Chapter 2

2. 2006 (47 Miles)

Unicoi Gap, Georgia, to Dicks Creek Gap, Georgia

Dicks Creek Gap, Georgia, to Timber Ridge Trail, North Carolina

Timber Ridge Trail, North Carolina, to Albert Mountain, North Carolina

Who can leave jobs, spouses, kids, aging parents, house, yard, and pets for five or six months at a stretch to go on a ramble? Although—and let’s be honest here—many of us probably dream of it from time to time. This is why you rarely see forty-year-old thru-hikers. Even to leave for a week or two requires negotiation and compromise, as well as determination and persistence. As the spring approached and I studied the upcoming North Carolina section of the Appalachian Trail, I recognized that the logistics of this adventure were going to need a serious review.

***

After four months in the beige apartment and just in time to greet the New Year, we finally moved our belongings, the dog, and our daughter (Dear god, would she be fourteen forever?) back into our house in downtown Franklin. Busy with our jobs and school, with friendships and extended families, with obligations to home and community, it was June before I could take the time to visit the AT.

I planned what I thought would be a quite manageable weekend hike for me and Tim from Unicoi Gap (where Teresa and I had finished in 2005) to Dicks Creek Gap, still within the state of Georgia. We drove over on a Friday evening with a hot and sunny weather forecast. Tim would take me on Saturday morning to Unicoi Gap, and then he would play golf while I hiked four-and-a-half miles to Tray Gap. He would pick me up there after his game, and we’d return to the town of Helen for postexercise rest and relaxation. On Sunday, we would hike the twelve miles from Tray Gap to Dicks Creek Gap together.

Part A of the plan went swimmingly. Tim dropped me off for my first solo AT hike, and I couldn’t have been happier. I scuffled along in no particular hurry, enjoying the strenuous ascent to Rocky Mountain summit and then the lovely sloping descent. Tall summer flowers—blue, red, yellow, orange—carpeted the old abandoned farm clearings skirting the Trail. I scampered across rock scrambles and skimmed babbling brooks, besotted by the beauty of this place and smug in my decision to hike it. I approached the end of this glorious jaunt, serene in the knowledge that my wonderful, sweet husband would be patiently waiting for me with a smile and a cold beverage.

Except there was no wonderful, sweet husband waiting when I got to Tray Gap. But I was earlier than anticipated, so I stretched out on a patch of grass close to where the Trail crosses the road and basked in the late afternoon sun. My careful instructions to Tim had been for him to take USFS 698 from GA 349 for ten miles to junction with USFS 79.

When Tim did eventually arrive, he was slightly irritated.

“What the hell was that all about?” he said. “You didn’t tell me this would require an ATV. I’ve been on that road for an hour, almost lost the muffler a couple of times.”

Perhaps I had not been entirely forthcoming about the possible state of USFS roads. I always tried to downplay any potential difficulties of hiking the AT so as not to discourage my companions. While a good intention, it sometimes backfired.

***

Next morning the manager of the little family hotel where we were staying agreed to shuttle us from Dicks Creek Gap, an easily accessible Trail crossing at US 76, to the forbidding trailhead at Tray Gap. Tim thought his fee was pretty high, but we really had no choice. The area was so isolated we would have had little chance of hitching a ride.

The road seemed even drier and dustier (and longer) than on Saturday. We bumped along in our chauffeur’s old Cadillac, startling flocks of wild turkey and, once or twice, a white-tailed deer. The sun had burned off what little coolness the day may have started with and now hung hot and yellow in the white sky. Our arrival at the trailhead was marked by silence all around.

Most guidebooks describe the twelve-mile hike from Tray Gap to Dicks Creek Gap as “strenuous.” I think Tim would tell you this is an understatement. Passing through the Tray Mountain Wilderness (capitalized because it has been officially designated as such by the US Forest Service), the trail is isolated and forlorn. Now, in June, masses of rhododendron and mountain laurel in full bloom crowd the trail and camouflage the danger of the rocky slabs and cliffs.

Two ascents that rise more than four thousand feet each, Tray Mountain and Kelly Knob, are separated by a five-mile ridgeline walk at three thousand feet. Two shelters, occasional campsites, and long-abandoned roads are the only signs of a human presence. The air was thick in the dense woods, and cloying spiderwebs strung across the path reminded us that no one had preceded us this day. The sweat dripped from our foreheads to entice tiny gnats and sting our eyeballs. I tried to sound cheerful and encouraging by pointing out a small animal or interesting flower.

“Oh look, honey, it’s a chipmunk!” Or mushroom. Or caterpillar.

Tim’s usual response was, “How much longer?”

I was dreading the Kelly Knob climb because my husband was becoming, as they say, not a happy camper. He wore heavy, outdated boots, and we stopped twice to doctor the rising red blisters on his feet.

The view from the Kelly Knob summit was indeed stunning, but for Tim, this was no compensation for the challenge of the ascent, the dense heat of the day, and the swarms of mosquitoes in our faces. He slung off his fanny pack (I was carrying most of our supplies), sat down on a log, and declared, “I’m through with this fucking trail.”

Not for everybody, I thought to myself. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I really didn’t know it would be this tough.”

“Humph,” he muttered with a glare.

“Only four more miles to the car and the cooler.”

With an exaggerated groan, Tim refastened his pack and trudged north through the woods to finish what he thought was to be his last AT hike.

***

The rest of the summer—prime hiking season—washed over me with no chance to travel east to the Trail. My obligations at work did not allow for much vacation time this year, and what I did have was gladly spent with family. Also, this summer we were hosts to a Parisian exchange student who spoke very little English, and Tim speaks very little French. Melanie had turned fifteen (finally) earlier in the year and now had her learner’s permit to drive. To leave Tim alone with this set of circumstances so I could go off, even for a few days, to commune with nature seemed more than a little selfish.

Labor Day weekend finally brought the chance to hike again. Two days hiking fifteen and a half miles from Dicks Creek Gap to Deep Gap and then about ten miles from Deep Gap to Timber Ridge Trail interspersed with a hotel stay near Hiawassee, North Carolina, was the game plan. And I had a new partner.

My friend Kelley looks like someone you would want on your Roller Derby team or on your side in a bar fight. Tall and rangy, with a headful of prematurely iron-gray hair although she is several years younger than me, she is actually a big old softie on the inside, kindhearted and compassionate with an endearing little whine in her voice. She is also scared of snakes and spiders and things that go bump in the night, so she was apprehensive about accompanying me on this trip but agreed after quite a bit of persuasion.

Me: Oh, Kelley, you’ll love it! It will be so much fun and so beautiful!

Kelley: But what if I can’t do fifteen miles in one day? I have bad knees. What about bears?

Me: You can do it! Teresa did it.

Kelley: But I will slow you down. What about bears?

Me: I won’t be in any hurry. You won’t slow me down.

Kelley: What about bears?

Me: Hmm?

Kelley still had doubts about the entire undertaking as we headed east on Friday afternoon, but I tried to reassure her and keep things simple. Our end point on Saturday (and thus our starting point on Sunday) involved a dreaded USFS road, and I wanted to...