The Abditory

Neels Gap to Unicoi Gap

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

Well, I still don’t have pictures up because I can’t seem to find the cable for the camera thanks to our move. Now, I know a picture is worth a thousand words… so maybe this post will be worth, like, almost a whole picture.

On Friday we finally set out for another AT trip. We once again picked up where we left off at Neels Gap and plotted a course for Unicoi Gap, roughly 21 miles away.

Friday
Our original plan was to camp near the Walasi-Yi center at Neels Gap, just off of Highway 129. I use the word near very very loosely. We arrived at Neels Gap pretty late, and I dropped the car off at the hiker parking area about a quarter of a mile down the road and walked back in the dark. This, about 20 minutes after spotting a small black bear near the edge of the woods (that nobody believes I actually saw). We strapped into our packs on the stairs of the Walasi-Yi and began walking up the AT a bit.

Now, we were told of a camping area “very close” to the Walasi-Yi. The source claims that he arrived at the Walasi-Yi on a solo trip, opened up a Starbucks Doubleshot, and by the time he finished it, he was there. So, we took off up the trail… in the middle of the night… through a winding forest… on Halloween… after we’d been listening to Stephen King stories in the car all evening.

At one point I had my headlamp off and my backpack snagged a branch, which turned me a bit. For a moment I thought it was someone playing a trick on me. When I turned abruptly to identify the culprit, my water filter (at the time, dangling from my pack by a carabiner) smacked me in the shoulder. Um, yeah. I think I might have screamed a little. Moments later I even spooked JD, who I almost stepped on. He jumped and turned to face me and, I guess, didn’t recognize me for a moment. He growled and got generally defensive before I called his name and he immediately came up to me licking and wagging.

I’m not sure I believe the Doubleshot story. Either he had been drinking his Doubleshot very slowly, or he had been walking very briskly. After a fun-filled pitch black hike of over a mile, we arrived at a cleared tent site: Bull Gap. We made camp (to include a blazing fire… the first, and only, of the trip), hung a bear bag of our food up a tree, and called it a night.

Saturday
Saturday we woke up to an extremely cold morning. I made some oatmeal to warm up. We broke camp, strapped in, and headed out for our 9.9 mile hike to Low Gap. Along the way we tackled Levelland Mountain, Wolf Laurel Top (with an amazing view), Cowrock Mountain, and Wildcat Mountain. At one point I thought I heard banjos. I crested a hill to find some very scary people standing around. No packs. No gear. Just beards, baggy blue jeans, and sticks.

Ok, it wasn’t this guy, and there were no banjos… but there may as well have been. I think I mumbled “good morning” and kept walking… I swear I think I heard one of them say, “squeal like a pig, boy.”

In fact, we saw quite a number of odd people on the trail on Saturday. We spotted a lot of people with no gear at all and didn’t really appear “dressed for the trail.” I guess the presence of a few nearby parking areas and access to USFS roads created the dynamic. Whatever caused it, it seemed to be centered near Tesnatee Gap and Hogpen Gap. As we got farther from these areas, we saw fewer and fewer stragglers.

We arrived at Low Gap shelter with plenty of daylight left. Low Gap was a nice area. Large, leafy hardwoods, colored from the fall, surrounded the shelter. A nicely flowing stream ran just in front, allowing us to easily fill and refill our water supplies. We didn’t really expect anyone else to show up so we sort of sprawled around the camp site. A pack here, some clothing over there, a food bag or two tossed in the shelter, etc. As I was starting up the stove for dinner prep, two guys came down the trail towards us: Mark and Nelson, a.k.a. “Captain” (named for “fun things he does with Captain Morgan,” apparently) and “Cracker” (I don’t know why, and I didn’t want to ask). Captain came from Texas and Nelson from Florida, a fact I was unable to forget thanks to the sickening performance by UGA at the UGA/UF game earlier in the day.

At one point in the not-so-distant past, fortunemegastore.com reported, rather openly, on a nocturnal aural anomaly. The following snippet was found over at http://fortunemegastore.com/blog/2008/07/introduction-to-appalachian-trail.html:

I had intended to sleep by myself on the lower deck of the shelter because Wanda snores like an air raid siren. On distant planets, advanced civilizations searching for life in the cosmos will detect Wanda’s snores, shut off their SETI radio telescopes, and give up.

Now… I’m not certain… but I think we found a competitor. “Captain” was a force to be reckoned with.

I slept surprisingly well, given the stereophonic performance of snoring I apparently had a free ticket to. The subwoofer 2 sleeping bags down and two treble speakers on either side of me apparently slept pretty well themselves. “Cracker,” down on the far end of the shelter, tried to escape the concert and set up his sleeping bag on the picnic table outside. But, given the stellar construction of the 3-sided, open-face shelter, there was no escape to be had. He called the shelter an “amphitheater of snoring,” stating that it only served to amplify and direct the sound.

Sunday
Sunday we awoke to a very chipper JD. For those that don’t remember, we had a lot of problems with JD’s paws on the last trip. We were hoping some dog boots would help him out, and it appears we were right. That morning, after almost 11 miles of hiking, JD was energetic and excited: running around the camp site, jumping up into the shelter (a pretty good leap for him), and just generally being a goofy labrador retriever. It was a brisk morning but not nearly as cold as the previous morning. Within maybe 20 minutes of hiking, I was stripping off layers (more on that later).

The first several miles of the day followed what used to be a rocky dirt road, prior to the AT’s creation. Now, the AT is old… 1920s, in fact. So this road is older. It struck me while hiking on it: what was this road’s purpose in years prior to the 1920s? Where was it going as it just meandered through deep forests? In fact, when the AT was originally conceived, it originally followed a lot of old roads and they later moved it (for the most part) from these roads to newly dug trails. In places where it still follows these old roads, you’re hiking some of the oldest, and easiest, sections of the trail.

The iPhone Saga
Just as the ever-present white blazes took us up a hill and away from the old forest road, we sat down on a huge downed tree to take a quick break. When I felt for my iPhone, I realized it wasn’t in my pocket anymore. I thought maybe it had just fallen out when I sat down and searched around to no avail. I had typically kept it in a zipped and velcro’d pocket, but had pulled it out that morning to check the time, etc. and had merely placed it in and open front pocket. I got to thinking… the only times it could have fallen out was when I had stripped off a few layers earlier in the morning. The most recent such occurance had been just a half mile or so back. So, I dumped my pack and backtracked. Clearing the entire area out where I had changed, I finally gave up, surrendering to the idea of having to upgrade to the shiny new 3G iPhone (how awful would that be?!). I would not be backtracking 3.5 miles to search the area where I had first changed that morning.

I rejoined Wanda and we continued on, iPhone-less. We encountered a couple on the trail, and informed them of the lost iPhone, but then realized we’d given them no way to contact us if they found it. A mile or so after that we encountered a father and son pair and told them about it. I jotted down Wanda’s cell phone number in their trail data book. Even as I was writing it down, I was thinking how futile it was.

Perhaps 15 minutes later, Wanda’s cell phone rang (thanks, AT&T for having more bars, even in the middle of nowhere). The voice was familiar. “Lost iPhone?” he said.

It was “Captain” and “Cracker” from the night before!

“Captain” and “Cracker” had spotted the iPhone in the middle of the trail, just where I had stripped off my first layer and picked it up about an hour before this phone call. They sort of thought it might have been from our group, but had no way to reach us. Until they bumped into a father and son pair and just so happened to strike up a discussion about the lost iPhone. The father gave them the phone number and they called.

We waited up for them along the trail and I grabbed their e-mail addresses to send them a “thank-you” of some sort (which I still need to do). We then, finally, made our way off the mountain to Unicoi Gap, where Ben had been waiting for a good hour or two at that point.

As always, it was a great trip. Perfect weather, great views, good fall colors, and the kindness of strangers.

Category : appalachian trail, backpacking, camping, great outdoors, hiking, nerdiness, tech

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