By Patrick Gensel
The Appalachian Trail, a wilderness footpath spanning from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine is a very enticing prospect for any adventurous soul. Unfortunately not everyone is able to take 6 months off to cover the entire expanse of the trail, but traveling the hike in sections is very attainable by most. I received the opportunity to do a 45 mile section of the Appalachian trail back in October and it was quite a fantastic experience.
We woke up that Beautiful Wednesday morning at around 11am and began to eagerly gather our things in anticipation of the adventure soon to be at our feet. After quickly breaking down camp, we drove both of our vehicles to the trailhead that we were going to end at, and parked Brent’s vehicle there. The approach was finally underway, and we were headed southbound with the unicoi gap trailhead as our target. The Unicoi gap trail head was located between two mountains in northern Georgia. We parked Jonathan’s Jeep in the fairly large Parking lot located at the trailhead, made some final gear checks, then bid farewell to civilization and headed up the staircase to the trail. The initial climb was quite impressive, and physically demanding, but the view at the top was well worth the work. The next few hours consisted of walking, bluegrass music, and conversation, all of which was a refreshing change of pace for me. After a few hours and a few miles we found a nice clearing with water access at the base of a mountain where we made camp for the night. With a warm fire roaring, camp setup and dinner consumed, we continued to converse around the campfire set to the backdrop of bluegrass tunes.
I awoke the second day rested from a tiring first day of hiking, we made a quick breakfast and of course some coffee, packed up camp, then made our way down to the water where we filtered our days supply of water. This day turned out to be the longest of all the days we spent on the trail, but it also offered some beautiful vista’s, namely the summit of Tray mountain. the weather was fantastic, and was only beat out by the last day in the terms of perfect weather. We came across a gentleman at the top of Tray mountain who was doing some trail maintenance, and he provided us some great information about the local trail clubs. Shortly beyond this point we arrived at a trail shelter where we sat down for a break, and lunch. The shelter was very reminiscent of a mountain cabin despite the open front design. Appalachian trail shelters are quite often synonymous with rodents and filth, but they offer up a bit of comfort when they aren’t over crowded. Within an hour after lunch we popped out on what would be our only highway crossing the entire trip, it was kind of weird seeing cars and a road even though it had only been a day and a half since I had seen these things. We hiked well passed dark, with our headlamps lit and the bats swooping at the bugs around our lights made for an interesting experience, but what was the most exciting, and possibly dangerous part was the medium sized copperhead snake that we nearly stepped on, had it not been for Jonathan seeing it after we passed it, we probably would have never noticed it. Of course we stuck around for 10 minutes or so taking pictures and admiring the beauty that could have potentially put one of us in rough shape. Finally after hiking for nearly 2 hours in the dark we reached our goal, the Plum-orchard gap shelter, when we arrived, 2 other gentleman had set up camp in the shelter and had a fire going, which was very welcoming after a long hike over a large mountain in the dark. We laid our our sleeping gear, made dinner and quickly passed out after dinner.
friday morning was probably the most social experience I have witnessed in the woods ever, we spent the time while packing and eating breakfast sharing stories with the two guys we shared the shelter with, it was a pretty cool experience. The one guy was just getting ready to end his trip on the trail that day, and the other guy was headed into North Carolina with the intention of hitching a ride into a town were he could find passage back home. We had approximately 20 miles left to accomplish before arriving at our destination. This day proved to be the worst day weather wise, most of the day was chilly with heavy fog and periods of rain, but it also marked the day where we crossed the line between Georgia and North Carolina. About the time we stopped for lunch I had to pull my rain shell out due to the period where the rain was heaviest. Despite the rain we ate lunch on an odd shaped tree just over the state line at Bly Gap. We only traveled about 3 hours beyond this when we decided to call it a night at the muskrat creek shelter due to the heavy rain. Fortunately this gave us a chance to really enjoy the camping experience and build a nice fire and just talk about life. The evening was spent building a fire, cooking dinner, looking at the map to plan our exit the following day. We found a trail that allowed us to get back to our vehicle in the amount of time we had remaining. It cut about 15 miles off of our trek, which would have take two more days which we did not have, so the Kimmsy creek trail is what we decided.
we awoke that Saturday morning from what for me was a restless night due to the cold, and what I believe was a boar in our camp to beautiful sunshine. This day proved to be the most beautiful day of our journey. We started hiking at around 8am, and by 10am we had covered nearly 4 miles already and made it to the Kimmsy creek trailhead. The Kimmsy creek trail followed the Kimmsy creek as one would expect, which provided beautiful waterfalls along this several mile meandering stretch of stream. The trail dropped us In the campground we stayed at the night before we started which only gave us about a mile of road to walk to the jeep. When we rounded that corner and saw that jeep it was like the gates of heaven opening. We finally made it, a successful 40 mile trek, and no one got hurt, and we all had a great time. I recommend a short section hike like this to anyone who enjoys the outdoors. It was an eye opening experience.
