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.

So this is the outfitter’s where he works. He’s all smiles and I’m grateful to see him again, a friendly face in this mob.  I go in and talk to a young woman behind the counter, and she’s all apologies as she explains they only allow camping near the building during the spring thru-hiker season. The rest of the year they let the land recover.

She’s so nice about it all, despite the crush of people, I find myself okay with this. Besides, they’re right about the land.

Meanwhile, Mudpie has approached another employee, a young woman named Felicity.  Mudpie asks if they sell reading glasses here, and Felicity tells her no, leads her to a little box and lets her choose from among three pair, free. Then Felicity checks on our mail drop.

It’s not here.  She tells us the next mail is due on Monday at 12:30. We can’t camp nearby – which we’d planned on so we could shower and do laundry – and the next site with water is a mile and a half north.
That leaves staying in their hostel. I don’t want to stay in a hostel. I don’t want to stay in shelters, either. I don’t like the idea of staying some place with a whole lot of strangers likely to be making noise, getting drunk, smoking pot, staying up all night.

Mudpie loves the idea. She actually likes meeting people. And, she points out, the prediction is near freezing tonight.  Grumbling, I agree to try it for one night. I’ve got some ear plugs in my pack. We go downstairs to check it out.

There’s this bearded old guy in the kitchen area. I ask him if he’s staying here tonight.

“I work here,” he says.

His trail name is Pirate, he manages the hostel, and he will become very important to us. 
 

Turns out we’re the only people staying here tonight and tomorrow night. We go back to the shop, buy some snacks and wander around looking at all the gear. I buy denatured alcohol, some Esbit tabs as a backup, some more Micropur tablets and an MSR Sweetwater filter. I also buy a 1.8 liter Platypus Hoser. Mudpie’s been carrying our 3 liter version and it’s too much for her. Besides, I want to try out this new-fangled drinking tube thing she’s raving about. I meet Winton Porter and shake his hand.

I ask him if there is somewhere we can set up our tent and tarp to dry out.

“Right out front,” he says.

“Out front?” I blurt, confused that a shop owner would say such a thing.

“Sure.  Anywhere out there.”

And so we do.

I can’t recall who it was, but one of them offers us a shakedown.

Porter and his staff have become famous for doing shakedowns of thru hikers’ gear during the season each spring. (See the story about them in Backpacker Magazine here) Lots of thru hikers start like we did last year – tremendously overburdened. They struggle from the AT’s southern terminus at Springer Mountain 30 miles to Mountain Crossings, where Porter and his staff go over all their gear and show them how to cut weight and stay safe.  They do this for free.

Well, this isn’t the season, we’re not thru hikers, we’ve already bought a bunch of stuff and don’t plan to buy any more. But they offer it anyway. I ask what would be a good time when the staff is not too busy and they tell us after noon tomorrow, Sunday. So we go downstairs, choose bunks, unpack, take showers, do laundry, make dinner and relax watching a video.

 

When we unpack I find our lost water filter. Somehow I had managed to pack it under the trash compactor bag I use as a pack liner. I had gotten all upset for nothing, but forced to experience the good luck or God working or whatever that had Jim and Austen show up when we needed them.

The whatever continued. In the bunkroom I find two hiker boxes, where hikers leave stuff they don’t need for those who do. One box contains food, an outstanding selection of Ramen noodles. The other contains gear, and there I find a pot scrubber and a knee brace for Mudpie. Alongside I find some blue foam padding someone has already cut, and I make two sit pads for us. That, with the free reading glasses, replaces all we had lost or forgotten.

When I get up the next morning at 6 and wander into the kitchen area to make coffee I find some already made plus hot water in a carafe, bagels and croissant, Pop Tarts and a variety of add-hot-water stuff, including tea, cocoa, oatmeal and grits. Pirate gets up at 4 am everyday to do this for the hikers at the hostel, even if it’s just the two of us. Later he will give us a lunch of bean soup he made.
 

Sunday, at about one in the afternoon, we carry our packs into the store and mention to the young woman behind the counter that we are supposed to ask about getting a shakedown.

“Oh, yes,” she says, “Alpine has been waiting for you. He’s right there.”

Before we go any further with this I want to explain something very odd and unusual about the people at Mountain Crossings.  It is something I have experienced only once before in my life, at a very expensive, exclusive inn near the Swiss border in France.

They seem to anticipate our needs and to meet them like we are family. No sh…No lie. They act as though they were glad to help, even when there was no money in it. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Certainly at some point these people will tire of us and our problems and our endless questions, tell us they don’t have time to waste on people not spending much money. But they are as relentlessly friendly as Mudpie is optimistic.

Alpine is James Ingram, a highly experienced backpacker retired after 13 years as an Army Ranger, and those guys can hike. Alpine has like 20,000 miles under his boots. He brings us over to the backpacker clothing section of the store and directs us to unpack our gear, so we end up blocking real shoppers from the clothing racks. He then goes over almost every piece of gear we have, building a pile of unneeded stuff that grows and grows and grows, my tiny multi-tool and most of the rest of my just-in-case repair kit, the bear canister I bought to avoid hanging a bear bag, the smaller of our titanium pots and our second stove, windscreen, reflective base for it, and on and on.

Mountain Crossings does not prosthelitize for ultra-light gear for its own sake. They seek a balance between light weight and safety. And they don’t condemn comfort. I like this.

He has someone set up a teepee style tent for us to check out, since we tell him that’s what we hope to buy someday. He goes over what packs he thinks we should use, mine being the Granite Gear Nimbus Meridian I already have. I tell him I think the best for Mudpie would be a Ultralight Adventure Equipment  Catalyst, a 4600 cubic inch pack weighing just under 3 pounds.  But Alpine convinces us a better pack for Mudpie is the Granite Gear Vapor Ki, the women’s version of GG’s famous Vapor Trail, at 2 pounds, five ounces and 3600 cubic inches. The Vapor Ki is $80.04 cheaper.

He helps us cut even more weight, opening our eyes us to trekking poles, which I had long-ago dismissed without trying, and loans us two pair of Lekis for the second half of our trip. The Leki sales rep happens to be there and Alpine has him give us a short course in how to use the things.

Alpine puts the stuff we don’t need in the back room to keep for us. When we retrieve our car at the end of our trip we will drive back here, return the Lekis, the glasses and the knee brace and get our stuff.

Alpine is teaching us as if we are on a thru-hike, since we told him that’s what we are practicing for.
He does it for four hours.
 

That Sunday night we have the hostel to ourselves again. Next morning Pirate has laid out another breakfast before we even stir. We hang out, pack what we can, play with our new gear while we wait for 12:30 and the mail.

At 12:35 we go into the shop. We don’t even have to ask. One of the young women tells us the mail has arrived without our mail drop.  Pirate is at my elbow. Somehow he also knows we were waiting for a mail drop.

“Come on,” he says. “I’ll take you into town so you can re-supply.”

“Why don’t we resupply here,” I say, gesturing toward all the packages of backpacker food.

“That’d be real expensive,” Mudpie says, and all of the staff standing around nods their heads.

Besides, this is thru-hike practice, so we’d better get used to re-supplying at regular stores.

We get in a van with Pirate and he drives us 18 miles to Blairsville. While he goes in a thrift shop for a bookcase, we hit a health food store to replace our supplements. Then he takes us to a shopping center and a big grocery store.

I’m carrying a cell phone. Its battery has died, presumably from the cold since I haven’t used it. I go into a Radio Shack next to the grocery store while Mudpie shops. I’m hoping to buy one of those battery powered quick charge things I’ve seen on the web, but the young man who helps me says they don’t have any.

“Why don’t you give me your phone and I’ll charge it while you’re shopping?” he says.

Turns out he is also a military veteran and he is planning an AT thru-hike. We have a nice chat and I encourage him to go see Alpine before he starts buying gear.

Mudpie has done a great job finding easy-to-cook food that will make pretty balanced, one-pot meals for us. As soon as we get in the van for the ride back, she gets on the floor and starts re-packing everything to save weight and space.
 

I’m actually sorry to leave this place. We buy two of Joshua’s photos and leave them and our hiking staffs with all the other stuff they’re holding for us. At about 3:30, we hike north with a new water filter, lots of Micropur, a full bottle of denatured, Esbit tabs for backup, grocery store food and yet lighter packs than we started with.

We’re headed over three days to Unicoi Gap. We’re going to cross the road there and camp just north of it about a mile. There’s a water source there and we’ll be able to get up early enough to hike back down to the gap and meet our shuttle ride at 8 am our last morning. All is well and I feel a kind of warm belonging to this trail community.

The weather turns bad. From daily sunshine and nightly moon glow it goes to constantly increasing wind, rain, mist and see-your-breath cold. The trekking poles are a great help, but even with the brace Mudpie’s knee is hurting. The trail is wet rocks covered with wet leaves and the down hills are pounding her. In some spots acorns lie in wet piles and feel like ball bearings under our feet. I transfer some of Mudpie’s gear to my pack and that helps. Still, we’re having a great time. I’m no longer the cynic. Whatever happens, either we or someone or something will take care of it.

The new water filter fails on its third use. In the rain. Some of our stuff gets wet, but Alpine had shown us Sea to Summit eVAC® dry sacks with eVent® on the bottom that lets air out. I bought two so our down bags compress but are safe from the water. I’m not a wreck over the water filter. We’ve got plenty of Micropur.

We’re behind schedule again and the weather keeps worsening. We set up our silnylon 10’ x 12’ tarp over our Double Rainbow ultra-light tent and seal the windward sides with leaves and duff. This gives us a dry, wind-free place to cook, change, pack and store our gear. We’re kind of having fun adapting. In the morning we push the leaves and duff back where we found them.

Our last day on the trail the weather has gotten even worse and Mudpie’s old rain jacket has wet out. Her poncho doesn’t work well hiking since she’s short and it gets in her way. We hike over two miles short of our goal, and make the Blue Mountain shelter. But when we get there we find the open side of the three wall building facing into the wind. The shelter is frigid and wet. I seal the opening with the tarp and a poncho and we have a calm and dry place to sleep. We break a rule that makes me nervous. We cook dinner in the shelter and I stay half awake all night fearing bears.

We have a long way to go in the morning and all down hill. If the weather is bad and Mudpie’s knee acts up, it will be a close call meeting our shuttle on time. We’ve never done a shuttle pick up before and have no idea how long the driver will wait for us if we’re late. We try to give ourselves plenty of time and rise at 4 am.

The weather is awful. The rain and mist are so thick there will be no daylight until 7:30 this morning. We literally can’t see our hands in front of our faces. It takes us two hours to get everything packed and get going, and we have a hard time finding the path from the shelter back to the trail.

Last year we had with us two Photon II key chain lights, which some say is all a backpacker needs. But over and over this past year I found myself imagining I was shining a very bright light into the woods on a misty night. After a friend showed me her small but powerful Surefire, I upgraded my old Mini Maglite with a 140 lumen Cree LED. The thing blasts through the rain and dark and mist this morning. Mudpie’s got one Photon Velcroed to her hat brim and another on a line around her neck. They barely illuminate a small pool at her feet. I’ve strapped one of my Lekis to the top of my pack to free one hand for the Maglite. I shine the light ahead to find the way, then back for her to see the path. The wind has toppled a tree into the trail during the night. There are branches all over. It is slow, slippery going.

Mudpie is going slower and slower. We’re not going to make our deadline.

Mudpie’s in tears. She’s standing a little up the mountain from me and her aching knee, the wet and rocky trail, the mist, the rush, have worn her down and now I’ve almost impaled her on my trekking pole. I forgot how far out the pole is sticking from the top of my pack and when I turned too fast it almost punctured her head. Now she’s terrified and crying. I fear she’s about to give up. I apologize, hold her, reassure her.

I don’t know his name. But he’s the angel who carried Mudpie’s pack to Unicoi Gap.