We gave dad big hugs, took a deep breath, and hit the
trail. We had to walk a mile backwards
to get to the top of Springer Mountain and the official start of the
Appalachian Trail. I had read in my research
to make your friends early, and I am so grateful that we did. As we climbed up Springer, we chatted with people
that were hiking down the mountain and said our hellos. It seemed like we are all on the same mileage
plan and we cheerily said to everyone, “see you at Hawk Mountain”.
The climb up Springer was easy, we had fresh
legs and were all smiles and giggles at this point. The only thing cramping our style were all
the tiny gnats that were swarming around.
I think we both had a few bugs fly into our mouths for a protein boost.
At the summit of Springer, we took a few pictures and signed
the official journal of names that lives in a sealed Tupperware in a metal box
in a rock. As someone who was read and
researched and dreamt of the trail for many years, that was an awesome moment
for me. I wrote “Bridget Ray 5/6/24 Here
Goes Nothing”. We didn’t stay too long
at the top, we had a lot of trail in front of us and it was time to get moving
and get away from these damn bugs. One
mile back down the mountain, to the parking lot where we started, and then we
found our white blaze and headed into the wilderness. This moment felt like the real true starting
point for me.
The AT is marked by white blazes, which are white painted
rectangles every quarter mile or so and they are your best friends.
They let you know that you are still moving
in the right direction and that you are on trail.
These first few miles were so very
cheery.
The terrain was pretty smooth
and we chatted about the various flowers and plants.
We groaned getting used to our heavy packs
and fell into a nice pace.
After a few miles, we stopped at Stover Creek
Shelter for some water and a few handfuls of trail mix.
The shelters are essentially small wooden
structures spread along the trail so hikers can hop in from a storm or sleep if
they are hiking without a tent.
Nothing
fancy, but when you have been carrying your pack for a few hours, it is a very
welcomed sight.
After a few more miles along the trail, we approached the
Three Forks Footbridge. Now this is what
I had been dreaming of! It was a
beautiful creek with fast rushing water over rocks. We decided this would be a perfect
opportunity to filter water for the first time, rest our feet, and have a
little lunch. Lunch was a little packet of
peanut butter squeezed on a tortilla for both of us. Soaking our feet in that cold mountain water
felt like heaven on earth. As I bent
down to fill up the bladder to start filtering water, I slipped and fell right
into the creek. I was soaking wet and
mom and I laughed and laughed until we couldn’t laugh any more. No one has ever accused me of being
graceful. As we pondered potential trail
names for each other, “Wet Butt” seemed like a front runner for me.
We had another five or so miles to make to Hawk Mountain
Shelter so after a quick break, it was time to get the show back on the
road.
As we did a big climb next to Long
Falls, we heard the waterfall crashing next to us and even though we were
huffing and puffing, I was in heaven.
We
caught up to a little group we saw in the morning, a dad and two sons.
The little one was only ten and I just imaging
Caleb out here trying to tackle these hills, it was brutal.
We stopped with them for a minute and chatted
while we enjoyed the waterfall and the dad said their rule was that the first
person to complain was getting one eyebrow shaved off.
No thanks!
Mom asked the boy if he had a trail name and he started blushing and
told him it was Bear Bait.
I think the
night before he was covered in BBQ sauce and his brother was teasing him he was
going to leave him for the bears.
Mom
and I kept climbing and they fell behind us and sadly we didn’t see them
again!
We kept hoping they would march
into Hawk, but I am afraid it got to be too difficult and somebody lost an
eyebrow.
The next few miles continued to be tough. We found that for our team, going down was much
more painful than climbing up. There are
no words to describe all the rocks and you really had to concentrate and take
every single step delicately with care so you didn’t twist an ankle. We did not make the timing I thought we would
and we started to stress a bit that we wouldn’t make it to Hawk Mountain
Shelter before it got dark. We kept
charging forward and it got a little darker, started to drizzle, thunder and
lightning. Not great. By the time we rolled into Hawk Mountain
Shelter it was about 5:30 and our people we met along the way cheered for as we
stumbled in. We both collapsed onto the
wood shelter to sit and take off our boots, both of us panting with exhaustion.
I can’t explain to you how incredibly kind every person we
met was. Everyone seemed to be very
amused by the mom and daughter rookie hikers just “looking to take a walk in
the woods”. After we got our heart rates
back down, we found a flat spot, set up our tent, and created our little home
for the night. We went down to the
stream and filtered more water and made our first backpacking dinner. Dinner was boiled water poured into a bag and
tada, spaghetti! The first night was
very social, all the groups gathered around the picnic table and talked about
far they were planning to go and it seemed like people really like to talk
about their gear. After hiking for eight
hours, I honestly didn’t really want to talk about hiking anymore but that was
the thing that connected us all. Around
7:30, people began to disappear and we learning that 8pm is “Hiker’s
Midnight”. Everyone crawled in their
tent and was dead to the world within minutes.
It was so creepily quiet. You
could hear other people as they rotated on their sleeping pads, it was SILENT.
Day 1 was in the books.
We learned that this was going to be much harder and take more time than
we initially thought, but we were so very proud of each other. We smelled TERRIBLE and went to bed with our
sore feet elevated on our packs, praying
no bears came to camp at night, and dreaming of what was to come next.
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