I'm lucky. I'm lucky I get to try to do this. I'm lucky I get the support I do. I'm also lucky I live near some really great National Forest and Wilderness Areas so that I can get out there and make my legs feel like frozen micro-waved mashed potatoes. I mean that. I've grown up a short car ride away from the highest point in the state, Mt. Cheaha, which looms, well, sorta looms over northeast Alabama from 2500 feet and I grew up tumbling around on its rocks and swimming in the lakes and creeks at its base.
I now live north of Cheaha sixty or so miles, following the border of what the geologists call the Ridge and Valley province where the land crumples up like the folds of a quilt pushed up on a bed. These mountains were formed, an orogeny about 300 million years ago, when the plate now holding Africa slammed into the Eastern U.S. and rebounded. It's a little known fact but the Appalachians were once the size of the Rockies, or the Alps. What's left is the stubbed broken and rotten teeth of the peaks and crests. These inner bones are mostly hard worn quartzites and other dense hard rocks that were once at the center on the mountain range.
For the practical hiker this means that most of your hikes go in a phase. You ascend the peak, sometimes switching back and crossing saddles till you reach the top of the ridge-line. This means evil, evil uphill grades. Then you cross the ridge line, woohoo, views, this is what you do it for. Then you do the descent, also switching back and somteimes getting into a gap or two that will take you back up a secondary ridge to continue the hike again. Then, you camp, or go home.
So distance out here, especially training distance, is not totally measured in miles walked. Which when you figure in the amount of switchbacks and dilly-dallying can make you really, really depressed. It's all about the amount of elevation you cover. I'm super serious. Here we are making ready to traverse a Pinhoti section.
Technically, this hike was only 6 miles long. But I climbed one peak that was 1600 feet in elevation and climbed out of a gap that was almost that much. When you come around the bottom of a switchback or the corner of a forest floor and see some big mean uphill that goes all the way up I usually just have to go to my happy place. Mean hill, evil, evil hill. I usually look like this at the beginning of my hikes.
I don't have any pictures post-hike... It's usually not something I'm thinking about as I flop onto my mattress and suck down diet soda. I'll try to make it more of a priority. But for right now, I'm hiking when the weather is good and maintaining an attitude on the days when my body is feeling like this whole thing maybe just might be bigger and crazier than something I can handle. But, as they say... No pain, no rain, No Maine.
Did I mention the dog??
I should have. But there is some back story. When I started doing the research on the trail I didn't get a good vibe on dog friendliness. There are two sections of the trail that outright prohibit pets; The Smoky Mountains and Baxter State Park. These are some really memorable and big points of the trail. And it's not that I don't love my dog. I do. She's great, this is her.....Molly.
Molly goes with me practically everywhere that I don't drive, and sometimes there too. But on the trail I started figuring in expenses and the fact that Molly's a grammie in dog years. I just thought I'd do better on my own. Even though she would be miserable. Probably.
But as I was getting closer and closer to the date and more and more prepared I ran into a situation that I think all through hikers are forced to confront. It's that none of us are really going to be hiking this alone.
I mean, yes... no doubt we'll meet tons of people as we tramp miles closer to Maine. But we will still be carrying a part of the people we left behind...our friends and our families. They will be worried and flustered, but also excited and proud. So, I came to realize that we aren't going alone.
We are taking hopes and fears and expectations and sometimes... guilt. Guilt about leaving your old dog at base camp. Or maybe some of the fear that every parent has when their child ventures into the unknown. Maybe hope that amazing things can still be done. Even today. When amazing sometimes seems like someone else's distant little miracle.
Coming to the decision to take Molly was a big decision, but it got big time bonus points with those staying behind running my base camp. My Mom and my sister. They didn't want to see the sad Molly face any more than I would. Did I mention Molly is a Lab, intensely loyal and of fine stick retrieving stock?
So, last week, I asked Molly if she wanted to walk to Maine. She asked if they made french fries in Maine and I said yes, of course. And so we've agreed to go. Together.
Sorry, dear readers. I had to put the blog to bed for the Christmas months. As I was running around trying to finish projects for gifts and then getting myself full of the goodness that is Charleston seafood and beach time, I let the blog go. Mea Culpa.
I took some time off hiking for a month too. One, to let any stress or repetitive chronic injuries in my legs and knees heal up and, two... it's whitetail season down here in Dixie and I don't want to mess with someones bag limit... or end up in it... as it were. But, during the months that the blog was down I was able to finish getting my kit together.
My 'system,' backpack, shelter and bag, came together in early December with the addition of Sierra Designs Ridge Runner 30 degree down bag. I love this bag. I mean it. I'm in a committed relationship with this bag. I know it's down and that she temperamental and mean when she gets wet, but when I snuggle into that loft and the temp outside is below forty I feel like I'm in the arms of a loving fuzzy ducky mother.
So she don't look like much, but she's got it where it counts. Ahem.
For shelter I combined my Eno double nest with Kelty's Noah's Tarp, which is an enormous but surprisingly lightweight, crushable swath of rainproof fabric. It looks like this when it's in the machine.
The third part of my system was a real trick. I'm doing this whole thing on a budget. Probably a budget of a quarter of what a standard through-hiker normally spends. So I've been constantly adding a little bit of gear here and there, when it was on sale or when I could find something on close out.
When it came to my pack, however, I was in trouble. I and everyone involved was leery about ordering a bag online. Plus, new bags, good ones, are expensive. But it turns out I happened to have a really excellent bag left over from my sisters backpacking trips years ago. It is a Glissade from Eureka, and though its old it still had a lot of fight left in it.
I'll get some better pics up soon.
All the other little essentials soon fell into line. And I've come to love wool socks in a way I've never believed possible.
I promise to start posting at a frenetic pace. Upcoming posts... My kitchen that is smaller than a kitten, pictures of my Pinhoti section hiking, more gear more gear and some thoughts about adding my dog to my trip
.
And to Matt, sorry I was late getting to the response, feel like the Smokies??? I'd love the company, it'd be epic. Drop me a line at the hushmail address and we can figure something out.
-Josh
Hopefully well. Ha. But seriously, I'm a wretched sleeper. I fear sleep. I dread the thought of laying in bed trying to sleep. Add to that I sleep on my stomach and I'm what backpackers call a 'hot' sleeper, which means that my metabolism is high when I sleep compared to someone who gets cold when they sleep. Eh.
What this means is that I've never enjoyed the traditional, sleeping pad, bag and tent combo. I'm also hopelessly fadish. So I decided to try a hammock sleep system. It's an ENO system doublenest hammock. It looks like this.
Quite cute in its natural setting, no? And it was sooo easy to set up. You literally just throw some straps around a tree and clip some biners in place... And it held my fat ass. Prop. Also prop? It weighs about 3 pounds. And comfy!
Let's hope it holds up in the field. Gonna break it in next week. Woo!
They say that the only way to train for hiking the AT is by doing it. The trail is notorious for its P.U.D's (pointless up and downs) and the rough terrain. Living as close as I do to the base of the trail at Springer Mountain, GA, I do hill climbs and walking every day. I'm active.
But yesterday was a surprise, both a good one and bad. I did a six mile hike with a 20 pound bag. Now, I've done this hike plenty of times. It involves climbing the fire road to the ridge top, hiking east along Big Tank and dropping back into the valley on the Pinhoti. The first third is a long hike up. The second is a nice gentle hike down. The third is a couple of miles back along the road to the house. But I've never done it in full pack.
I was expecting my feet to give out or blister and to experience a lot of pain from the pack. I got neither. It was amazing how quickly I got use to the feeling. That was the good part.
The bad? To get to Maine I'm going to do twice what I did yesterday... everyday. Lots of NSAIDS.
Hello, I'm Josh from blackswanstudios and I recently decided to take a long dive in cold water. What I mean is that, I woke up one morning, a week or so ago and found I had the time and temperament to do something I've wanted to do for a very long time.
Next spring, around March or April I'm going to leave my front doorstep, take a lazy left hand curve and get on the Pinhoti Trail section that is a mile down the road. Then I'm gonna keep going. For about two thousand miles.
This blog is a place for my friends and family to keep up on my musings and preparation, and to eventually be a record of my trail experience. It's gonna be one part travel book, and one part navel gazing, one part cat videos. Well, not so much cat videos... hehe.
