Day 1 The First of Many

Writing from my tent at the end of a long but incredible day. 

Didn’t sleep too well last night. Between the strong wind, getting used to sleeping outside again, and the animal that stomped past us at 2 AM it was tough to stay asleep. However, after getting in my tent around 8pm last night and only getting out around 6am, I still probably got 5 to 7 hours of sleep. 

We woke up feeling pretty good, none of us slept great but we also weren’t sore from the day before. We were on trail before 8, all wanting water since our campsite hadn’t had any. It did have an incredible sunrise though. I always love watching how a sunrise or sunset evolves.

We pretty quickly covered a mile and stopped for water at the first stream. After eating a little and drinking plenty of water we began the ascent of Springer Mountain, the start of the AT. The ascent went smoothly and we summited the first mountain of the trip. Many more to come. 

We actually got to see the view this time and were able to really take in the moment as we were the only people up there. The views were incredible and the feeling of being back, and that I will be out in the woods for the next four months is very surreal. 

We descended from Springer and covered our first steps on the AT. Before long we stopped at Long Creek Falls for lunch.

Through the rest of the day we began to realize that we could be a little more ambitious than the original 14 miles that we had planned. We once again had awesome weather and the miles were passing easily. It almost feels too lucky how great the weather has been. Hopefully we don’t pay for it later.

We saw a couple other thru hikers at the falls but are all still shocked by how few other people we have run into so far. In a way it’s nice, we are mostly alone out in nature. But in another way it feels odd, usually this time of year we would be seeing about 5x more people, especially with the great weather. Oh well, maybe we will solve the mystery down the line. 

After lunch we crushed the miles to Hawk mountain, where we had originally planned to camp. Although the camp site looked great, it was only 2:30, so we decided to turn our 14 mile day into a 17.5 mile day. We dropped down from Hawk Mtn and ran into some trail magic at the gap between Hawk Mts and Sassafras Mtn. Trail Magic is when someone decides to help a hiker out of the goodness of their heart. People that regularly provide trail magic are called trail angels. This particular trail angel kindly took our trash to lighten our packs and provided us with some water and granola bars. 

To finish out the day we climbed the steep approach to Sassafras Mtn.

From Sassafras we dropped down for the last 2.5 miles to our campsite by a stream. It will be nice having plenty of water to drink tonight. I ate a lot for dinner, I’m not used to how rich the cheese and coconut oil that I brought on the first resupply are compared to the other trail food I usually bring.

It’s supposed to rain tonight, but we got all set up and the bear bag hung before it started. Hopefully we all sleep better tonight despite the storm. 

I feel very accomplished going as far as we did on our first day. It will set us up nicely for a shorter 14 miler tomorrow, and there is something very rewarding about covering miles and checking off a section of the trail. 

Goodnight

Walker 

If you want to follow Tyler or Spencer, here are their logs as well:

Tyler: https://tylerat2024.blogspot.com/?m=1

Spencer: https://www.instagram.com/baxter.bound?utm_source=qr&igsh=MWx4MzRqa3M4dGk3Mw==