Date: 2017-11-12
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Miles today: 0.0

The Appalachian Trail is marked with white 2¢ x 6¢ painted rectangles, known as white blazes, on trees, posts and occasionally rocks, but are not consistent enough to make AT hiking a follow-the-dots adventure. Some navigation skill is still needed or is at least helpful. Especially in federally-designated wilderness areas, blazes may be few and far between.  Trail blazing has a long history. Native Americans sometimes bent sapling hardwood trees in distinctive ways to mark paths and possibly to convey information. The Appalachian Trail is not an old Indian path, but the AT occasionally follows indigenous trails, like the Abenaki carry trails between ponds in Maine. Some Indian marker trees distinguished by horizontal runs of the trunk and distinctive knob are visible along the Appalachian Trail, although lightning, fire damage and falling trees pinning saplings can result in similar distortions. There are some great examples of marker trees along the AT in Georgia and in the Smokies. Hunters and loggers would occasionally mark trails with cuts made by axe, definitely not a recommended Leave-No-Trace practice. You will occasionally see one of the original Appalachian Trail metal markers, like the one pictured above, sometimes in the process of being ¢swallowed¢ by a tree as the bark grows over the marker. Aside from paint blazes, there are also wooden signs along the AT, either on wooden posts or nailed to trees. The signs sometimes announce the start of the maintenance section assigned to one of the 31 trail maintaining clubs or indicate side trails to shelters, springs, viewpoints, or intersecting trails. Mileage figures on wooden signs are notoriously inaccurate, sometimes because of trail relocations, and cannot be relied upon, especially when you are tired at the end of day. I truly appreciate the shelter signs that include an indication of trail north and trail south. There are few things worse than starting the day by hiking in the wrong direction. I try to make it a practice of saying to myself, ¢Left in,¢ or ¢Right in,¢ when I start down the shelter path to help me remember which way to turn in the morning. It doesn¢t always work and most hikers have stories of wasting hours hiking in the wrong direction with that horrible sense of deja vu. Some people make it a habit. I have met a hiker named Wrong Way.Occasionally you will see two blazes, one over the other, meaning to pay attention. The top blaze may be offset in the direction of a turn, but maintaining clubs can be eccentric in their blazing policies. When I served on the board of the Appalachian Trail Conference, before its rebranding as the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the board dealt with many maintenance-related issues. I can recall one agonizing two-day discussion of blazing policy without any resolution. It gave me a new appreciation for our Congressional representatives. Above tree line in New England, the trail may be marked by rock cairns, little rock pyramids. It¢s essential to follow the cairns to avoid crushing sensitive alpine plants and, in fog, to avoid walking off the mountain. One of my favorite mountains is Baldpate in Maine that has two domed peaks joined by a lovely wooded glen. I had dense fog on the east peak and had to wait at each cairn until the wind would clear some of the fog allowing me to see the next cairn.  Hiking in dense fog can be challenging. On a late October hike in Virginia, I spent much of the time was in dense fog, the kind sometimes called Afton Mountain fog, for the crossing of I-64 between Charlottesville and Waynesboro that is infamous for multi-car pileups. I would pace off the distance to the furthest tree I could see and found visibility reduced to 10 feet at times. The trail south of Afton Mountain crosses the Blue Ridge Parkway repeatedly. I couldn¢t see where the trail reentered the woods on the other side of the Parkway and got in the habit of walking directly across, making a scuff mark for reference, and exploring to the right and to the left until I found it. There is an easier way today, using a cellphone GPS app like Guthook¢s AT Guide. I actually love hiking in dense fog. There is a feeling of great intimacy and the color saturation is intense. There is a convention on the Appalachian Trail that if you are heading toward Maine, you are hiking trail north. If you are walking toward Georgia, you are hiking trail south. The AT often meanders and it isn¢t uncommon to be heading trail north while the compass reads due south. For a northbound hiker, east means to the right and is not a compass direction. For a southbound hiker, east means to the left. For example, The Thru-Hiker¢s Companion has the following services listed at Sugar Run Gap south of Pearisburg, Virginia: R, P (E¢0.5m H), which translates ¢Road, Parking and 1/2 mile to the right for northbounders and to the left for southbounders is a Hostel,¢ in this case Woodshole Hostel & Mountain B&B, one of my favorites.Aside from white blazes to indicate the Appalachian Trail, blue blazes are used to mark side trails, such as shelter trails, bad weather trails or high water trails. Hiker slang has created a rainbow of colors, like yellow-blazing for following a road instead of the trail, brown-blazing for hitchhiking the road instead of hiking, aqua-blazing for canoeing parallel to the trail (like paddling the Shenandoah River instead of hiking through Shenandoah National Park), and even pink blazing referring to a young male hiker following an attractive female hiker in high hopes, usually delusional. There¢s a blurred line between pink blazing and stalking.I recommend carrying a compass even if you don¢t carry maps. It doesn¢t have to be a fancy orienteering compass. Any old thing will do. One a hot, humid day hiking the Kittatinny Ridge in New Jersey that parallels the Delaware River, I realized that there was no trail in front of me. I looked behind me and saw only endless low bush blueberry plants. I had zoned out and wandered off the trail. The first thing I did was to sit down and remind myself that I had everything I needed on my back. I had hiked that section before and knew that Kittatinny Ridge is oriented north-south and is fairly narrow, so I was either to the east or the west of the AT. I could see Rattlesnake Mountain to the north and remembered that the trail approaches it from the west, so I made the assumption that I was to the east of the trail. With my compass, I walked due west and before long intersected a woods road running north-south. I followed it to the north and soon intersected the AT on its approach to Rattlesnake Mountain. If instead, I had reached the edge of the Ridge, I would have known that the trail was to the east. The only embarrassing thing about my mishap was that an hour earlier I had passed a group of hikers and now I was coming up behind them again and had to fess up. Today, I would have simply looked at Guthook, but it¢s nice not to be totally reliant on electronics.Aside from carrying a compass and having the Guthook app on my iPhone, I also carry a PDF version of the Thru-Hikers¢ Companion, and in paper, I carry the Appalachian Trail Data Book, a lightweight table of distances between shelters, campsites, springs, road crossings and other features. I want something in case I break or lose my iPhone or the battery is dead. It¢s compiled annually by a really cool guy, Daniel Chazin. The Companion and Data Book, along with maps, are available at the Ultimate Appalachian Trail Store run by ATC: http://appalachiantrail.org/home/shop. Another very popular guide is the A.T. Guide published annually by David ¢AWOL¢ Miller. It condenses an incredible amount of information into very little space but is too compact for my eyes. Both the Companion and the A.T. Guide, and increasingly Guthook, contain information on town services. With the large increase in the number of AT hikers, there are more and more businesses oriented toward them. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy now recognizes Appalachian Trail Communities that meet certain criteria. The economic benefit of welcoming hikers is broadly recognized.  When I started hiking the AT, I focused almost solely on my feet. I never had a sense of how the trail related to the land except by referring to a map. This isn¢t something I¢ve tried to do, but I find that increasingly, even on a day hike in new terrain, I assemble a topographic map in my head and take pleasure in understanding how the trail is laid out. I¢ve started instinctively being aware of the sun angle and the moon. It¢s a strange feeling, but lately I¢ve felt oriented wherever I hike, as though I¢ve tapped into a navigation sense that we all have but have lost through city living and driving. It won¢t stop me from getting lost on this thru-hike and telling you about it. I promise.