Day 1
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't regain consciousness until 7:02 to be precise, and I certainly needed that sleep.
I woke up to the sound of walker and spencer moving and packing up. As I peaked my head out of my tent and opened my rainfly I was greeted with golden, purple, and orange streaks strolling across the sky. Later, some of the colors morphed to red and a red sun came up over the mountain horizon. Although sleeping at elevation can be chilly, watching the sun come up over the mountains is truly special.
Starting out at our campsite, we had 3.2 miles to go to Springer. We rolled out of camp at 7:27, and probably by 7:45 or 7:50 we had gone a mile and stopped to fill up water and grab some breakfast.
As a side note, I think I'm going to try to write a post one of these days explaining my gear, water, and meal philosophy / preferences, just so everyone is on the same page with what I'm doing. But, I won't get into that quite yet.
After taking a good amount of time to eat and fill up water, we walked the rest of the way down the hill and past black gap shelter. At this point, we had 1.5 miles to go until we hit Springer.
Having done the approach trail in 2020 as well, we knew the climb up Springer wasn't very hard, and sure enough, it wasn't. I think you only gain 700 feet over the course of 1.5 miles, so although I don't remember the exact time that we started our ascent, I'd assume it didn't take us any more than 35 to 40 minutes to go up.
Shockingly, when we got to the top around 915, we were the only ones there! In fact, we've seen almost no other thru-hikers yet out on trail. Now, I know that we're ahead of the standard bubble, and that we could just be hiking in between groups right now, but it's been absolutely surprising us the entire day now (as of me writing this at 9pm).
Either way, we took a picture of the start, and continued down the trail. In Georgia, the trail conditions are really quite good. There are sometimes some decent sized rocks that you need to step on or around to continue down the trail, but for the most part it's dried, crunched up leaves, and dirt. As for the surroundings, when you're at elevation it's a lot of hardwoods, and when you're at a lower elevation, it's mostly pines and rhododendrens. I attempted to upload pics yesterday, but they didn't want to go through. So, to appease peoples curiosity, those are the general trail conditions. As for the pics, I'll probably upload them at either neels gap or Hiawassee.
After Springer, we had 4.7 miles downhill, and we enjoyed it. Super easy hiking, stopped for another breakfast along the way, and never had to carry to much water since we were walking next to streams the entire time.
Throughout the day, we kept remarking how good the weather was. You have to remember, when walker and I hiked our portion of the trail in 2020, we probably only had 10 days that were sunny. Meanwhile, both of our days have been sunny, and over 60 degrees now, something we didn't experience until Virginia last time. Needless to say, we're feeling spoiled.
After hitting the bottom of our descent, we had a couple of climbs left for the day: hawk mountain and sassafras mountain. Hawk is pretty gradual while sassafras is pretty much straight up and straight down. In the end, both of them got crushed.
With no rain or snow, perfect temps, and lighter packs, hiking has been a breeze. We ended up choosing to camp at Justus Creek tonight, which is mile marker 14.3. So from when we were at the bottom of our descent to where we camped, it was roughly 10 additional miles.
Our daily recap is as follows.
High temp: 63
Low temp (morning): probably 33 or 34
Low temp (tonight): 53 or so, we're getting rain.
Miles hiked: 17.5
Ascent: 2,530
Descent: 3,606
Couple of things to note:
- we got some trail magic from an older guy in horse gap right before the sassafras climb.
- we went more miles today than the 13 we originally planned, but hey, this'll work.
- My feet are the most sore, everything else feels pretty good
There's supposed to be a moderate but steady rain during the night.
Tomorrow the plan is to hike 14 miles to slaughter creek campsite and camp on the side of blood mountain.
Anyways, I'm going to try and get some sleep now. I feel like I could sleep so I don't want to pass that up.
Thanks for reading,
Tyler M.
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't regain consciousness until 7:02 to be precise, and I certainly needed that sleep.
I woke up to the sound of walker and spencer moving and packing up. As I peaked my head out of my tent and opened my rainfly I was greeted with golden, purple, and orange streaks strolling across the sky. Later, some of the colors morphed to red and a red sun came up over the mountain horizon. Although sleeping at elevation can be chilly, watching the sun come up over the mountains is truly special.
Starting out at our campsite, we had 3.2 miles to go to Springer. We rolled out of camp at 7:27, and probably by 7:45 or 7:50 we had gone a mile and stopped to fill up water and grab some breakfast.
As a side note, I think I'm going to try to write a post one of these days explaining my gear, water, and meal philosophy / preferences, just so everyone is on the same page with what I'm doing. But, I won't get into that quite yet.
After taking a good amount of time to eat and fill up water, we walked the rest of the way down the hill and past black gap shelter. At this point, we had 1.5 miles to go until we hit Springer.
Having done the approach trail in 2020 as well, we knew the climb up Springer wasn't very hard, and sure enough, it wasn't. I think you only gain 700 feet over the course of 1.5 miles, so although I don't remember the exact time that we started our ascent, I'd assume it didn't take us any more than 35 to 40 minutes to go up.
Shockingly, when we got to the top around 915, we were the only ones there! In fact, we've seen almost no other thru-hikers yet out on trail. Now, I know that we're ahead of the standard bubble, and that we could just be hiking in between groups right now, but it's been absolutely surprising us the entire day now (as of me writing this at 9pm).
Either way, we took a picture of the start, and continued down the trail. In Georgia, the trail conditions are really quite good. There are sometimes some decent sized rocks that you need to step on or around to continue down the trail, but for the most part it's dried, crunched up leaves, and dirt. As for the surroundings, when you're at elevation it's a lot of hardwoods, and when you're at a lower elevation, it's mostly pines and rhododendrens. I attempted to upload pics yesterday, but they didn't want to go through. So, to appease peoples curiosity, those are the general trail conditions. As for the pics, I'll probably upload them at either neels gap or Hiawassee.
After Springer, we had 4.7 miles downhill, and we enjoyed it. Super easy hiking, stopped for another breakfast along the way, and never had to carry to much water since we were walking next to streams the entire time.
Throughout the day, we kept remarking how good the weather was. You have to remember, when walker and I hiked our portion of the trail in 2020, we probably only had 10 days that were sunny. Meanwhile, both of our days have been sunny, and over 60 degrees now, something we didn't experience until Virginia last time. Needless to say, we're feeling spoiled.
After hitting the bottom of our descent, we had a couple of climbs left for the day: hawk mountain and sassafras mountain. Hawk is pretty gradual while sassafras is pretty much straight up and straight down. In the end, both of them got crushed.
With no rain or snow, perfect temps, and lighter packs, hiking has been a breeze. We ended up choosing to camp at Justus Creek tonight, which is mile marker 14.3. So from when we were at the bottom of our descent to where we camped, it was roughly 10 additional miles.
Our daily recap is as follows.
High temp: 63
Low temp (morning): probably 33 or 34
Low temp (tonight): 53 or so, we're getting rain.
Miles hiked: 17.5
Ascent: 2,530
Descent: 3,606
Couple of things to note:
- we got some trail magic from an older guy in horse gap right before the sassafras climb.
- we went more miles today than the 13 we originally planned, but hey, this'll work.
- My feet are the most sore, everything else feels pretty good
There's supposed to be a moderate but steady rain during the night.
Tomorrow the plan is to hike 14 miles to slaughter creek campsite and camp on the side of blood mountain.
Anyways, I'm going to try and get some sleep now. I feel like I could sleep so I don't want to pass that up.
Thanks for reading,
Tyler M.
Awesome reading your post! The detail is so great! So glad the weather has been good during the day! “We’re feeling spoiled” made me laugh:) hopefully y’all see some people soon!
ReplyDeleteAlso share some pictures!
DeleteTyler, thanks for the good progress report. It is interesting to compare 2020 blog posts with 2024. We like your daily recapp which is the foundation for a "hike at a glance" spreadsheet, so keep on with the daily recapp. We started to follow a guy (Youtube channel "Frank Doty Jr.") that was right about where you were / are until he had to be "rescued" due to some health event at the Hawk Mtn shelter and is now off the trail and it appears that he will not be continuing. He appears to be about 75 years old - not sure of his background other than that he is from NY state. So, we'll look for someone else that might be travelling around you with a Youtube channel.
ReplyDelete