
In truth, we hadn’t seen anything of the type of danger this woman was talking about. She came up from the parking lot, past that scary sign about bears, and I’m sure she was talking about bears and snakes and maybe even mountain lions - lions and rattlers and bears, oh my.
Now, sometimes things just don’t seem right, don’t feel right, don’t want to go right. Sometimes, later, you think maybe those were signs, hints from above that this wasn’t what you should do. Then again, maybe it seemed wrong, but that’s just because you don’t understand.
Whatever. After this trip we’ve decided we need a new tent, new and lighter high-end sleeping bags, new really expensive rain gear, some titanium tent pegs, Platypus Hoser shut off valves and quick release connections, 800 or 900 fill down insulation layers, a couple pairs of really light shock absorbing trekking poles, Merino wool base layers for me and more silk for Mudpie, a titanium windscreen and pot support and a quarter of a gazillion dollars to pay for it all. Oh, and better quality pack covers or maybe a couple of Packas and new gloves or at least new glove liners. And I’m going back to drinking coffee, too.
Ranting here. We had carefully gone over all we have learned in our previous AT trips and all the smaller trips we’ve done in Florida, noted what we had learned, listed the new gear we’d like. We planned and plotted, listed and reviewed, considered and checked and re-checked until we formed A Grand Design that became, well, kind of an ignoble retreat.
We had two weeks off. We wanted to pick up where we left off last year at Unicoi Gap and make our traditionally slow way up into North Carolina. The plan involved multiple shuttles and two food drops, a stay in an inn and some other expensive stuff. But, you know, the economy, drastic reductions in income.
You may be thinking, wait a minute. What am I complaining about? In the midst of this miserable recession with 10 million Americans out of work and our country in two wars, I got to go backpacking in beautiful country and spend some time not only with my wife but some very interesting and enjoyable hikers.
All true. Given the circumstances, we were actually quite lucky. We had to change our plans because of a lack of money. A kind hiker on one of the AT forum sites offered to let us park for free on his property very near the trail. So we planned two out and backs essentially covering areas we’d been on before. We’d leave a food drop in the car, and another at Mountain Crossings at Neels Gap, where they’d charge only a dollar to keep it safe for us. Bingo. Since Mudpie prepares all our meals with her dehydrator, our only real extra expense would be two tanks of gas.
And we suffered no permanent damage. Relatively speaking, our lessons were cheap.
By the way, you might consider Mudpie’s dehydration obsession. She dehydrates everything. We ended up carrying under one pound of food per person per day and still had food left over. We ate a great variety and we ate very well. We snacked very well. Just needed some coffee.
Anyway, we had wanted to buy some new gear, especially a new pack for Mudpie and trekking poles for each for us, but the weeks before the trip made it clear we could not afford it. I bought some stuff to revive the DWR of Mudpie’s old rain jacket and packed my ancient and heavy rain pants, Mudpie would use our three-year-old Columbia jacket and off we went.
We had good weather for two days. The morning of the third was cool and misty as we packed up for the hike back to our car and our first resupply. By the time we were halfway there, the mist had become a hard rain driven by a cold, sharp wind. Our rain gear wet out and despite hiking hard with a pack on my back, my windward side could not get warm. I began to fear hypothermia as the cold seemed to seep deeper toward my core.
At least I wasn’t wearing jeans, like the lady scared of bears. Jeans are made of cotton, and when cotton gets wet it loses all its insulating properties. Exposed to wind, wet cotton becomes a sort of flat air conditioner right against the skin, thus the saying in hiking, “cotton kills” because this is a set up for hypothermia and hypothermia is deadly.
We made it back to the car, stripped off our wet clothes, cranked the heater up all the way and ate like we were starving. That also I learned, get the wet clothes off, get some heat going and give your body fuel to burn to produce more heat.
As on every other trip we’ve taken, we had to abandon our original plan and improvise, something we are to expect on a six or more month thru hike. We dressed and drove over to Neels Gap to stay in the hostel at Mountain Crossings, the outfitter-tourist shop-hiker haven we stayed at and fell in love with last year (see story here. See a review of a book by Mountain crossings owner Winton Porter here) We’d be able to dry out, clean up and plan our next moves.
The next day we headed out again on that out and back over Blood Mountain to Woods Hole. We made the climb up Blood on a Saturday, and the trail was full of day hikers, the Blood Mountain shelter on the summit surrounded by hikers and backpackers, the place looking like a Disneyworld with backpacks.
Blood Mountain Shelter
Woods Hole was also crowded, with the shelter full and most of the tent sites taken. We arrived after lunch in bitter cold and everyone was hunkered down, inside out of the wind.
The wind. The Woods Hole shelter is in a gap, a low place surrounded by high places. The wind gets funneled through the gaps and gains speed and power. The weather prediction was for temperatures in the mid 30s. The wind was constant and vicious, with gusts up to 50 mph. With our ultralight tent buttoned up, and covered by a tarp, with all my clothes on and inside my down sleeping bag rated to 0 degrees, it took two hours for me to get warm enough to sleep.
I’ve read over and over again that hiking the Appalachian Trail is pretty safe, that you’re never more than 10 miles from a town, that this isn’t the wild back country. I’ve also read over and over again that mountain weather is fickle, unpredictable, and that there are places along the AT where you can experience refrigerator temperatures, freezing winds and snow in July.
This trip drove it home. There is no greater teacher than natural consequences. Over six days the foliage went from mostly green to awesome colors to nearly stripped bare - from summer, through fall and into winter just like that. Our ultralight tent is too light and small and cramped. Out sleep systems are not warm enough for the weather we may face. Our rain gear is worse than worthless, because it gave us a false sense of security. And so on.
From Green
To Colors
To Bare
The next day was sunny, everyone else had left, we warmed up and enjoyed the woods. We slept warm that night, and the next day hiked to the Freeman Trail to the Blood Mountain descent path and ran into that woman, wearing cotton and not carrying as little as a fanny pack to hold a sweater, rain gear, a snack.
“See anything dangerous up there?”
I should have said, “Oh, yeah. About those jeans…”
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