Date: 2004-05-17
From: grrrr

To: Helen, GA
Miles today: 60.0

[Ben: Postmarked 5/17, arrived today 5/20. Joe writes like ee cummings, so I've added capitalization.Joe left his Titanium spork here in Worcester! I will mail it to him. Pics in this mailing will be posted soon.]Hello. Made it to Georgia in one piece. Saw Amicalola falls, weighed in my pack at the visitor's center, it was 19 pounds. I hiked up the falls - 700 metal steps - to the top, then took the approach trail to springer. Dan AKA AT-Addict, a history professor from New York, passed me on the way up - his 7th time starting the trail. I got to the summit in about 3.5 hours at 3pm, and met Greg, who I had met online before. We decided to hike another 3 miles to the Stover Creek shelter, where it started to pour just after we finished cooking. Spent the night with Keith and his dog Liberty. He was from Florida and sold his business, his house, and decided he needed a change. He had every piece of gear imaginable, plus more... a night vision scope, a PDA-GPS, etc...Greg and I left at dawn, with the idea of getting Gooch Mtn. shelter (~12 miles). I wanted to catch up with Peter + Colin from Bates if possible. We got to Gooch shelter about 1:00 after taking a detour to see Long Creek falls (pictures) . There was an entry from a ROTC group and from "Bear-foot" & "C-legs", which would have been from Colin + Pete, but left no details which would have been useful to me. Since it was 1:00, we decided to push on - 12 miles - to the next shelter. We reached Woody gap by 3:00 and decided to eat dinner. There were trash cans and flush toilets, too. We were tired, so we took a nap until 5:00 so we could make it the last 7 miles. We ran into the ROTC group who said Peter + Colin were at Gooch the night before, so they must have gotten trail names. One of the ROTC people game me a plastic spoon to replace the fork I had whittled to replace my Ti I forgot (lost)I got to Woods Hole shelter by 9:15 - half an hour after dark. I sang loudly the whole way to scare whatever kept rustling the bushes around me. The shelter was full, so I set up my tarp and slept.Left at dawn again intending to catch up with Peter by noon. Dan (AT-Addict) was in the shelter + left before us. He is resupplying in Neel's gap. We got to Neel's gap (4mi) by 9 AM, and saw Colin + Peter. They stayed at the hostel the night before and were just getting up. Greg + I unpacked everything to let stuff dry - this was the first time it was clear since I got to Georgia. At the store, I bought some candy and Aquamira. I am happy with all of my gear except my water pump, which does about 1/5 ounce per pump, and goes up to about 40 pumps/minute (while breaking a sweat to pump that hard). I could drink water several times faster than I could pump it (picture of stone building).We left Neel's at noon to go to Low Gap shelter, and came across a 4' rattlesnake (pic). After pushing it aside with a stick, we moved on and saw some awesome views (more pics), and made it to the shelter (pic) for a ~15 mile day.We talked alot to AT-Addict which shared lots of good advice. We decided to go into Helen, take a light day, and restock. My food is lasting much longer than I expected.Helen is a tourist town themed like a German or Swiss alpine town. It is sickening and full of tourists and crappy gift shops.On the hike/hitchhike to Helen, Colin informed me that my trail name should be Bilbo and that the similarities are just too many. I'm short, I have hairy toes, I'm on a journey to "the lonely mountain". As much of a tourist town Helen is, there is still no internet access. Since we are here early, have enough food, and want to keep going, we all filled out change of address forms to forward to Hot Springs. We expect to get to Fontana by the 21st.