Login Labor Day Hiking September 09, 2010 09:15 AM (PDT)




 

Labor Day Hiking

by ryan
 		 

2004 Labor Day Hiking Trip
A few months ago I went canoeing with Hofstetter and his friend Andy Tohn, who convinced a drunk Ryan to go on a hiking trip in the appalachians over labor day weekend. Here are the pictures from that trip.

WARNING: Some of these pictures are graphic in nature, and might make you sick.

We left for Amicalola Falls, GA on Friday, Sept. 3, at about 4am. The crew was myself, Andy Tohn, and his roomate Moishe (pronounced moy-shuh) Groger. We drove all night and arrived at the camp site that afternoon, after fighting the hurricane traffic. Everywhere we stopped we had to explain that we weren't fleeing the hurricane, we planned this six months ago. Anyway, we were all exhausted and drove around completing the first quest: finding alcohol.

After driving and asking questions for a few hours, we found "Woody's Wheel". Here's Andy brandishing the fruits of our journey. We actually had to go to Gainesville, GA to get liquor, which we all found dismaying. Passing a "Now entering Gainesville" sign just felt wrong.
The quest for alcohol was frustrating, since the county was a "dry" county, meaning they only sell beer and wine. I didn't quite that get that one.
The actual park was full, so we camped at a small place across the street on Friday night. Andy and Moishe had hiked before, and we got all our stuff ready to go that morning. After a breakfast of dry pop-tarts we drove to the Amicalola Falls park, to begin the hike.

Here's me killing a bear in the lobby of the campground. This is proof that earns me two grocery stores worth of Amber Bock from Nathan and Russ. There actually is a knife in my hand, a deadly 2" of blunt steel.

"Time to put this son of a bitch on."
My pack was 35 pounds, Andy's was 35 pounds, and Moishe's was 28 or so. Most of my gear was borrowed, the pack was one Huston's dad had, and the sleeping bag was Hofstetters. The boots, however, were my own. We left the parking lot and got on the trail at about 12:50pm.
The hiking was very pleasant at first. The day was cool, there weren't any mosquitos or other bugs pestering. There was an alarming number of daddy-long-legs, but those don't bother anybody. At first the trail wound up and down through the park, crossing the roads a few times before going deeper into the forest. Once in the forest it got nice and quiet, and the trail got more difficult.

After 2 miles, my right heel was split open. I felt it heating up, but thought that was normal. After the pain became searing, I figured something wasn't right, but still didn't expect to have gotten and broken a blister in such a short time. The other heel had an unbroken blister.
The food we brought with us was mostly high-protien, high-carbohydrate, high-sugar stuff. Hiking is one of the few times when you want to eat candy bars and such, as you'll actually use that energy. The food bars are notoriously foul, but the ones I had at lunch were pretty good. They felt really heavy in my stomach.

"We can rebuild him..."
After eating I put duct tape over both heels, and surrounded them in a substance called "moleskin", which is meant to help in such situations. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but was bearable.
The heels earned me three trail names, "The Bionic Man", "Duck", and later, "Blisters". We hiked on, with me falling behind to take the uphills a little slower.

Before moving along, I had to take some medicinal bourbon. At the liquor store Moishe and I got the advice of the locals and got some "Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey", which was 90 proof and "Made from pure, Kentucky limestone-filtered water in the Bulleit family tradition." So it was moonshine. I'm okay with that. I actually watered it down a little bit in my flask, so it was probably only 80 proof.
The downhills were almost more difficult than the uphills, which I didn't expect. It was almost harder to slow yourself down, and was very hard on the knees when you did take a big step down. The hiking stick helped a lot.

Here's a shot of me and Moishe hiking. The trail was pretty awesome. There were a few parts with waist-high wildflowers all around, with a gentle breeze blowing through. It was very relaxing. It was also very strenous.
Our destination was Springer Mountain, which was about 8 miles away from our starting point. There were some hefty uphills near the end, and I lagged way behind. We had radios that worked in a 3-mile range, but they didn't work through the mountain.

There was a sign posted near the top of Springer Mountain warning about "bear incidents". It would've been nice for them to put this at the bottom of the mountain.

There was a bare rock at the top, which gave a nice view of the valley below. They had a book inside a metal box with a pen for people to sign.
Near the top of Springer Mountain was a shelter, which was basically a wooden shack meant for random hikers to stay in. We got there and unloaded our stuff. We all changed shirts, and thats when we discovered that my pack wasn't very well designed.

The pack had all the weight on my shoulders, which quickly became bruised. You know what that means...

Medicine!
The shelter was very cool. Random people show up to stay there, so we talked with Keith and Viv from Tampa, who where hiking back to Amicalola the next day, and also with Mary and Russ, siblings from Suwanne, GA. Suwanne, GA is about a mile away from Gainesville, GA, which we all found disturbing. Mary was very cool, and we talked for a long time. She was a graduate of Georgia, and we shared UF-GA game stories and compared our respective stadiums. I liked Mary.

Here's the group shot, with Mary and Russ on the left. Keith and Viv left before we could take the picture.
The next morning we had oatmeal, which I screwed up. Andy and Moishe boiled water and then scooped a cup into their bowls, and added the oatmeal to their bowls. I've never made oatmeal in the wild, so I dumped mine in the pot of boiling water. This was a Bad Move. I tried to scoop it out, filling my bowl with water, then kept adding packets of oatmeal to the bowl trying to thicken it up before just giving up. We used the oatmeal water to make coffee, so everyone's coffee had a peachy taste, and I took the last of the water, the part that had all the oatmeal. With some of Andy's Kahlua in it, my peach-oatmeal-kahlua-coffee was delicious.

The second day was much easier. Moishe and Andy were kind enough to take a lot of my weight. The trail was also easier, with fewer hills. I kept up pace almost the whole time. This is Long Creek Falls, where we stopped for lunch. The perspective in the above picture is a little funny, the falls are pretty long.

Here's Andy at the top of the falls.

We stopped a long time for lunch, enjoying the cool air coming off the falls.
Our second day was another 8 miles, with the destination being another shelter at Hawk Mountain. Our map had a profile of the elevation, and there was much less variation in elevation, just a steady uphill and downhill. There were a few parts where we had to cross small streams, which was neat, and for awhile the trail paralleled a stream, so there was a constant rushing sound of the water. There was a section where the trail had a full canopy of green rhododendrons so we were walking in a complete shadow of the plants.

Here's a random shot from the trail.
We finally got to our destination, and found a group of 4 older guys camping out. They were electricians from Kansas, and had hiked maybe 300 miles over the past few years. They always took their vacations at the same time and went hiking. We had some of our bourbon, and they had some of theirs. They gave me the name "Blisters".

Both bandages had come off my heels while walking, and you can see something grey in my heel in this nasty shot. In the car ride home I picked that out using tweezers. The older guys all winced when they saw my wounds.
I fell asleep pretty quickly, and Andy stayed up talking to the guys. Moishe went with a transport service back to the falls to get our car. There was a parking lot about 1/4th of a mile away, so he was picked up there and driven the hour back to his car. When we started, we weren't sure about this part, but Andy's girlfriend Elecia was nice enough to do some of the legwork in working out a ride.

Here's all three of us and Dave at the shelter. The shelters have a loft section where we slept, and one open wall. The wind had really picked up during the night.
We woke up that morning and got all our stuff together. I had re-done my foot bandages again, and putting on the boots again was a little painful. I took it easy on the last quarter mile, trying not to split my heels open any further. We were all really tired, and that last bit seemed to take forever.

Here's me taking my last steps into the parking lot.

Here's Moishe's final steps.
We drove over dirt roads for about 45 minutes, and finally got back to the main roads. From there we flew back to the falls, driving fast along winding mountain roads. We "borrowed" their shower facilities to get clean, and then enjoyed a fabulous breakfast buffet. Then we began the long drive home.

One the drive home, we were escorted by tree-cutting trucks, huge generators, and other repair/clean-up people heading down to the wreck that is Florida.
That's about it. We never saw any wildlife, and never had any big accidents. All in all, it was an excellent trip. I'm currently in the back seat of the car, hauling ass back to Florida, and drunk. We stopped at Hooters on the way back, and me and Moishe shared two pitchers of Killians. I've called everyone, and I have a job and a house to live in still in Gainesville, so now there's nothing left to do but sleep my way back home.