Appalachian Trail - 2024

I don't think anyone else is on the AT. Last night was cold. I wouldn't be shocked to hear it got below 20. Certainly a chilly night. Our rain gear froze immediately after we took it off, and once we got into our bags, our shoes and socks were next. Thankfully, we slept dry, and fairly warm. Having a hiking pair of clothes and a sleeping pair of clothes that are distinct really make a difference. I will say, one redeeming factor about a lack of clouds to keep the heat in, is that the stars come out, and last night, the stars were phenomenal. We woke up around 730, and knew exactly what was about to happen. We were going to take off our warm sleeping clothes, and put on frozen socks, and then push them into frozen shoes. By 815, we were packed up, and the shoes were on.  We walked for a little over an hour this morning before taking breakfast right after Wallace gap. We set up next to a mountain stream, and enjoyed the sun starting to poke through the clouds. Although the sun di...

A lot happened today.  First things first, we all quit. No just kidding... wouldn't that be an insane way to start this post?! I woke up at 7:10 or so and started doing a few things on my phone: texting loved ones, checking the map, weather, etc... A few minutes later, I look back at my phone and realized it was 8 -- I had fallen back asleep! At this point, I think walker had already taken down all his camp gear and packed up, and Spencer wasn't far behind.  After packing up and eating breakfast, we were on trail by 9. Unlike yesterday, we had a relatively flat trail for the first 2 miles or so. And unlike last time that we were in this area, we didn't have to break trail slightly after muskrat creek. Instead, we got rain today -- which I'll get to in a minute.  The first big climb today was standing Indian mountain, and we flew up it. I'm unfortunately to lazy to check precisely what it is right now, but I think it was a 1200 foot ascension is roughly 2.5 miles. An...

It never ceases to amaze me how comfortable a real bed is.  I woke up to my alarm going off at 7 this morning, and a text from Kristina at 7:01. When I'm back home, we usually spend the morning together before she heads off to work. Although we usually call each night while I'm on the trail, it was nice to return to my normal routine of starting the day off right.  I slept pretty well last night. Around 10 I realized that I was melting into the pillow and blankets, so I figured it was about time to head off.  I tossed and turned a couple of times during the night but I woke up feeling quite refreshed, which of course works for me. After eating leftover pizza and cracking into my food bag since I bought slightly to much, we were picked up by our shuttle at 10:30. After a 20 minute car ride, we were back at mile marker 69.4, Dicks creek gap. Our goal for the day was to hit a campsite at white oak gap, mile marker 82 on the AT. Now, from 11am to last light at 7pm, going 12.6...

It's nice being in a hotel bed.  I slept decently again last night. Something ran through near the camp around 10:30 -- couldn't tell if it was a bear or a deer but either way, I went to sleep shortly afterwards.  Besides turning over a few times in the night, I slept until 6:40 am. Once I heard people moving at 7, I started to tear down and get ready to start moving again.  By 7:45 we had everything packed up and we began hiking. We wanted to go 3 miles to the next gap over and grab some water and eat breakfast. After arriving there around 9, we cameled up and put away our breakfast.  We wanted to move quickly since we had to do a pretty grueling 9.3 miles with only a couple hours to spare. The big climb of the day was Kelly knob, a mountain where we gained slightly less than 900 feet in 1 mile. After going up and over 3 big mountains yesterday, I was really feeling it going up.  Throughout the rest of the day, we primarily went downhill, which was probably mor...

As expected, today was the hardest day we've had so far.  Alright quick quiz, what three mountains did I mention that we were crossing over today....? Blue, Rocky, and Tray. If anyone remembered those from my previous blog, I'd be impressed.  Enough quizzes though -- we woke up this morning and the temps were in the low 20's. I don't think it got all the way down to the mid teens like the weather people were taking about, which was fine by me. Although if anyone wasn't able to camp out of the wind they might have had it rough.  After tearing down camp, we got moving at 7:31 -- and I remember that specifically cause it was just barely after 7:30. Our first stop for the day was .5 miles down the trail at some random spring that was gushing over the trail. Although it was cold out, it's just hard to beat fresh mountain water. While stopped, we also chose to eat breakfast and enjoy the sun slowing coming up over the horizon and warming the rocks we were on.  I don...

Georgia finally gave us a bit more of a challenge today.  I started off my morning hearing walker outside my tent telling me that everyone was moving. Naturally, I began packing things up. I think the time was slightly past 7 am -- which means I slept pretty good last night. I went to sleep around 11, woke up briefly at 1245, 2, and 330 -- finally decided to pee, and then slept until slightly after 7. Our morning began with a 600 foot ascent up blood mountain, that lasted .8 miles. On the Georgia section of the AT, blood mountain is the highest peak, and in good weather, a crown jewel. Although it wasn't a bright blue sky, we had good weather and could see all the surrounding mountains and even the Atlanta skyline 70 miles in the distance! As we were descending 2 miles down into neels gap, we got our first snow of the trip. Although it didn't stick, the temps dropped low enough for it to flurry for a couple hours today. In general, there was quite the temperature fluctuation th...

I slept so much better last night! As I was finishing typing out my blog at 10 or so, I realized that I was falling asleep and just dragging my fingers across the screen and not even spelling words anymore. Turns out selecting random characters on the keyboard doesn't produce a very coherent daily overview... From roughly 10:15 to 12:30am I slept great. Then, there was a deluge of rain, like someone was pouring a bucket over my tent, and a storm instantly broke out. Lightning would flash in the night sky, and a couple seconds later, a loud crash would sound in the not so distant distance. Sleeping in a tent with metal poles is a little worrisome during a storm, but we were so tucked away next to the stream we were camping at I wasn't worried about it. Lightning would also have to get through a cubic mile of rhododendrens, so we were completely fine -- that's impenetrable. After the storm died down, I slept from 1 to 6:45, only waking up once or twice to toss and turn.  At 7...

Well, I was right -- sleeping was a bit challenging last night. Like I said, it always takes me some time to get used to sleeping in the woods again. Last night, we were up on a knoll that was reasonably exposed to the wind and with a 10 to 15 mph winds, our rain fly's were rattling pretty well. Additionally, some sort of large animal came through our camp last night. Walker and Spencer thought it sounded like a bear, and I thought it was a deer or coyote. Ultimately, who the heck knows what it was since it scurried off before we could look at it, which I'm not complaining about. Currently, there is about 12.5 hours of light, and 11.5 hours of darkness. Since we got to camp in the early evening yesterday, we were in bed by the time the sun went down, especially since things were in the mid to low 30's. From 7 to 10 basically I called Kristina and texted with family, and from 10 to 2 I tossed and turned. Thankfully at least, from 2 to 7 I absolutely passed out. I didn'...

Good evening. We are now officially back on trail. And as for Spencer, he's on trail for the first time. It's good to be back! Our time line for the day was as follows: Woke up at 5:15  Started driving at 6:05 Left Kristina at 6:35 Met Walker and Spencer at 6:36 Learned that Walker left his phone with Ashley at 6:37 Ashley came back at 6:48 Checked a bag and got through security by 7:10 Finished breakfast by 7:45 Boarded at 8:00 Got on the runway at 8:10 Took off at 8:22 Landed at 10:33 Got picked up at 11:10 Got dropped off at amicalola at 12:50 Started hiking at 1:15 Finished hiking by 4:30 Had camp set up by 4:45 Finished the blog by: right now Before I start talking about the trail, the whole concept that we as humans just fly around in metal boxes and view it as completely normal is mind boggling. I know it's just physics and engineering but still, that fact that I was going 550 mph at 30k elevation is crazy.  Okay -- trail time. Walker and I both looked at each other ...

Hello again, Walker and I are going back on trail, and this time, Spencer is joining us too.  Truth be told, I've been in the process of writing this post for more than a year and I'm still not sure how I want to introduce my mindset going into this hike.  I'd say there are three emotions that have been top of mind for the last couple years: excitement, curiosity, and frustration.  Starting with the obvious, I'm overjoyed that I'm in good enough physical and mental health to do a thru hike. You never quite know what can change over the course of 4 years, and in reality, something unforeseen could happen any second. As I've mentioned time and time again (for those who know me well), being outdoors leaves me with an aura of wonder and superiority. Not that I am better than those that don't hike the AT, but that I am fundamentally doing something more valuable than I have been. And it's not exactly clear to me why that is. To a degree, even though this hike...