Backpackin'

Camp Fire at Low Gap, Appalachian Trail, Georgia

The old military canteen was stamped “1918.”

I found it when I was playing in an old out building on my grandfather’s Poconos property. With it were a faded canvas canteen pouch, a canteen cup and an old web belt. A decade later I was wearing all this as I hiked, thirsty, in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. I was last in line, behind my brother, his wife and my girlfriend. None of them brought water on this side trip and we had shared mine.

I was walking head down watching my footing when for no conscious reason I snapped my head up and to the right. Up on a tree was a little two inch by six inch sign with an arrow and the word “water.” The others had not seen it and I don’t know why I did. But I yelled “Hey!” and headed downhill to a large rock with a small tree growing on it. As I walked around the rock I saw the spring.

I was mesmerized. Water flowing out a hole under the rock. I had never seen such a thing, especially not on a mountain. It seemed magical, and more still when I felt how cold it was. I filled the canteen, which instantly got a sheen of condensation. I filled the canteen cup and drank it all, then filled it again and held it, carefully, as I climbed back up. For years that metal canteen reminded me of the delight I felt about that spring.

It was almost 40 years before I saw anything like it again.

Water has always fascinated me - flowing water, falling water, rushing water, and deep, still water. When I visited my grandparents as a kid, I’d immediately head for the little stream at the back of their land in the Poconos forest. My Jungian analyst might say it’s because water is a symbol for the unconscious and I have – excuse me – a deep interest in that.

Perhaps. Maybe it’s because our relationship with water is so primal. Or because a stream, a spring, an ocean can be so pretty.

It is especially important, of course, for a backpacker. I grew up in a place where a small forest was literally a half-block from my front door. But there was no water in that forest, so my camping trips there, while convenient to home, were by necessity short.

In October 2007 my wife Sherri and I took our first trip on the Appalachian Trail (See story here ). We planned on an out and back for a week in Georgia, starting with the 8.1 mile approach trail in Amicalola Falls State Park and just hiking as far as we felt like. I’d bought a bunch of maps, including topos, and it looked like there was all kinds of water there. I was looking forward to seeing all those mountain water sources and another spring. But by the time we arrived, every water source in the first 11 miles had dried up, and since we were limited to 2.5 miles a day (really, see the story), that was trouble.

We were better prepared for our next Georgia AT trip last October, when we started at Three Forks and hiked north to Unicoi Gap. The night before we left home, I downloaded a report on water availability along the trail in Georgia from the Mountain Crossings website (here) so I had a good idea of which sources were flowing.

But there were still surprises, and mostly pleasant ones, this time. At one point in the first week we came across a little seep near the trail.

A Seep on the Freeman Trail

When I was a kid backpacking I drank straight from lakes and streams and that White Mountains spring. When I later learned of Giardia and acid rain and other pollutants and dangers, I was heartbroken. I dug a small hole in the trickle from the seep, let it fill and then clear. I used my Katadyn Hiker filter and its pre-filter (with a coffee filter wrapped on it) fit just in the hole. Now there are ultra-light hikers who will only use chemical treatment like Aqua Mira – or nothing at all – to save weight. I wondered how they would handle getting water from a source like this.

We stopped at Justus Creek for lunch. The little area looks almost park like, with a lot of tent sites under the trees, although it is too close to a dirt road for our taste. The weather had been fine the first week, all sunshine in the days and just cool enough at night. We found the creek so charming I use this picture for wallpaper on my computer.

Justus Creek

But my hopes weren’t fulfilled until the second week, in Low Gap, as the weather started to change.
The sky became overcast as we got to the gap and set up camp. Soon as our tent and tarp were up, Sherri began unpacking our gear and I went to find the water source and found this.
 

A rock, with plants growing on top of it, and water flowing out a hole under the rock

Later, the wind began. And it was getting colder, so we enjoyed a campfire with a little wall to block the wind and reflect some heat.

By next morning, the wind was rising. We had set up our kitchen a ways from our tent, keeping critter-attracting food odors distant and downwind. But when I got up before dawn to make coffee, the wind had done a 180 and increased until the chill factor was high. I lowered the windward side of our tarp, filled in the edge with leaves and sticks, and made coffee out of the wind.

Kind of comfy, actually, warm and calm while the wind howled a bit around us.

But it never let up. As we headed toward Blue Mountain and Unicoi Gap, the wind kept increasing until it reminded me of hurricanes back home in Florida. It was like this:

At least it was dry. That is, until two days after Low Gap when we were headed toward Blue Mountain Shelter. The wind had been joined by rain and mist. We had not planned on staying at shelters this trip, but Sherri’s rain jacket had wet out, her poncho was too long for her to hike safely, and we were tired of using cat holes in the rain.

But we had not researched Blue Mountain shelter. The privy had no roof and the shelter, we later learned, is infamous for facing squarely into the prevailing winds. It was freezing in that shelter, and part of the floor was wet from the driven rain.

A tent and a tarp might seem too much, just like a rain jacket and a poncho. But this trip was partly for trying out gear new to us, and we were lucky. 

Blocking the Wind and Water at Blue Mountain Shelter

The tarp and a poncho were rigged to block the wind and water and slowly, eventually, we got warm and dry on Blue Mountain.
It was fun.