Max Patch

Viking Funeral

Today I said goodbye to a close friend. I snapped a trekking pole coming out of the smokies and found an awesome walking staff at the shelter to replace it. I hiked close to 80 miles with that staff into Hot Springs. When I got my pole fixed in town, it didn't seem right to just throw the staff out so we gave it a Viking funeral.

Location:Andrews Ave S,Hot Springs,United States

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Day 1

Got a late start today but still made good mileage. The climb up into the mountains was pretty tough but it was worth it. We decided to push on to the second shelter in the group of three to avoid the crowds. I’m sitting here now hoping that we don’t get thrown out of here. Through hikers only have a few spots reserved at each shelter. If any section hikers with reservations come along, we have to get out no matter what time of night it is.

Missing Jasper a whole lot right now, but I called the kennel and he is doing great. At least, that’s what they told me.

 

Day 2

Another huge mileage day. This park has a different vibe than the rest of the trail. People are still nice in general but seem to be a bit more on edge somehow. We hiked almost 16 miles through some really rough country. Should be a relatively easy day into Gatlinburg tomorrow.

Day 3

Wow, what a hard day. Today was the hardest day of hiking I’ve had so far on the AT. We hiked for over nine hours today and only covered about twelve miles! Climbed to the top of Clingman’s Dome (the highest point on the AT) today. The hike down was really brutal. There was 4-5 feet of snow on the trail and I was falling through it all of the time.

 

Made it into town and got some all you can eat goodness at Shoney’s. Also ran into Frankie the Sleeper from my 2nd night out at Hawk Mountain Shelter again here in town. It was good to see him again.

NOC to Fontana Dam

Day 1

Cold again! Long climb today back up into the mountains but now it’s a relatively easy hike into Fontana Dan. Almost seven miles of pure uphill to get here.

Seems like I left a great deal of my hiking partners behind at NOC and there are a few that are ahead of me. I’m looking forward to meeting up with some of them down the trail.

Happy birthday sis!

Day 2

Looooooooong day today. 15.1 miles from shelter to shelter. Jasper did really well, as usual. We also had some more trail magic today. Will and Way thru hiked in 09 and were passing through on their vacation. They had cookies and a cooler full of cold drinks for us. I’m getting spoiled!

I also picked up a trail name, finally. I’m going by Grateful for the rest of the trip so if you hear that name, that’s me.

Day 3

Our first day of rain this morning. Started raining at about 5am so I had to pack up my gear in the rain. All of the important stuff stayed dry and my tent didn’t leak, so I’m happy. About 20 minutes after I got on the trail, the rain stopped.

I sent Jasper off to his vacation while I hike through the Smokies. I really wasn’t expecting it, but as soon as they closed the door to the van and drove him away I started to tear up. I’m really going to miss hiking with him.

Zero day tomorrow to let my feet recuperate before the long trek through the mountains and more snow (eww). Wish me luck!

Franklin to NOC

Day 1

I learned today that if I take smaller steps up the hills, I get less tired. Who knew? I’ve always had trouble pacing myself but I managed to reign myself in today and it worked extremely well.

Jasper is doing great, as usual. Sight of the day was definitely the view from the top of Wayah Bald. I hiked out of the woods onto a paved trail and suddenly there was this huge stone tower in a clearing that provided the best views I’ve had in weeks. It was really unexpected and really beautiful.

Day 2

I CAN HAS CHEESBURGER? Yes. Yes I can. I was hiking along the trail today and came out of the woods near a road. Some kind soul had set up a grill and was cooking up cheeseburgers for all of the hikers! And there was a cooler of cold drinks too. I was blown away.

The hike was great too. We did another eleven mile day and by the end, Jasper was really tired for the first time on the whole trail.

Day 3

All downhill today and into the NOC. Jasper and I are staying in the bunkhouse for the night. It’s really spartan, but it’s warm and dry and I got to take a shower, do my laundry, and get a nice hot meal. I’m sitting here next to the river, watching people kayak in the whitewater while I wait for a pizza to magically appear in front of me. Heaven!

Hello North Carolina!

After a pretty long day of hiking I finally made it across my first state line! I’m sitting here in North Carolina getting set up for the night. For some reason, I was bone-weary after hiking these nine miles. More tired than I’ve been so far on the trail. The funniest part of the whole day happened when I sat down to get set up for the night. As soon as my butt hit the ground, my iPod started playing the ‘you won a battle’ song from Final Fantasy III. I couldn’t help but laugh extremely hard at that one.

Beautiful Weather Continues

I just finished my 2nd day back on the trail and the weather has been absolutely wonderful these two days. There was still a little snow on the trail on the shady side of the mountains, but overall it couldn’t be any better.

I’ve heard some horror stories from a few hikers further up the trail in the Smokies. Apparently there are more than 100 hikers stuck at shelters and in town south of the Smokies due to 5-6ft deep snow along the trail. I sure hope that starts melting soon, otherwise I may be stuck in town AGAIN!

Jasper has been doing great, as usual. I’m not setting a very fast pace but he has stuck with his customary 20-30 feet in front rule and seems to be having a great time. We’ve met quite a few other hiking dogs so far as well and everyone has been very friendly.

Sorry for Not Updating

Hey everyone. I decided to spend some time in town while the weather warms up as I posted before so I haven’t had much to report. I’m still on the trail and will be heading back out on Thursday morning. It looks like things have warmed up a lot. I actually ran into someone here that I spent my second night out with. He mentioned that some of the people that were in the shelter with us that night had to get off the trail due to super bad snow and weather in the Smokies. I’m desperately trying to avoid that and it seems to have warmed up a lot in the past few weeks. There is a huge difference between 15 degrees and 35 at night.

Anyway, sorry again for not posting this before. I still appreciate the thoughts and prayers. Also, I’m not sure why it’s not auto-publishing comments to the blog but it should be. Please keep posting, it’s great to hear from everyone.

Stutter Start Continues

In my continuing effort to stay in the warm weather as much as possible, I’ve spent a couple of days here in Helen, GA instead of pressing on up the trail. The past few days have been really beautiful and warm but there is a cold front moving through tomorrow. I hope I don’t go stir crazy in my hotel before it warms up a little more. I’m hoping with all of the sun and warm weather that the trail will be relatively snowless when I get back out there.

Heading to Hiawassee

I'm heading back out tomorrow morning to Hiawassee. Hopefully I can post more regularly along the way. It's been so cold I haven't thought about much besides hiking and getting warm. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

Hell is a Staircase

I’m off! The first two days of my trip have been pretty eventful. I read a lot about the approach trail on forums and decided that there was no way I was going to do it. I wanted to get on the AT as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the road to my shortcut was washed out so I had to go up the falls.

 

The hike up the falls was one of the most brutal stretches of trail I have ever been on. There were over 400 steps up a near-vertical rock face I had to climb. Jasper didn’t seem to mind at all. He charged right up and waited for me patiently at each landing.

Once I got past the stairs I had another seven miles of steep climbs to get to the first shelter along the trail. Lucky for me there were two guys there already and they had a fire going when I showed up. The sight of the fire after the cold, snowy climb almost brought a tear to my eye. I bunked in Black Gap shelter on my first night, still a couple of miles short of the first white blaze on top of Springer.

Early the next morning I woke up to see about 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground. It was beautiful but I knew it would make for rough hiking. The trail was hard to follow but Jasper seemed to already know the way. He never hesitated and when we got to a fork in the trail he always picked the right way to go. It was almost like he was tracking someone up to the top of Springer.

On top of Springer mountain I tried to find the register so I could mark our passing but the fresh snow made it impossible to find anything. I refilled my water supply at Springer Mountain shelter and kept walking. We covered almost 10 miles that day through the snow and ice before ending up at Hawk Mountain shelter. There were two other through hikers there waiting for us and two more showed up before the night was through.

That night it got colder than I have ever felt before. At one point the temperature got to about 14 degrees. When I got up the next morning, all of the gear that wasn’t in my sleeping bag was frozen solid. My water bottles, extra clothes, gloves, hat, boots, water filter, and food were all solid as a rock when I woke up. At that point I decided to ditch the trail for a few days while the weather settled down a bit.

So, here I am in a cabin in the hills of Georgia, getting warm and drying out my gear. Jasper has taken up his customary spot at my feet getting caught up on sleep. I still feel good and strong but the cold is just too much to bear right now. Hopefully it will warm up soon so I can hit the trail again. The hiking is beautiful but the camping, at the moment, is hell.

TrailPhone Voice Updates

Wow, technology is amazing. I'm going to try out lots of different media for recording my trip but this one sounds like one of the coolest. TrailPhone.net lets me call in to a number from anywhere along the trail and record a voice message that is instantly available for everyone to hear. It even attaches your current location based on your mileage. Very nice! I put a RSS feed of my audio posts on the sidebar of the site. You can also look at all of the audio posts along with a map at my TrailPhone site:

http://trailphone.net/hiker/527737/

One of my goals with this hike was to reconnect with people that I haven't done a good job of staying in touch with. I hope this helps. :)

Final Pack - 35lbs

I just got off the scale after weighing myself with and without my fully loaded pack, water, and 5 days of food. 35lbs is not bad at all, even with all of my luxuries and my extremely heavy pack. I have everything arranged how I want as well and the pack is riding very well. I'm trying to keep myself from constantly packing and unpacking everything. It's only a few more days now!

T-minus One Week?!?!

Wow, only a week to go. It's hard to imagine but I'm starting to get really excited. I finally have all of my gear squared away and I'm almost completely moved out of my apartment. I actually have my tent set up in the living room right now where my couch used to be.

I decided that I'm going to be using amazon.com for all of my mail resupply along the way. I got a Prime membership so I get free 2-day shipping on everything I order. That should really come in handy along the way. I can even buy freeze-dried food from amazon and have it mailed to businesses along the trail!

Expect a LOT more posts once I actually get going. Wish me luck!

Jasper is Tired

We went on a 6.5 mile walk this morning with packs on and Jasper did really well, although he was tired after. I think he is going to do just fine with 10 miles per day at the beginning, although I may have to carry his pack after mile 5 or 6. I'll have to see how he does with breaks. Here's a cool log of the hike: Garmin Connect -Activity Details

I also downloaded and started listening to a book called The Final Empire: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson today. So far, it's really good. It's like a mix between The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and the Jhereg series by Steven Brust. Best of all, it's really long and there's a whole trilogy!

Trail Mix

Mom and I went grocery shopping today and I decided I'd take the opportunity to try and build a trail-ready menu with stuff I found at a normal Wal-Mart. It turned out to be suprisingly easy. All of the pre-cooked, pre-packaged food they have these days makes perfect backpacking food.

From left to right:

• Thai Peanut Noodles with Smoked Salmon
• Cheesy Mashed Potatoes with REAL Bacon (yummy)
• Chicken Noodles with Chicken Breast
• Cheddar Broccoli Noodles with Tuna
• Snacks and Instant Coffee/Gatorade.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be eating a LOT more healthy on the trail than I usually do at home.

Update - The potatoes and bacon was really good but really really salty.

First Gear Roundup

Well, there's most of the stuff I will be living off of for the next 6 months. I don't have everything yet but I took what I did have and added in a few substitutes to get a feel for the weight of my filled pack. I'm trying to decide if the pack is really heavy or I'm just really out of shape. Or possibly both. I'm pretty sure I could shave some weight but I'm not sure I want to. I suppose I can pare it down a bit when I'm on the trail by sending stuff home.