Date: 2004-05-03
From: Stover Creek Shelter

To: Big Cedar Mountain
Miles today: 18.5

The sun was shining in the morning. That was grand. Out of the bag I lowered my bright orange stuff sack of food from the bear cable system. This consists of a 14¢ steel aircraft cable strung between two trees at least 15 feet in the air. Pulleys are fixed to the cable well away from the trees. Each pulley has another cable through it in a loop. The loop has 2 hooks attached at opposite ends. A food sack gets hooked to one and hoisted up to the top. The other hook, now in hand, is clipped to a tree. Now the bear can't get the food because it doesn¢t have the opposable thumbs required to undo the hooks. Sounds great, doesn¢t it? Well, imagine my alarm to discover an inch wide hole in the side of my stuff sack all the way into the chocolate covered craisin ziploc bag. (Thank you very much June.) Some squirrel must have done a tight wire walk out the cable, then a hang dog down to the sack. Unbelievable. At least he didn¢t get much. Still, I¢m a serious Leave-No-Trace kind of guy.My first full day on the AT started at 10:45 am, still not exactly the crack-of-dawn but better than the crack-of-noon. Besides, some sleep was sorely needed. The side trail to the shelter tunneled through rhododendrons, but I didn¢t know what they were. They were so big; my mind tried to make them magnolias, but there were no seed pod things. For all of my time spent in forests around the country, my abilities at remembering and identifying plants is horrible.Five miles later at 12:40 it was time for lunch at Hawk Mountain Shelter. About 2.5 miles an hour felt pretty good right out of the box, so to speak. It was just a half hour lunch of my traditional Vermont Cabot Cheddar Cheese and bagels. Gooch Mountain Shelter was my destination for the day. That would be just over 12 miles. The plan was to start off small and build endurance. Of course the first day, yesterday, a half day, was 11.3 miles on no sleep with a 2080 foot gain in elevation. Hmmm.Gooch Mountain Shelter was a pretty cool place, much newer and nicer than Stover Creek, but it was only 3:55pm. There hadn¢t been another soul on the AT that I had seen yet. That seemed odd. I ate lunch part two here, and it was still only 4:25pm. The sun had returned so I pushed on. The next shelter wasn¢t for another 14 miles at Blood Mountain. That was out of the question.There were some really cool trees along the trail. The views through them were really nice. The leaves weren't out much yet. It was much earlier in spring than this northern New Englander had expected down here.There was supposed to be water in Gooch Gap, 1.5mi and Woody Gap, 5mi. Both gaps had roads too. The thought of water didn¢t occur to me in Gooch Gap, but I was ready for water in Woody Gap. The book indicated water 0.1 mile west, but the road down looked steep and surely there would be water soon on the trail. Well, there was water soon on the trail but it was not very enticing. It would have been smart to get water at that cascade back a half hour before Woody Gap.Shadows were getting pretty long. The views were great but a feeling of desperation regarding water and a flat tent site came over me as the hour approached 7pm. There was a 600 foot climb out of Woody Gap to Big Cedar Mountain in the next mile. This turned out to be one of those typical places in the south where the trail just misses the summit by skirting it by about a hundred feet. Fortunately, it crossed a little spring just as it passed below the summit.A hundred feet past the spring, I turned east and headed up the gentle bushwhack to the summit. There among the trees, thorn bushes, rocks and leaves I pitched my tiny MSR Micro Zoid one man tent. It took a little ingenuity to collect water from the tiny spring ,but it was mighty fine.Stealth Camp:This was a pristine camp site in Leave No Trace terms. In other words, it did not appear that other folks had camped here. The point is to leave it looking that way. In thru-hiker terms this was a stealth camp site, an unofficial, hidden campsite.Back at my pristine summit camp there was a rock to serve as a kitchen. It wasn't exactly flat. OK, it wasn't flat at all, but the stove found a little niche to balance in nonetheless.The sun set golden through the trees to the west as the full moon rose to the east. Another delicious dinner filled the hole in my gut. All was right in the world.The first full day had come to a beautiful end. The 12.2 planned miles had turned into 18.5 miles. Not too shabby for the first day. I was psyched. This was a big surprise.A lesson had been learned too. Don't pass up good water late in the day. There's no telling what may not lie ahead.Previous Home Itinerary