Learnings from the Shakedown Hike

This is admittedly a long post, but I wanted to share this while I had access to my computer.  Future posts from the trail will be simple photos with a line or two of text uploaded from my phone.

I went up to the Walasi-Yi Center at Neel’s Gap to start my final shakedown hike on Tuesday.  It is about 30 miles from the start of the Appalachian Trail at Springer Mountain.  Mountain Outfitter there is famous for going through the packs of the thru hikers at that point and helping them to lighten their loads.  I wanted their advice before even starting my hike.  “Squirrel”, who had thru hiked in 2006 went through my pack with me, and it was a worthwhile exercise.  Among the items we decided to ditch: my extra pair of “campsite” shoes which he convinced me I will not need until we are beyond the threat of colder weather, and one of my Nalgene water bottles.  One 32 ounce Nalgene plus a collapsible Platypus jug of twice that capacity for the campsite will be fine during the cooler temperatures.  He also suggested getting rid of several smaller items which collectively added noticeable weight.  One of those smaller items was my compass.  More on that later…

Of course there were a couple of purchases too… they don’t do these pack checks for only altruistic purposes.  I purchased a silicone compressible stuff sack for my sleeping bag.  In addition to ensuring that the bag will stay dry, Squirrel showed me how to compress it down enough so that it fits inside, rather than strapped outside my pack.  The other purchase was a more compact coffee mug.  I was pretty excited when we finished.  Squirrel was a wealth of knowledge and I felt better prepared as a result of talking to him.

I set off on my hike 1:30-ish that afternoon.  In this post I’ll touch on three highlights on my time out on the trail till my return at a little before noon yesterday: navigation, the three basics for survival, and the community of thru hikers.  The kids at the Frazee Center had asked me all kinds of great questions about what the hiking experience would look and feel like… and the pictures that I have interspersed here will start to give them a feel for that.

Navigation:  I set out on the trail in the direction Squirrel pointed me, deciding I would head for the Whitley Gap shelter, 7.9 miles away.  He had said that it was a great shelter, but because the last 1.2 miles would be “blue blazing” off the AT very few thru hikers use it and I would likely have it to myself.  I had pretty much followed Squirrel’s advice on what to take, but I did include my compass.  It was a little disconcerting that as I started, I could not see a white blaze in sight.  White blazes are the guide marks that lead you all the way to Maine – vertical white painted marks… generally in the trees.  All I could see starting out was red marks.  Not wanting to start off in the wrong direction, I sheepishly went back to Squirrel.  He assured me that the red marks were simply boundary markers for their property and if I continued walking a ways I would see the white blazes.

There are two reasons why Squirrel was right about a compass not being helpful.  The first is that the AT is a very wiggly path.  Although generally heading northeast to Maine, as the trail goes up and around mountains there are times where you will be walking south.  The second is that there is so much iron ore in those mountains that my compass needle literally stuck to the bottom of my compass housing.  I found that I could tap on the housing and the needle might move almost a quarter turn one way or the other.  I will not be taking the compass with me.

At first I was a little disoriented by this humble beginning, but after being on the trail a while and seeing some of those white blazes I started to feel better.  About half way out, after a couple of rest stops, I ran in to my first fellow hiker coming in the opposite direction – “Blackbeard”.  He was a great guy, and we were both pretty excited about how beautiful a day it was so we chatted a while.  He explained that he had just taken a two hour break up on top of a mountain just to soak it all in.  I explained that this was a shakedown hike for me and that I had started out from Neel’s Gap that afternoon.  He said, “Oh… so you’re headed back there now, huh?”  I think I just gave him a blank look, while my inner critic was saying, “Way to go, Tom… how did you manage to turn yourself around accidentally on the very first afternoon?”  We went on… I was resigned to getting back to Neel’s Gap and then moving the car to a different spot to see another part of the trail.  I decided that since this was a shakedown hike for me, there was no need to tell Blackbeard of my blunder.  As I continued on, I convinced myself that I had indeed been on that part of the trail before.  A couple of miles later, I started descending on a gap that I thought would be Neel’s Gap, it turned out that it was Tesnatee Gap.  I wasn’t the one that was turned around… Blackbeard was!  At that point, I felt guilty for not having voiced my confusion to Blackbeard.  I hoped he had not gone too long before realizing his error.

Here is the key to navigation the trail.  Trust the trail and the blazes.  If you get off of the trail to do anything, make a strong mental note or even make yourself an arrow on the ground to remind you of which direction to go when you get back to the trail.

The survival basics.  I told the kids at Frazee during my pack talk that there are three things we all need to survive: water, food and shelter.  So, how did I do with these things on my shakedown hike?

The easy one to answer was food… it was great!  I didn’t know I was that good a cook.  And I love the fact that the more you eat the lighter your pack gets.

Water?  Well, I arrived at the Whitely Gap shelter at just about dark.  I went down to the stream to start pumping water through my filter.  This is the filter that I had just completely broken down, cleaned, reassembled and used perfectly in my last practice hike.  No go.  Couldn’t get any flow through it.  Rather than try to figure out what was wrong with it in the darkness, I just opted to go to one of the other purification methods.  In this case, I opted to boil the water.  I was also carrying the iodine tablets for emergencies and I tested them out the following day just to see how that water would taste.  Not bad… there is a clarifying tablet you add after treatment, and it does a pretty good job of getting the iodine taste out.  I found out later that the problem with the filter was a small sponge on the inlet line, which is designed to keep you from pulling sediment into the filter, had fallen out.  So I had sucked a bunch of “gunk” into the line and plugged it.  Easy fix… and you can bet I’ll be checking for that sponge before each future use.

Shelter?  I had performed a home repair on my rainfly.  It was a rainfly with a fancy “window” that had become detached.  I had glued it back in place, but hadn’t had a chance to test it under rain conditions.  As dinner was cooking up that first evening, I set the tent up.  I was about 60 feet away from the shelter.  There were beautiful bright stars in the night sky, so I was toying with the idea of leaving the rainfly off.  After eating and cleaning up though, the sky had clouded over so I put the rainfly on.  I probably hadn’t been in the tent fifteen minutes when the skies opened up and it started pouring.  I thought about how great it was to be dry and protected inside a tent and listening to a strong rain.  Then I felt and heard the drips start – right at my legs onto my brand new sleeping bag.  At the first break in the rain, I made a beeline for the shelter.  It took three trips to get everything into the shelter.  I was glad I had the place to myself.  So… last night Anne and I made a trip to REI.  They gave me my money back for that old tent purchased in 2005 since my super organized wife still had the receipt.  I am now in possession of a state of the art model… it has a plain rainfly with no window.

Community of Thru-Hikers:  While I didn’t overnight in the company of the thru hikers, I did get the chance to begin meeting them.  They are a great bunch of people and I look forward to getting to know many of them better over the months ahead.  While some of the ones I have met I will not see again, others are moving at slower paces and I know I will catch up to them.  The second day I hiked north to the next shelter – Low Gap shelter.  That one is directly on the AT.  I had decided I would make a leisurely lunch there and then return to “my” Whitely Gap shelter in the afternoon. 

Derrick from North Carolina, on home leave from service in Afghanistan, was the first to arrive at the lunch time at Low Gap.  He had until March 1^st to hike as much of the trail as he could.  He had decided on the spur of the moment to hike the AT with two companions, and had run to the REI in Greenville to pick up what he thought he would need.  His two companions had given up and gone home.  He asked if I knew anything about the trail further north.  I didn’t other than having the guidebook, and he consulted that during lunch.

The next to arrive… Blackbeard!  We looked at each other, he said, “Why didn’t you…?”, and we both laughed heartily as the story unfolded and I was telling him I was just getting ready to put a note in the trail register apologizing to him.  We chatted a long while during lunch.  He had decided to take a long lunch and was planning to hike into the night to make up for lost time.  As he left, he said he would remember and laugh about our encounter all the way to the end of the trail.  Right after he left, it occurred to me that I should have said, “when you get back up the hill to the trail, turn right!”

A father and son from Indianapolis, Dan and Caleb were next in to our lunch spot.  Son Caleb had just graduated from high school and was doing the thru hike before starting college in the Fall.  Dan was going to join him at various sections, as his schedule permitted.

Jerry was the last in to our lunch spot while I was there.  He was from Washington, DC, but will be moving to Tennessee.  He was a huge Michigan Wolverine fan.  He was admittedly starting out at a slower pace, so I am likely to see him again.  We agreed we could put aside our natural enmity (remember - I’m a Buckeye) just for the duration of the hike.

As I walked back to Whitely Gap shelter I encountered several other thru hikers.  Most stopped and chatted briefly.  The second night at Whitely Gap I pitched my tent inside the shelter… and didn’t bother with the rainfly!  Hiking back to Neel’s gap yesterday morning I encountered 11 thru hikers headed north.  I am excited about the community that will be created on the AT this year.