Return to the Appalachian Trail

I haven’t written anything about our Appalachian Trail hike since March 2020 when I wrote about our 10 year anniversary of starting our thru-hike. Before that it was 2016 the last time I wrote about the AT. The AT has been with me all of this time, of course, though I had slowly distanced myself from following hikers every year and keeping tabs on the yearly hikes and happenings, mostly because I was bogged down with life and other things, but often because it just gave me massive FOMO and I wanted to be out there hiking, too.

We planned our Spring Break trip for this year a year ago, and Chris wanted to go to the Smokies. His real motive was to fish for brook trout but of course the other motivation was just to see a really cool national park and spend some time in a different part of the country. I hadn’t been to that region of the country since our thru-hike in 2010 and I was up for it, though I knew we’d be early for spring wildflowers. What I really wanted to do, however, was step back on the AT for a little bit. To see a white blaze and reminisce and wonder what it would be like to do it all over again.

The real lesson is I’m almost 14 years older than the last hike, a lot “fluffier” than I was then, and in a completely different life stage. But, being on the trail didn’t take away the urge to do another long distance hike. My feet may by telling me otherwise but my heart was saying, “Do it, do it, do it.” Ah, how I wish.

Seeing the white blazes again made me think about how lucky we were to do it to begin with, how we’d arrived at just the right life stage for it to happen. A few years earlier and we were too broke to have any kind of savings to do it, a few years later we probably would have been at the precipice of figuring out if we were going to have kids or not, or we’d have been buying a house in south Florida. I really don’t know what life would have been like if we’d not done the AT in 2010, if we’d stayed in Florida, moved to central of north Florida where it would have been cheaper to live and buy a house than south Florida, or moved back to Texas anyway. I’m still really glad I read that Backpacker article in 2009 about the AT and pitched the idea to Chris, though and thankful we acted on the impulse! Sometimes I wish we’d snuck in another thru-hike or two after our AT and FT thru-hikes, though of course we did try to hike the Northeast Texas Trail, an incomplete rail-to-trail in NE Texas, back in late 2013 that ended up being a fail after two-days due to the incompleteness of the trail. I dunno, completing the Long Trail, or doing the Ozark Highlands Trail, the John Muir Trail, or even the PCT or CDT—I have always wished we’d snuck another one in before settling down. Anyway, we didn’t do all of that and it is fine and well so I can’t dwell on it too much. But even if my mid-life body continues to tell me that I am not 29/30 anymore and long distance hiking won’t be the same was it was back then, I still want to do some shortish to mid-length long distance trails in the future. Or begin the life of a section hiker! Which technically I have now began a section hike of the AT AND the Mountains to Sea Trail with my meager miles put in on the AT and visiting the Oconaluftee River Trail/MST last week in the Smokies. And Chris has started a Benton MacKaye Trail section…so we’re on our way! Hah!

I really wanted to go down to the Fontana Dam and do trail magic at the Fontana Hilton shelter but it was so far on the south side of the park that it was out of our driving range. We were staying in Gatlinburg so after hiking in the Cosby area of the park one morning we drove over to Pisgah National Forest for the afternoon and drove up to Max Patch Bald. After the chaos and busyness of the national park, driving quiet, winding, mountain forest service roads was downright exhilarating. Also, I didn’t quite realize how the approach was to Max Patch via the FS roads so I was quite shocked by how long it took. I mean, last time I arrived at Max Patch I’d gotten there on foot. My memory didn’t quite recall the road crossings on the way there, though I do remember somewhat a few dirt/gravel roads that day we’d first came to Max Patch.

White Blazes south of Max Patch

Before we arrived to the parking lot at the base of Max Patch we found the crossing of the AT and what we thought was a thru-hiker hanging out by the road. We stopped and Chris talked to the hiker who Chris couldn’t quite get the full story out of, but it sounded like he’d started on the other side of the Smokies and was waiting for a ride to get off trail there at this odd place near Max Patch. He did have the AT hang tag on his pack that is common for hikers to have these days so I did wonder if he actually started at Amicalola Falls at some point. Forest and I got out of the car and walked over to two double blazes and took our photos there. Kiddo’s first white blazes! Forest was actually very curious about our hike and asked some questions on the drive up. We’d talked to him a little bit about it over the years and we have some AT paraphernalia around the house—and I mean, his middle name is Katahdin—so he knew about our hike but I don’t know that he actually “got” it until we saw the AT and were actually going up to see it. I’m still not even sure he understands what the life of a backpacker is but he got a little glimpse of it later on, which I’ll talk about shortly.

We hiked from the parking lot at Max Patch, winding our way around the base and then up the south flank of the bald. I am completely out of shape for hills and mountains so it was a journey getting up there. There were plenty of opportunities to ease my way into it by taking photos of white blazes or the views from Max Patch once we got up on top. We camped at the summit the evening we were up there in 2010 and being there mid-afternoon this time wasn’t nearly as scenic but still magnificent. I really, really wanted to just keep walking north to the next shelter and then another day and a half hike into Hot Springs, NC. But we turned around and descended the way we came and then at the junction where we could hike south on the AT or take the trail back to the parking lot we opted to walk south on the AT until it crossed back at the road, which the road crossing wasn’t very far from the parking lot so we just walked the road back up.

It was the AT. The vibes. The scenery. It could have been 2010 or 2024. But it was the AT through and through. I loved it and soaked in it, though Chris and Forest were bounding down the trail and I just wanted to sit there and immerse myself in the magic of the trail. How much I missed on the hike because we were hiking and now I wanted to see what I’d missed—the plants, the insects, the life. We hiked back to the car and drove back down the forest service roads, back to I-40 and headed towards Gatlinburg again. I did want to detour to Davenport Gap and hike up to that shelter but we didn’t have time. Pizza was calling!

The AT north of Newfound Gap

We went back to the AT a few days later when we went to Newfound Gap. I dropped Chris off at a currently closed road (for the season) north of Cherokee for him to hike up to the Raven Fork so he could backcountry fly-fish for the day. Forest and I hung out in Cherokee, checking out some nearby waterfalls, doing a few touristy things, and hiking along the Oconaluftee River and watching elk. More on that in another post later. It was dusky by the time I’d picked Chris up from his fishing day and we’d eaten dinner in Cherokee when we slowly started ascending the Smokies once again and stopped at Newfound Gap. We’d missed sunset by a little bit but it was still light enough for us to see. I wanted to stop anyway because I knew the parking lot would potentially be a nightmare the following day when we were planning to come back to hopefully give trail magic to hikers crossing there. I was glad we stopped because it was quieter and because it was just another opportunity to see white blazes.

The AT below Newfound Gap

After hiking the Alum Cave Trail on Thursday morning, we drove up to Newfound Gap in hopes we’d find thru-hikers. As I suspected, the parking lot was chaos and as we slowed down we saw what appeared to be two thru-hikers trying to hitch into Gatlinburg. The thru-hikers were still there by the time we found a parking spot but Chris wanted to hike down the trail a bit south to wait for any hikers who would be coming up the trail. We’d brought sodas and some Oreos as our trail magic and we hoped to catch them before the chaos of Newfound Gap. We waited a few minutes but Chris then decided it’d be better up at the gap itself, especially because we thought there were a couple of other hikers we’d caught glimpses of in addition to the hitching hikers. I will say, walking south reminded me a lot about the day we came through there on the trail. We’d postholed across the back of Clingmans Dome and it had been a really long and rough day.

Gadget with our trail magic

Back at the parking area we spotted a different hiker trying to hitch, one we’d noticed on our circle around the parking lot looking for a spot. She’d appeared too clean and put together for a thru-hiker but she turned out to be just that. We decided we were going to pay it forward, a small repayment of our hitchhiking debts we accrued in 2010 and 2011, and I walked over to ask the hiker if she needed a ride into Gatlinburg. And she did. Scar was recently retired and had started in mid/late February on the AT and was in needed of a resupply. Between me walking over to talk to her and coming back over to where Chris and Forest were, Chris had found another thru-hiker perched on the rock wall at the parking lot so we all walked over and talked to her. Scar and the other hiker, Gadget, knew each other and Gadget was glad Scar had found a hitch in us back to Gatlinburg. We offered Scar and her hiking partner Cheeseblock, whom we didn’t meet, the sodas and some Oreos, and gave a soda to Scar, too, who declined Oreos because she didn’t like them. It was a bit surreal because Gadget took out her phone and recorded us giving her trail magic, something completely foreign to us from our thru-hiking days. We might have taken photos of trail magic, but video? Nah. The world of thru-hiking vloggers on YouTube and Instagram is much different now 14 years later! I regret that I did not get Gadget’s IG or YT handle so we are out there on social media somewhere…but I do have Scar’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hikingheatherb.

Us with Scar at the Cici’s parking lot in Gatlinburg

We rearranged the car and made room for Scar and her pack and then drove down to Gatlinburg as we talked about the AT, her hike and our hike, and just got to know someone you’ve never met but share this one particular interest, and try to share a short life story in a 45 minute time span. It was thrilling! I completely get why there are so many people who become Trail Angels or just give Trail Magic. If you can’t hike you might as well be close to the community and this is one way to do it. I wished we could have done more and had more time to do a proper trail feast or something like that but I know from personal experience that sodas and some Oreos are more than welcome and downright divine in that instance.

We dropped Scar off at Cici’s in Gatlinburg, mere steps from the GSMNP and across the street from an outfitter. Apparently NOC Outfitters has a store right there, too, just for all of those hikers needing to get off trail at Newfound Gap. She’s back on trail from what we can tell and I hope she’ll make it to Katahdin later this summer!

Our brief return to the AT was something I needed, honestly. I’ve been burnt out from “the hiking world” for a while now, mostly from producing my Florida Trail podcast but it gave me a little boost to get back into that whole world again, reading books, following hikers. Once upon a time for a few years after our hikes, I would pick one or two people to keep track of for the hiking season. I stopped doing that around when Forest was born because it gave me major FOMO and just depressed me but maybe I’ll pick it back up again.

My middle-aged body needs some work before I think about a long trail again but the hiking in the Smokies and seeing the AT again reinvigorated something I’d lost over the last few years. I forgot I’d downloaded Chasing the Smokies Moon more than a year ago or so onto my Kindle and I started reading it on our last day before we left. I’m about half way through and it is so good! I should have started it before we got there as it would have set the mood for the trip!

There’s not much else to say other than I’m glad I got to see my old friend, the Appalachian Trail. I’d love to revisit other parts of it in the future and I do think a trip to Maine and Katahdin is in our future when Forest is a few years older.