So after months of anticipation and weeks of preparation we have finally made it onto the Appalachian Trail (furthermore known as the 'AT', for obvious spelling reasons).After a mad 36 final hours of preparation, flying from San Francisco to Charlotte, North Carolina on the red eye, then rental car-ing it to Asheville (kind of like a southern Montville), we got the last of our supplies and gear, and after ANOTHER two hour $200 taxi ride, we made it to the trail head (ie where you can join the trail from the road) at Fontana Dam.
From here we thought we had a relatively easy 5 mile (8km) hike to our first shelter (a kind of poor-mans cabin, with only three sides) at the appropriately named Mollies Ridge. Thanks to us being amateurs at reading the trail guide, the first days hike turned out to actually be 11 miles - a lot longer. Rudy almost cried. Thomas powered on and quickly earned the trail name 'The Bolter' (apparently have to have a trail name as part of AT tradition). The first three miles were hell - it was hot, sunny and felt like it was directly up hill all the way. The first view made it worth it though - beautiful clear skies out to the blue tinged mountains.
Another 8 miles later, we made it to the first shelter, and settled in for the night, just us and the wilderness, which on the AT of course, means bears. Bears rule your life on the AT. There are approx. 400-800 living in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where we are currently hiking, and they are never far from you mind. Like they were at 2.30 in the morning, when Thomas woke me up with a whisper of 'There's a bear in the shelter'. A quick check with our headlamp revealed nothing - but your mind sure does play tricks on you out here.
We didnt have to wait long for our first actual bear siting - about three miles onto the trail the next day, Thomas spotted two bears up ahead of us on the track - they quickly retreated after seeing us, and to be honest we were kind of relieved we had finally seen them for real. Its good to know what your up against.
So the next four days were spent going up and down the great smokies - we have done about 35 miles now (approx 50km) and are having a night off in the town of Gatlinburg, a sort of Surfers Paradise/Las Vegas in the mountains. There are about 8 different Ripleys believe it or not-stlye museums here and enough snow cones/hot dogs/fudge/taffy to send you straight to the ER.
The video is from the shelter we spent last night at - luckily this one had a bear cage, as we got a visitor about 7.30 this morning. We were sharing with three burly southerners and two very fit ladies, so we figured we'd be right. The bear didnt seem to interested in us - although he did lick the log that Thomas sat on the previous night. Make of that what you will. Until next time...
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