Backpackin'

From Part I

   “My God man!” he says, “What are you carrying? Did someone get hurt?”
   He and his buddy are standing at the beginning of the next switchback down Georgia’s Blue Mountain, and as I carry the two packs toward him I tell him my wife is having a hard time.
   "Tell you what,” he says as he drops his pack. ”Let me carry one of those down to the road for you.”
   I don’t know who this guy is. I thank him, and I’m truly relieved. But I’m not surprised. With the way this trip has gone, I’ve been expecting him.

You just never know.

I’d become a shade optimistic when our Alabama trail angels magically appeared and gave us a ride from Woody Gap to the little town of Suches, Georgia. A lot had gone wrong so far on this trip and yet we’d been unexpectedly helped, too. So I was feeling better but guarded.

I’d read a post on the White Blaze forum website about the little store in Suches,  that it was a cool place for Appalachian Trail hikers to stop and re-supply. Not every experienced thru-hiker agrees, of course. Some argue that with Neels Gap and the Mountain Crossings store, outfitter and hostel just about 10 miles up the trail, going two miles to a one-store and post office town to re-supply is a waste of time.

But for us, limited to five miles a day, max, a mail drop and store visit in Suches was perfect and the post I read made it sound like a very hiker-friendly place.

But when we arrive we find the store management has changed since that forum post, and there is no ibuprofen, no denatured alcohol, nor any HEET, for our alcohol stove. All they have is isopropyl, good for disinfecting but truly crummy fuel.

Our Appalachian Trail Conference map has the store and post office about a mile apart. The angels wait for us at the store and give us a ride to the post office – about 100 feet.  They drop us off, we say goodbye and head for the post office door.

It’s closed for lunch. I try to hang on to the optimism. We’ve gained some time with that ride, but we still have to do two miles back to the trail and then a mile or so north – up hill – to water. We may do a little night hiking, but I’m feeling confident enough. We sit in the parking lot and enjoy junk we bought at the store, fantastic sausage and biscuit sandwiches and a variety of Little Debbie cakes. The post office opens, our mail drop is here and we get to repacking.

 Mail drop in Suches

Suddenly it hits me. “Where’s our water filter?” I ask.  I search my Nimbus Meridian, empty the trash compactor bag I’m using as a pack liner, open every stuff sack. No filter.

“No problem,” I force myself to say. “We’ve got Micropur tablets in our emergency kits, six each and we can make it on that to the outfitters at Mountain Crossings and buy a new filter.” We fill our bottles and bladder at the store. But my optimism doesn’t last. I’m angry about making such a stupid mistake, and like a child I want to blame Mudpie. But I’m carrying the filter. It’s my responsibility.

We start hiking along the road back to Woody Gap. I’m chewing on this when a Jeep Wrangler comes around the curve towards us and I find myself imagining someone stopping to offer us a ride. And that’s what happens. This guy stops across from us and says, “You going to Woody Gap?”

“Yeah.”

“Hiking the AT?”

“Yeah.”

“Want a ride?”

“Oh yeah.”

He whips the Jeep around. He is Joshua Myers, a hiker who tells us he works for an outfitter and he just shuttled someone to Woody Gap. Now he gets us there, too.

We’re suddenly ahead of schedule. We get back on the trail, re-supplied with food and optimism. We hike north up Big Cedar Mountain.

There’s no water here.  It’s getting a bit windy and it starts drizzling. We set up and I open the emergency kits to check the pills. There are three, a quarter of what I expected. Then I remember giving the rest to our daughter to take to Mexico and never refilling the kits.

Then I knock over our pot and spill three cups of water.

I’m a mess. “It will be okay,” Mudpie repeats. “We’ll get to the next water source and someone will come along with a filter and let us use it. God will take care of us.”

I’m not to be consoled. I stew. I rage. This is the middle of the week in October. This isn’t thru-hiker season with hundreds of people out here. The chances someone will come to a water source while we are there are slim. The chances they’ll be helpful, slimmer. They’ll probably think we’re morons for losing our filter, laugh at us and hike on.

Eventually I calm down and begin planning. Three pills mean three liters of water. Maybe it will rain harder and we can collect some. I put out everything I can to catch rain water. I put a plastic bag over a leafy branch and rubber band it closed, like Lofty Wiseman says in the SAS Survival Guide.  We can strain water through a bandana and boil it. We can skip morning coffee and make it with boiled water at the first source we find. We’ll get through this. I’m no longer raging, no longer despondent.

I’m grim.

We get up early and skip breakfast. It drizzled during the night, but not enough to give us even a quarter cup of water.  The plastic bag on the bush has a thin coating of condensation, not even a teaspoonful. We hike to a small creek north of Dan’s Gap.  I fill bottles, add pills, put creek water on to boil and a guy named Jim shows up and offers us his MSR Sweetwater filter.

Nice filter. Fast, easy. And Jim gives us six more Micropur pills while his dog, Austin, checks the area for playmates. We offer Jim some of Mudpie’s home dehydrated fruit. He likes the watermelon. Austin turns down the raspberry.

Everything we have that can carry water is filled.  If we’re careful, we could go two days with this much, and now we have pills for more. We can make it to Neels Gap and Mountain Crossings now and buy a new filter and more pills and be safe again. We hike to Jarrad Gap. A group with kids shows up and I am surprised I am not worried about a night of noisy, obnoxious teens. A man with them walks towards us while we sit on a log, and I’m ready for some argument about tent sites.

But Brian asks if there’s water down the trail, and I loan him a Georgia AT water report I downloaded from the Mountain Crossing site. (https://01ef580.netsolstores.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=15) Turns out Brian and his group are from The Grace Place church in Mobile. They offer us the use of their filter. We share their fire. They’re quiet.

It is a cold and misty night. The isopropyl doesn’t like it and won’t light. But I’m beginning to get this. I’m calm. I remember that in my emergency kit I have stored three foil packets containing cotton balls smeared with petroleum jelly. I take one out and twist it until it forms a wick. I bend the wick in the middle and hang it over the lip of my Trangia. It lights easily, heats up the isopropyl, and the stove is working. But the isopropyl doesn’t put out a lot of BTUs. Brian, one of the church group leaders, brings over his Coleman burner, a huge thing that gets our pot boiling in minutes.

“I’ve carried that thing 20 years,” he says. “It’s heavy, but it’s never let me down.”

Tomorrow we are all to hike up and over Blood Mountain, at 4,458 feet the highest peak on the AT in Georgia, five miles to Mountain Crossings. Brian suggests if we get tired to just chant the word “Flush.”
We all head out, the church group leading. Brian is their rear guard and he is carrying a huge external frame and pack, stuff piled above his head and down to his butt. I can’t imagine how much weight he must be carrying, with that huge stove and his camp chair and his tent. But he and their whole group pull steadily away from us until we are alone.

We decide to skip Blood Mountain and blue blaze around it on the Freeman Trail. The ATC map says it’s shorter and not so much of a climb. The Freeman and the AT meet up about two-thirds of the way down the north side of Blood, only about a mile from Neels Gap.  We figure it will be a lot easier on Mudpie’s leg and we fear doing our maximum of five miles over Blood will be too much.

But it turns out the Freeman Trail is even more rugged than the AT and challenges Mudpie’s knee. She teeters uncertainly from rock to rock, balancing with her hiking staff.

When we join the AT again the men from the church group show up at the same time.  We let them go ahead again, and again they soon leave us behind.

Now, the water filter isn’t all that’s missing. There’s Mudpie’s glasses. I’ve forgotten a scrubby for our pots and she’s left her knee brace in the car. I had planned on cutting two sit pads out of an old blue foam sleeping pad but forgot.

As we descend Blood Mountain I catch glimpses of the Mountain Crossings building through the trees, way, way down there across a road.

When we get there I feel like we’ve entered some Disneyworld thing. The old stone building is just perfectly a mountain store. It’s Saturday, and there are people all over the place. The parking lot is crowded. There are a motorcycle club and a Corvette club here, hikers and tourists all over. I expect to see Mickey Mouse with a backpack any minute. I actually do see a sort of Bigfoot/Ape thing walking around I suspect is the owner.

 Part III