Appalachian Trail, Part 2

Our first morning in Watauga Dam Campground came early. I turned the alarm on my phone off an hour before its scheduled blast at 5 a.m. because I was awake most of the night. Today was the day. Today we would hike a section of the 3,000+ mile historic Appalachian Trail. Adrenaline was surging through my veins as I woke Jim and we stuffed our packs with water, trail snacks, extra wool socks, and gloves in silence. The silence wasn’t for any reason other than Jim doesn’t talk much anymore. Damn Alzheimer’s.

We drove into the dark to meet Dee Ann, our local hiking partner, at the McDonald’s in Hampton, TN. We got there early so we could wolf down some breakfast and I could make sure Jim took all his meds for the day. By the time Dee Ann and her husband Phil arrived, I had forgotten she promised to make lunch for us. As she handed bags of chicken salad sandwiches and trail mix to us, I looked at her like where am I going to put this? My pack is full. We’d never had someone else make food for us. If this was southern hospitality, I was grateful for it. Or maybe it was the fact she wanted my last meal to be a nice one. Because I had stupidly told her weeks before the trip how I liked hiking through rather than in and out. I mean, I don’t like leaving the same way I came in because I don’t want it to be redundant. If I am going to all the trouble of getting out there, I want the whole trail to be new to me. Unfortunately, she heard that. So instead of doing a few short hikes, she planned a longer, 10-mile hike. Now don’t get me wrong. She gave me CHOICES and she wants everyone to know that. I am the one who chose this one in the end.

“Well, I’m not carrying your food OR your water for you!”

Of course she wasn’t. You carry your own stuff on the trail. But I think this was her first subtle reference to my day pack, which she later called a “1/2 day pack”. I figured chicken salad was going to taste just as good whether it was scraped off the aluminum foil it was wrapped in or if it was in a plastic Glad container, so I squished it into my overstuffed “1/2 day pack”.

Phil drove us and their dog Sampson to the trailhead on Tennessee 19E while Dee Ann talked about murder on the Appalachian Trail (AT). It was almost as if she knew what I had been thinking during some of those hours I’d spent awake the night before. I was aware of seemingly random murders in the early 80s since it was during the heyday of our serious hiking trips in various places across the country, and it seemed she was talking of that time. Upon further questioning, no, she was talking about recent murders during the spring of this year. The suspect had actually been at the hospital where she worked. I felt a chill knowing something so violent had so recently occurred on the trail we were about to converge upon but decided not to allow my imagination to get the best of me.

Sampson was as excited as we were, to get started. We put on packs over our jackets and grabbed our hiking poles. Right away, we began walking uphill through woods with large rock out-croppings while following a creek. What started out as a cold morning just after dawn, quickly began warming up and I took my jacket off. It was intoxicating to breathe in the combination of maple, hemlock, beech, and birch trees and walk among their colorful leaves lining the path. In the larger scheme of things, as I scanned the trees and their myriad colors, there was also an abundance of deep greens from the laurels and rhododendrons in the understory. It was beautiful. And it felt as if we could be the only people who had ever traversed the trail.

By the time we stopped for snacks and water, we had seen several hikers, most of them going in the direction opposite us. I had to put my jacket back on because as long as we were moving and sweating, it was warm; the minute we stopped for any length of time, we were reminded it was still cold on the west side of the mountains.

Dee Ann was a wealth of knowledge about the trail and it was fascinating to hear her stories about when she had hiked this part of the AT some years before. At our first stop, she thought we were making good time. Little did she know that was about to change.

We kept climbing up and up through woods and upon bluffs. Even though Dee Ann had previously hiked the same trail, it is common that trails are re-routed to avoid too much erosion and we were confronted with one of those instances. We couldn’t decide which path to take, but she proved her skills when she recognized a town far down in a mountain valley. She was able to pull up a trail map and orient it on her dying phone, using the town as a point of reference. Our problem was solved and we continued on. Although we began in Tennessee, most of our hiking would be done across the border in North Carolina.

Later in the week, we would argue about which of us talked the most, but I had to tell her I couldn’t walk and talk at the same time, early in the hike. As we continued to gain elevation, I began panting and couldn’t carry on a conversation. It was embarrassing, but I had warned her I was terribly out of shape. I didn’t feel I was holding up our trip too much until after lunch where we sat on rocks in a flat area and leisurely ate chicken salad, jerky, and trail mix.

We continued making the incline with a few switchbacks here and there and occasional downhill treks before walking up and out of the dense treeline into smaller, gnarled scrub trees where the elevation and wind caused obvious changes in the landscape. Dee Ann and Jim were like pack mules, moving steadily upward. Sampson did double time exploring the area all around us as well as moving parallel to us and the trail. He convinced me I needed to consider getting another dog–a Service Dog that could hike and go everywhere with us. I, on the other hand, went from recovering fairly quickly after every breather we would stop and take, to my body demanding it needed more frequent stops. I was moving slower and slower. Meadows and tops of bluffs became excuses to stop and look at mountains in the distance. By the time we began ascending Little Hump Mountain, I thought I was never going to make it. Jim was walking behind me and waiting with me every time I stopped to catch my breath. Dee Ann would eventually yell something to further motivate me. Everything along the way became a blur and I was praying to make it. Little Hump Mountain was a bald (covered in grasses and void of trees) and was pretty amazing. The mountains surrounding it were stunning. It felt wonderful to finally get to the top. We stopped a short time and looked at the monster ahead of us: Hump Mountain. We would gain about 3,000 feet in altitude from the beginning of our hike when we reached its peak.

Hump and Little Hump were both straight up. There were no switchbacks, no level ground. Straight up. I felt like I was dying. I think I was taking 5 to 10 steps and stopping to gasp for air. It seemed like it took forever. By the time I reached the summit, I forced myself to look around at the 360-degree view only because I knew I should before I passed out. I was barely able to crawl out of my “1/2 day pack” and put it under my head. I lay there at least 30 minutes, trying to regain some strength. Dee Ann, who rarely talks (by her admission, not mine), stood and talked to a fellow hiker the entire time. That’s when I noticed Jim had done the same thing I did, placing his pack under his head as a pillow, and was lying beside me. That was the first time I realized the hike may have been difficult for him as well.

It was a few more minutes before I could sit up, eat a snack, and drink some water. Then I stood and walked around the magnificent flat bald that was the 5,587 ft. summit of Hump Mountain. As far as the eye could see in any direction, were mountains upon mountains. The sky was blue with lazy white clouds. As a T-shirt I now own says, “The AT: The journey is the destination.” So true. The journey is why we hike; not just the summit. But the summit ain’t half bad.

We still had to make our descent and a storm was coming . . .