So, at Enota the people are incredibly pleasant. A family with thirteen children working very hard.
They served us all the chicken and biscuits we could eat. And brought out extra just in case we would like more.
Fresh, homemade biscuits with butter and jelly.
Just a wonderful place.
We made it on to the next resupply and finished up at the NOC, given the weather induced delays. It was great hike.
Our mileage came to around 13 miles actually hiked.
We found out about the change in the weather forecast and the incoming hurricane getting worse and decided we needed to reconsider our plans.
AWOL (a guidebook that was the standard resource and a supporting website and now just a footnote in hiking history) had suggested 15 miles to Trey Mountain. With the Hurricane and storms we decided to go to the Nature Commune instead.
We met Random Mike, a shuttle driver.
Google maps took him a strange route but got us there.
Enota is really pleasant. It is currently run by a family with 13 kids. They work really hard.
The famous soup was not available. The standard is that they always have soup for hikers. They are known for that.
No soup. They lost their garden to flooding so they had no soup from the garden. We could have stayed in the bunkhouse (which is really nice, we looked at it) but took a cabin instead.
They had glorious bagels and cream cheese.
I can’t stress how nice the people are.
And they had laundry. 🙂
As a hiker you start to focus on food, laundry and showers. So laundry is suddenly a big thing.
The storm got worse, so the next day found us:
I got up and made blueberry pancakes for breakfast.
I admit, I’ve not had as much appetite as I had expected. But this morning was fun.
We used the Wi-Fi in the lodge (no internet anywhere else) to update on the storm, read, and make “Trail Journal” entries.
Have I mentioned how pleasant the staff is here? They even sang for us and went out of their way to cook us a dinner from scratch.
Currently we are planning to leave in the morning in the rain, hike to Trey Mountain at mile 58 and then Top of Georgia at mile 69 for the hostel and resupply.
d20 & Happy
Neels Gap to Low Gap is only 11 miles. We walked somewhere between 12 and 13 miles. Water was right next to the shelter.
We met two guys who were brother-in-laws and who both went to the University of Utah (neither are really from Utah). They were great guys.
Storm was heavy with falling trees, chipmunks, bats and mice (one even fell on Happy).
Incoming Hurricane reported.
d20 & Happy
Well, it was only ten trail miles but we ended up walking further. The rainstorm helped with water and we met a lot of people. Blood Mountain is a popular day hike.
People let their off leash dogs play in the water sources.
Mountain Crossing is where I met my first mouse in five section hikes. I woke up. Mouse noses on your feet are cold. They will wake you up.
They provide bins to protect your food so I didn’t lose anything.
Happy and I slept on the bean bags to get away from the mold in the bunk area and the gear getting dried out on the dehumidifiers.
The picture is one I took and agreed to let a professional use in return for a copy. I’m still waiting. I just got lucky with it — no special filters or anything.
Note:
Pizza is no longer free with the bed. It is a separate charge (and you can also get Dominos to deliver).
Most hiker hostels provide sheets, but no pillow. A classic hostel does not provide sheets but has a pillow. This one had no sheets or pillows, which makes sense as a hiker is covered for both.
Also. The washing machine broke a while back. Guidebooks are wrong when they suggest you can get laundry done. The guy who broke it was the guy drying his gear on the dehumidifiers. He was very proud of the accomplishment. 🤷♂️
All in all well worth the cost and I’m glad we stayed. Even liked the pizza. Next time through we did not stay at the hostel.
d20 & Happy
AWOL suggests Gooch Gap and a 8.7 mile day, followed by a long day and climbing Blood Mountain.
It suggests tenting, though there is a shelter.
Happy looked at the trail and we pressed on. Water was a problem so we were going to tent where there was supposed to be water.
Did not find anything (though there was solid, cold rain) and I was greatful for waterproof rain gear that did not wet through).
The rain was really solid.
Then I went back looking for a stream while Happy kept the tent going.
Ok. First, the water source is a spring, not a stream.
Second, it is closer to the road than advertised.
Third, the water is not on the secondary trail, but next to a campsite that drops off the secondary trail.
Luckily that is all in the comments in Guthooks so by reading the comments I found out what I needed to know as I looked for water in the rain and the dark.
Unfortunately, I’m like the other guy and walked well past the water before doubling back. Then I found the water.
My mistake was good fortune for two other guys looking for water since they were passing the campground and would have made the same mistake I had.
I saved them from that. I got my water and headed back to our informal campsite.
Happy had a light on for me. That made the tent easy to find.
Got back to the tent and slept well.
d20 & Happy
Survivor Dan told us that arriving late and then hitting the terminus was unwise so we took MARTA up and spent the night in a hotel.
At 6:45 a.m. he showed up and we were off. We were dropped off at the parking lot, backtracking to the terminus and then on to Hawk Mountain like AWOL recommended for an easy start.
I forgot our butter and left it in the hotel refrigerator.
That stint got us to Mike 7.8.
We were there and settled in at the shelter early enough to nap from 4:00 to 6:00 when I realized I’d left the butter in the hotel freezer.
We met a Latvian-American SF officer named Josh who shared the shelter with us. There were about 20 people tented near the shelter.
d20 & Happy
September. Mostly talking food
Then, later in September I wrote this:
This is a plan for a section hike “jump start” that goes from the terminus at Springer to the NOC. That is a distance of 137 miles from October 4 to October 20. Roughly 10 miles a day. Some are longer, some shorter (based around some resupply points and shelters and a very short first day, given the travel to the trail).
My goal is to have some time for zeros.
October 4.
Goal: three miles
October 5
Goal, 13 miles
October 6
Goal, 15 miles — Long day
Potential location for a zero.
October 8
Goal, 12 miles
October 9
Goal, 9 miles
At this point it is probably best to flip flop and return to the trail at Mile 69 and hike south, which handles the elevations better and makes a single day slack pack possible, depending on weather and personal preference.
October 10
Goal, 6 miles
October 11
Goal, 11 miles
October 12
Goal, 12 miles
October 13
Goal, 12 miles
October 14
Goal, 9 miles
October 15
Goal, 8 miles
October 16
Goal, 10 miles
October 17
Goal, 11 miles
October 18 (goal is to arrive by October 19 with space for a second zero in there).
Goal, 6 miles
Potential stopping place and shuttle to airport
This is the place to stop, to get back for work on October 22.
My plan is to have time for two zeros — I’m just not sure where to put the second one.
——————————————————————————–
——————————————————————————–
Alternative (if we end up feeling like no zeros).
October 18
Goal, 7 miles
October 19
Goal, 9 miles
No road access.
October 20 — Saturday
Goal, 11 miles
This is also the base of the Smokey Mountains, and the start of the permit zone.
Good location for shuttle to airport. Alternative place to start up on a through hike starting in 2019 and to be finished before October (so it meets the ATC definition of a through hike as completed in 365 days).
I have to be back at work on October 22, 2018.
d20 & Happy
Looking back, I have had a lot of adjustment with my shoes
https://www.trailjournals.com/journal/entry/598621
https://www.trailjournals.com/journal/entry/599398
Well, had a good rain, so we did a four miler with packs and rain gear to see how it did.
The rain skirts worked like a charm. Ok, we are using “real” ones (not the Mark 1 in the picture), so they are incredibly light, breath well, and do well.
We have a set of very lightweight, but very waterproof, gaiters for each of us. Those did very well too. No water got into my 110 GTXs from the top, Happy’s feet stayed dry too. The skirt/gaiter combination worked much better than rain pants for us, and was much, much lighter than the Mark 1 DIY.
Now, Outdoor Research and Youngone and Moosejaw are now kind of WalMart brands, just like Patagonia. However, that has not reduced the price.
On the other hand, both the Helium II Happy had and my Helium Hybrid wetted out very quickly. Hers went back to REI.
I made the mistake of not getting mine from REI. So for mine I’m going to use Nikwax and try to renew the DWR. It appears to be a known issue that some of them need renewed before their first rainfall (e.g. mine, first serious use was when it failed me), but renewal seems to fix that. Happy got her money refunded and then bought a Goretex replacement.
We will do another stress test, or I may just do a stand in the shower test. 🙂
Heck, I’m going to do the five minutes in the shower thing.
I’ll report on that next.
But I want a jacket that will keep me dry in cold rain. For warm rain/warm weather I don’t really care, I’ve friends who hike wet.
And, I’ve friends who do the Continental Divide with afternoon sleet in just a rain jacket and shorts and let their legs get wet. A lot of people are comfortable with that.
More thoughts and reports when I know more and have better data.
References:
To quote from Sectionhiker:
“First, slightly over 50% of our survey respondents purchased one of three rain jackets: the Marmot Precip, the Frogg Toggs UL Rain Suit, or the Outdoor Research Helium II rain jacket. Knowing backpackers, it’s incredible that so many would share such a strong consensus about these three items.”
d20 & Happy
Sadly the DWR treatment didn’t work and the company basically told me I was SOL.
Happy’s Black Diamond worked like a champ in terrible weather and is still going strong now.
Funny. At this point I was playing with the idea but not planning on hiking in my heart of hearts. I still planned to work until I was 67 or 69 and then retire and maybe hike.
We have tried various types of pre-hike conditioning for our section hikes.
Weights. Walking 4-5 miles a day. Stair climbing (I even knew a guy who went downtown and climbed up the stairs in a skyscraper, then rode the elevator down, then repeated, with a full pack). Martial arts training (the hard kind, where you sweat 3-4 lbs off during a work-out).
Most recently we started carrying full packs for hiking a local 4 mile circuit every evening.
A couple-three things.
Given how the weather got insufferably warm, we are holding off more hiking with packs, just going on our normal walks. But I feel better about putting off the conditioning given just how fast we started to adjust.
We will start up again in September, a month or so before we do our two week section hike, then in January for our February 15 through hike start (remembering that the “official” through hike definition is what you can do in a 365 day window. Starting at February 15 with fifteen days already in is like getting a February 1 start without the February 1 weather).
I’m comfortable with the conditioning we will be able to do. We may push it up to eight miles a night instead of four, depending on the trails available, etc. But I’m positive about the way we started to adjust.
d20 & Happy
