Date: 2008-02-18
From: Amicalola Falls GA

To: Springer Mountain Shelter GA
Miles today: 0.2
Weather: broken clouds

Day 1 ¢ Monday, February 18 ¢ Springer Mountain Shelter GA ¢ Miles Today: .2   Total Miles: .2Hello, this is Day 1 and the name of the day is ¢Lost Already¢, which we'll get to a little bit later. We were up at Mr. and Mrs. Brakeman's at 6:00 a.m. As we waited for everyone to get ready, we watched the weather channel. Heavy, heavy rains and tornado warnings moved through the southeast all day yesterday and into the evening. Our timing was great - we missed all the bad weather by one day. We departed for the trailhead at 7:00 with Brakeman driving. Three hours later we pulled into Amicalola Falls State Park. Already waiting for us was Brakeman's sister Peggy and her dog Molly. Immediately upon seeing us, Peggy handed us a bag of goodies! We are already being blessed with Trail Angels. Our bag of goodies contained a dozen Tollhouse cookies, a dozen snowball cookies and some gorp, which was appropriately named Appalachian Trail Gorp. What a great sendoff from Peggy. THANKS PEG!!As tradition dictates, we weighed our packs and signed in. We are the 37th and 38th hikers to start from Amicalola Falls this year. (Grasshopper 37, Brakeman 38). Brakeman's pack weighed 35 pounds with four days of food and 2 pounds of water; Grasshopper's pack weighed 24 pounds with 4 pounds of water.We also took the traditional pictures of weighing our packs and standing underneath the archway. It was rather cold, perhaps 45 - 50 degrees and windy so the goodbyes were made quickly. We were on our way! Grasshopper then said to Brakeman "At the trail junction, let¢s pull a Pa Grasshopper trick of intentionally going the wrong way". We went a few steps up the trail and turned right at the junction. We walked a few steps and then looked back at our family. They were all yelling at us that we were headed the wrong way and telling us to turn around. Hehehe. Mission accomplished. So back to the junction we went. Grasshopper headed left and headed down the trail. All of a sudden there was more yelling from Peggy and Brakeman saying we needed to go straight. OK, whatever. Since Grasshopper is normally lost, she didn't second guess them and just went with the flow. Back to the trail junction and straight ahead we went this time. We hiked uphill for twenty minutes, crossed a logging road and then for some reason we both had the sinking feeling that this was not where we were supposed to be. So we paused, got out the map, and sure enough, we hiked twenty minutes in the wrong direction!   Only our first ten steps on the trail were in the right direction! Thus the name of the day, ¢Lost Already¢. I guess the joke is on us! Having doubts that we¢ll make it to Maine?We could have kept going on the trail that we were on but we wanted to go back down and do the official Approach Trail containing 604 steps up the side of the falls to the top. We figured we added a mile and a half to the day's journey of nine miles, putting us at 10.5 miles total for today. Although we departed the first time at 10:30, by the time we got back down the trail and headed the right way, it was 11:15. Before we knew it we passed a picnic area in the park (just off a parking lot) so we decided to stop for lunch.   Yep, a break before we even got out of the state park! After our lunch in the pavilion we did our stretching because, mind you, we had already walked a couple of miles and it was time to stretch. FINALLY we headed up the side of the falls doing the 604 steps. It really wasn't too bad; they were nicely formed steps out of steel with wood railings and every so often on the landings, there was a sign stating how many steps we had done. It went pretty quickly and it wasn't too bad of a workout. With all the rain yesterday, the falls were flowing really good; even the ranger had commented on how full they were today. Not quite sure of the dimensions of the falls but they had a nice long drop and were rather wide.Many of the trail journals we had read complained about the Approach Trail being so difficult. I'd have to say that we are not on that page. Brakeman rated it a degree of difficulty of 5; Grasshopper rated it a 4 on a scale of 10. Compared to the tougher parts of our training hikes, this was more level, for longer stretches and any inclines or declines were very short-lived. The trees today were much younger and smaller than the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.   We also saw plenty of campsites along the way, right along side the trail, which is not what we are used to in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park either. At the official 8.8 miles we passed the plaque announcing the Appalachian Trail and the very first white blaze along with a register. Of course we made an entry in the register ¢ ¢We create our tomorrows by what we dream today.¢ We were hoping that the journal would give us our official number of what hiker we are, as not every hiker starts at the Visitor Center, but it did not. I guess it's not meant to be. Looking at the register, we found it odd that there were three or four couples ahead of us and one couple is from Charlotte North Carolina! Small world. We had not expected to see so many other couples hiking the trail together.After taking the traditional pictures of the plaque and the first white blaze, we headed the .2 miles to the shelter. After seeing the number of hikers starting with us, we figured we'd have a pretty full shelter, but when we got there, we were the only ones here. Everybody else apparently had gone the two additional miles up to the next shelter. That¢s OK. Our plan is to start slow. Today, although we hiked 10.5 miles, was only planned to be 9 miles. The next two days are about 8 miles each. We're really trying to be safe and slow. Hopefully this approach will save our bodies thereby increasing the odds of us making it to Maine.