Date: 2016-05-02
From: Beech Gap Trailhead

To: Carter Gap Shelter
Miles today: 4.7
Weather: light rain

White Blaze ReunionFinally back on the trail! And it was almost not to be. I woke up last Friday morning with a sore Achilles' tendon and was hobbling badly. After a long afternoon in the Urgent Care center I got the necessary drugs and started feeling better by Saturday afternoon. What a disaster if that had happened once I started on the trail! A reminder that success and disaster on the AT are always inches away. One slip, one twisted ankle, one fall can end a hike.My wife and I parted ways Sunday morning and I flew down to CLT where my brother graciously was giving me a ride to the trail. He surprised me once again with Chocolate Eclairs from our mother's recipe book! Just like Mom used to make! We spent the evening shopping for last minute supplies and food for the first week, packing, weighing, throwing stuff out, reweighing. My pack was 39 pounds with a week's worth of food and no water. Ugh! I had worked to get it lower, but had pared down what I felt I could given the expected weather.Monday morning came and we headed for Beech Gap Trail. This week was about completing a 75 mile section that I wasn't able to complete over the last two years. Once I completed it, I will have done the southern 517 miles of the AT. After completing this section, my brother is going to pick me up at Fontana Dam and take me back to Marion, VA where I got off last year. Then I will begin my trek north to Maine.Arriving at Beech Gap Trail via some "scenic" back roads, It looked as it did two years prior. I hefted my pack on, took the obligatory trail head picture and started down the trail. Two years ago my friend Indy and I left the AT via the Beech Gap Trail when our hiking time had expired. Now it was time to rejoin the AT where we had gotten off.Beech Gap Trail is generally uphill back to the AT but not too bad. It took me about an hour and I arrived back in the AT once again, a white blaze reunion. It felt good and Beech Gap looked just as I remembered it. There was one tent set up, and I was trying to decide whether to push on or stay the night. With a couple hours of light left I decided to push on and see how far I could get.There were only 3 groups of tenters that I saw over the next three miles, which I thought was pretty light. After 3.2 miles I arrived at Carter Gap shelter. There were 5 tents set up but no one using the shelter. Hearing thunder in the distance I decided to sleep on the shelter for the night. There were two guys in the shelter eating there dinner, Josh and Thomas. They were medical students about to graduate on Friday. Josh was assigned a hospital in Baton Rouge for his residency, and was trying to get a last few nights in his beloved Appalachians before heading for the flat lands. When you looked in his eyes you could see he was really going to miss this part of his life.I hung my food bag in a tree, ate a few snacks, hung my pack and talked with the guys. When it started to rain they headed for their tent and I bedded down for the night. The shelter was pitch black with no light coming from anywhere. The sky was overcast and no lights were visible from any towns or houses in the valleys below. I was back on the AT once again, working to fulfill my goal, and it felt great. It was only 9 pm and I was asleep instantly.