Date: 2005-09-03
From: Amicalola Falls State Park

To: Hawk Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 15.6
Weather: scattered clouds

I started my trip yesterday with a flight into Atlanta and a stay at Hiker Hostel with Josh and Leigh Saint. I got a ride from them this morning to Amicalola Falls State Park to start my adventure. My goal: at least the first 400 miles of the Appalachian Trail in about a month.The visitor center at Amicalola Falls State Park is the beginning of the official Appalachian Trail approach trail, an 8.8 mile hike that gets people to the top of Springer Mountain. I had the option to start one mile past Springer Mountain instead, but didn't want to have to backtrack, so I thought the long approach would be a good hike. I'm not tempted by shortcuts just yet!Amicalola Falls looks like a typical state park, with mowed lawns and gardens up front with a nice visitors' center, and some trails in back. I stopped in the visitors' center to sign the trail register and weigh my backpack (22.5 pounds, including 3 days of food but no water), and then I was off. The trail starts under a stone arch, so I felt obligated to take a picture of myself beneath it. The 8.8 miles to Springer Mountain are clearly labeled as "strenuous" on park signs, and I wasn't quite sure what I was in for.After about 500 feet of walking, I had my answer when I started huffing and puffing. But most of the trail was well-shaded, so the exertion didn't feel too bad. The trail went directly uphill with a few switchbacks and had some nice vistas of densely forested rolling mountains, bluish in a light haze. After about a mile, I got to Amicalola Falls. I thought I heard someone say that it is the highest falls east of the Missisippi, but there was little information on the signs.After the falls, the day hikers thinned out and I saw more backpackers. The trail continued up through increasingly green foliage, then meandered through flatter areas of dense underbrush and tall, thin trees. I kept my eyes open for wildlife and saw some interesting butterflies -- some yellow ones and some black ones with a blue dot pattern. They seemed to be attracted to a white flower which I later learned was Sassafras.I passed a few other backpackers and headed further uphill. The terrain changed a little in different zones. I noted changes especially in the level of moss and moisure in the soil, and in fern vs. other ground covers. The trail was very easy to follow-impossible to miss.After several miles, I saw a man stopped in the trail in front of me. He told me he had just seen a rattlesnake. I asked where, and he pointed right in front of him, where a dark medium-sized one was coiled up and rattling right at us. Although the sound of the rattle was audible from ~25 feet away, I had dismissed it as an insect sound and so had the other hiker. Luckily he had seen it at the last minute. We walked off trail around the snake, and it continued to rattle as we made our way down the trail.Soon after that, we crossed a road, where we met some locals hanging out. We talked to them a little bit and they oohed and aahed at my plans for a long hike. The other hiker stayed with them to chat longer and I continued up the trail, once again uphill.I stopped to filter water from an underground spring, and it tasted great. As the trail continued up and up, I could tell I was getting close. I couldn't help myself and hiked faster in my excitement. (I had tried chanting "slow and steady wins the race" to myself, but it didn't work. Instead it occured to me that "fast and sweaty wins the race" was an equally good mantra.) I passed a shelter and continued onward, then I saw a white blaze on a tree. This confused me, since white blazes mark the Appalachian Trail, which hadn't started yet. The approach trail had been blue-blazed like other side trails. I worried that I had somehow passed the official starting point of my hike...then I saw some baby blue blazes that confused me further. I took a gamble and kept going, and all of a sudden, I was at the top.I had imagined Springer Mountain to have a majestic, large summit like Half Dome, but the clear, rocky area was very small. There's a plaque and a white blaze on the ground defining the first foot of the trail, then a boulder with another plaque on it mapping out the Appalachian Trail. The boulder has an odd, inconspicuous metal door on the side, with the trail register inside it. I read it (but it was short, since they had just replaced it) and wrote a short blurb of my own. There's a limited view, and I asked someone to take a picture of me in front of it.It was about 2:30pm, so I decided to take a break to make some phone calls, and then shoot for one of the later shelters or campsites since I had so much time left before sunset. The phone reception was, surprisingly, very good. After I finished talking on the phone, a couple of women walked up from the north. One of them mentioned that she had been section hiking the AT since 1990, and that this was her final section. So I got to see her momentous last footsteps on the trail.Hiking after Springer Mountain got much easier. I decided to shoot for staying at Three Forks, a nice river area. I went through some green tunnels and pine forest and got there quickly...so I decided to press on to Hawk Mountain.The last couple of miles to Hawk Mountain were a little more difficult, but I made it there about 45 minutes before sunset. There was a woman and her dog there, and we decided to share the shelter for the night. (It sleeps 12, so it wasn't a tight fit at all.) I made dinner with only minor fire incidents (trouble lighting the Esbit tablet, followed by melting my pot lid handle by letting it touch the windscreen) :-) I used my first bear wire to hang my food, hung my pack on a peg that looked inaccessible to mice, and crawled into my bag.Between my excitement and all of of the mouse noises that ensued, I hardly slept at all. I had some strange dreams -- at one point, the dog dog jingled her tags and I dreamt that the mice had carried away my keychain and coins. With all the scampering, I was constantly wondering whether there were mice in my pack, but I decided not to look. The other woman had left her pack on the floor of the shelter and told me in the morning that she watched the mice running in and out of it for quite a while.