Big Bird's Adventures

You can read through my entire list of entries and find more than a few dedicated to the Appalachian Trail, however I am nowhere near a “significant” portion of “hiked” when it comes to the full Springer Mountain to Katahdin distance of 2100+ miles. It looks more impressive to say that I have hiked All of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, most of Vermont, and some of PA and Virginia, but that total still doesn’t even add up to the length of the trail in Virginia alone, and that is less than a fourth of the total.

So, as I near retirement, and as each year brings me another year closer to my end of days, and eliminates another year of accomplishments, it seems it might be time to try something, and so I have set in place an initial itinerary for starting a thru hike in 2024, beginning the 2nd of March from Georgia.

First question you might have is “What does that even mean?” If you don’t follow AT Thru-Hiking, then you probably are unaware that it is more popular today than it has ever been before, and with Social Media, and near 100% signal availability, is brought to a viewing public through Video journals on You Tube, as Pictorials in Instagram, and Blogs via any of the many Bloggable platforms available to content providers. For example, this year I have been following Chris Howard on he blog, and last year I followed Hiking Mitch (The Endless Mountains) on Instagram, and Natalie on You Tube, and before that it was Dragon Sky, Dixie, and Rocket. Anyway, what am I getting at? Well, the AT is a limited resource. If a highway interchange consistently has 0 available rooms, someone will build another motel/hotel to cash in. That doesn’t exist on the AT, so the AT Conservancy manages a tool that allows you to create an itinerary where you can plan your journey against everyone else’s planned journey, and they will keep track of all the “sites” you choose for your overnights. This allows them to manage those resources by not allowing someone to select a site that theoretically doesn’t have any available spots for you.

What does that mean? Will there be “Campsite Police” out there making sure only hikers with “Reservations” can stay in any site? No. It’s simply a tool for planning your trip. If there is one take away from nearly 100% of all thru hike attempts, it will be this. No trip goes according to plan, so while you can’t really plan an entire 2200 miles on the trail, you can barely plan 200. It all really depends on what happens on the trail, and how aggressive, or passive your individual plan is.

Now, most of my friends know that I am usually an aggressive planner, however I am going to be 65 next year, and do I really need to be aggressive? I don’t think so. So, there is no reason for me to planning 15-20 miles days in the first month of this adventure. The longer you push it each day, the more the body suffers, and if you really want to make your goals, then you have to choose reasonable goals, and that doesn’t mean simply, reasonable daily goals. It means reasonable weekly goals.

So, what is one of my “reasonable goals”?

• I would like to last at least 1 Month

A month? That’s it? Let’s look at me. Until 2010, almost 100% of my backpacking experience was limited to long weekends. Yes, I did two and half weeks in 1982 on The Long Trail, and yes, I have done a fair number of week long adventures out west in the last 12 years, as well a couple of week long adventures on the AT in Mass and Jersey, but I have not spent that much time, day in and day out camping since I rode across the country in 1981.

Let’s look at another reality. Weather. I have been very very lucky with weather throughout my outdoor adventures. Sure it has rained out West, or snowed, but it hardly ever lasted more than a few hours, and then the sun came out. What didn’t dry immediately, could dry later after we made camp, and if still not dry, then with the aid of a campfire, everything was restored to normal. Even when it snowed all night and most of the day in Banff, we still got a fire going, eventually, and spent all evening drying out before sleeping dry. And we started dry the next day.

The exception was my first attempt to hike the NY section of the AT in 1998 when a tropical storm hit the second morning, and instead of trying to sit it out, I moved out onto the trail and got soaked, eventually abandoning my hike. Bad rain gear, and a bad decision led to that abandon, but the point is this. Georgia in March is wet, and it’s cold, and when it’s wet, it can be wet for a few days, so there is a key to success, and “dry clothes” have to be kept dry, and away from wet clothes, AND, you have to be able to don wet cold clothes (unless you can dry them somehow) and continue on the next day. As long as it isn’t pouring and windy as fuck, if you keep moving, you generate warmth, so you really have to be able to manage the bad times, and I have never really had too many of these bad times. So, I can’t say for sure how I will handle them. I am making some new gear purchases to handle backpacking in the rain better. What does that include you ask? 1. I usually hike in a kilt, so I have rain kilt from Z-Pack. 2. My LL Bean gore-tex rain jacket is now shit, and I have replaced that with a cheaper, and thru-hiker approved solution. 3. I will get the cheap simple pack liners and use them, though I also purchased an insert for my Osprey Pack, though I am not sure I would take my Osprey on this adventure. 4. I might consider a small hiking umbrella as well.

I think a key thing for me, is I feel like I can exist better sleeping in a shelter in the rain, rather than my tent. While I have a vestibule, I am a big human, and I also don’t like mixing “Where I eat” with “Where I sleep”, so at this point, I feel like when it comes to foul weather, I would rather be in a shelter than in my tent, and if I keep my distances low, then maybe, so the thinking goes, I can be first at a shelter, and guaranty a spot inside. That is what I am thinking.

There is another big challenge to get over on a trip like this, and it comes down to what I already know about the AT, and that is this. Except for a small percentage of the time, and this goes just as much for a canopy free forest as well as the full canopied forest, the AT is 95% hiking in a limited sight range under the canopy of trees. While the type of tree may change as you move North, hiking in trees has limited rewards. I contrast that with hiking out West where the visual rewards are almost 100% on all the time. Out West you might complain about too much Sun. That is never an issue on the AT. Another factor on the AT is a lot of the trail was laid out after much deforestation, and so with all the second generation forest, many of the vistas once numerous on many smaller hillocks, are no more, and it feels like the trail takes you up for no reason what so ever. Some of these minor hills aren’t such easy climbs either, so after a few of them it’s easy to start yelling at the trail designers who more than likely are all dead and buried.

What happens if I last a month? To last a month, at the pace I was looking at is about 325 +/- miles and could be in the middle of the Smokies, so clearly at that point the next goal, which really seems pretty straight forward, is to make it to Virginia. Looking back at my first goal, I might ask “Did I already try to chew too much?” One thing to consider here though is that of all the people who do start a thru-hike, many of them quit within the first month, so the point of that note is that the further you survive into a thru-hike, the less congestion there will be for resources. So that impacts just how close I need to try to track my itinerary, and once that is behind me, then it’s simply a matter of assessing my interest in continuing, and then setting the next goal. For example, once I get to Virginia, and since Virginia is 500 miles, it would seem like the next goal would simply be to make it to West Virginia, and Harper’s Ferry. That’s at least another month, and since it will be April, that isn’t a cakewalk, but most of Virginia, once you get into the Shenandoah’s is high up on the ridge, and I have backpacked some of those sections, and they aren’t really that bad. Gradual climbs as I recall.

If I reach Harper’s Ferry, then it’s decision time. Am I done? If I am not done, then continue NOBO, or jump to Maine and do the Flip Flop and hike South from Katahdin back to Harper’s Ferry. I think it will depend on the “when”. What time of year is it? Let’s be reasonable and say I make it to Harper’s Ferry the middle of May. That might be too early to start from Katahdin, and everyone knows that Black Fly season is no fun in Maine, but that begs the question “Are the Black Flies a Coastal thing or a woods thing?” The other thing is to just keep going. Maryland is only 40 miles, and then Pennsylvania another 260. I know what May in PA is like, and it can’t be any worse than Georgia in March. Anyway I like PA.

Another item I haven’t covered here are visits along the trail. Andy is at the beginning, Bill and Lorraine are just off the trail in Weaverville near Ashville NC, and then Terry and Laurie in Smith Mountain Lake Virginia. Of course there will be some time off the trail to see these folks, and not to mention my Northern Virginia backpacking friends when I reach that locale.

So, that is it for now.

The following is what the first 3 days will look like as formatted in my itinerary.

3/02/2024

Amicalola Falls
SP Visitor Center
(GA)

N/A (0.0) Section 1

During the spring thru-hike orientation will be provided
throughout the day at the AFSP Visitor Center. You
should also plan to begin your thru-hike here due to
poor road conditions and limited parking at Springer
Mt.

3/02/2024
Springer
Mountain Shelter
(GA)

9.00
(9.0) Section 2 Shelter holds 12 people + 18 tent pads, 2 privies and

food storage.

3/03/2024 Hawk Mountain
Shelter (GA)
7.90 <<< daily mileage
(16.9) Section 2 <<< total mileage

Hawk Mt. Shelter is likely FULL by 3pm during Feb. 22
through April 18 – use Hawk Mt. Campsite if arriving
later than 3pm. The shelter holds 12 people + 9 tent
sites, privy, food storage cables and spring.