Monday, April 25th

I finished typing all of the blogs and posting them on the website.

Friday, April 22nd

Today we worked on posting the blogs on the website for each day. I have found that it takes awhile to copy everything we wrote down onto the website. But, I want to make sure I leave nothing out.

Thursday, April 21st

It was our last day. We woke up around 8:30 and took our time to get ready, but we were still quick and were out hiking by 9:15. We didn't make breakfast since we ate all of our food yesterday. We had to get to Bly Gap by noon because that is when our dads will be close to picking us up. We remember asking Sir Packs A Lot if there was a service road we could get picked up at at Bly Gap. He told us you pass the gnarled tree and there is a blue blaze trail on the left which takes you about 2 miles down the mountain and puts you in a neighborhood where you can get picked up. Both of our phones were 100% dead so we had no way of communicating with our dads. Also, the last thing our dads said was that they were picking us up at Charles Creek Road around noon. Charles Creek Road is about 7 miles from Bly Gap so we knew we would have to find someone with a phone and call our dads. We saw some people close to Bly Gap and asked if they could take a picture of me and James at the state line. We then asked if we could call our dads since we wanted to get picked up at the service road. The lady, who took the picture and gave us her phone, told us that she was 90% sure that we got bad information and that there is no trail that leads to a service road where we would get picked up. We decided we were going to trust Sir Packs A Lot and take the trail so we told our dads to call Top of Georgia for directions. Me and James took the trail and after what seems like forever we connected into a neighborhood. Sir Packs A Lot said 2 miles but it seemed more like 3 or 4 miles. Once we got to the neighborhood we were going to knock on someone's house and ask to use their phone to call our dads. Fortunately, right when we got to a house we saw my dad's car coming in our direction. We caught some good luck right there. Were now riding in the car with our dads, telling them all about our trip and talking about how great the Bobby's meal were about to get is going to be.

Wednesday, April 20th

Today we knew we had another easy hike since we were so far ahead of schedule. We slept in a little and made ourselves coffee, oatmeal, and pop-tarts. We were only about 6.5 miles from Bly Gap so we decided we could camp at Plum Orchard Shelter (an easy 2 mile hike). We took our time packing and got out of Bull Gap by noon. We took our time walking, then took a break for some lunch. We were eating, then two older men came to eat lunch with us. They said they were doing a 3 day backpacking trip. We had enough interviews and footage at the time so we stopped asking people to be interviewed. After the old men left a kind of strange bearded guy came and introduced himself as Square Peg. He thru hiked the AT last year and is doing it again this year. He told me I looked like a young Indiana Jones and told James he was looking a little bit like Rambo. We decided those would be our trail names: Dr. Jones and Rambo. We left and got to Plum Orchard. We set up our enos and were planning on taking a nap; however, James' eno ripped in half so he couldn't use his. We woke up and tried to use the propane for the burner but it was out. So, we built a fire and started making dinner. We ate our dinner and I'm in my eno getting ready to sleep.

Tuesday, April 19th

We woke up around 8 at our campsite, which was about 50 yards away from where the shuttle come to pick hikers up. Our goal was to catch an early shuttle to the lodge, buy some food there and then get on with our hike. We saw a shuttle across the street but we didn't get there in time so we had to wait for the next one. Before we left the camping spot we saw a rack that we could possibly grill something on over the fire. So we joked about grilling out some burgers. The next one came and we tried to get in but they said if you weren't planning on staying at the lodge then you have to pay $10 to get a ride. We didn't have cash on us so we decided we would try and hitch hike. But first, after the shuttle left, there were people with a lot of food at Dick's Creek. They are offering all the hikers free food in memory of their father who hiked the trail and then would always come out to Dicks Creek and give food to the hikers. We talked to them, got some food, then started hitch hiking at about 11ish. We failed and about 20 cars passed us until a construction truck picked us up and took us to the lodge. Conveniently, the construction truck was going to the lodge also. We went into the main den and talked to the ladies there. We bought about 3 sodas each and a huge pizza. At the lodge we told the ladies we are on a school project and we are interviewing hikers about their experience and what they love about the hiking community. They told us we should interview Bob, who is a triple crowner and owns the lodge. A triple crowner is someone who has thru hiked the AT, the PCT, and the Continental Divide. We interviewed him and he had some great things to say. We then asked if we could buy food here and resupply. They had a really small room with supplies in it. They didn't have much good food except some Spaghetti with meatballs Mountain House meals. We decided we could go into town today and go to Ingles and buy better food. So, we bought some Mountain House meals and left to hitch a ride in Hiawassee. We hitched a ride on our first try on this go around. A man named Jose, who was headed to Hiawassee because he owns a restaurant there, picked us up. Jose dropped us off at Ingles where we resupplied enough food for the last 2 days of our trip. We bought some burger meat too since we saw that rack earlier this morning. As we were about to leave Ingles with all of our food, James decided to charge his phone (mine was already pretty charged so I didn't need to). He charged his phone at the eating area and a kind old lay saw our packs and offered to give us a ride back to the trail. We gladly accepted since we thought we would have to hitch hike for awhile until getting a ride. Her and her husband took us back to Dick's Creek and she said she loves to give rides to hikers. We then ate lunch at the picnic area at Dick's Creek and we interviewed a guy named Corky, who we have leapfrogged* with over the past couple of days. We quickly went back across the street to get the rack and then we proceeded to Bull Gap which was about 2.5 miles from Dick's Creek. We purposely gave us an easy day today since we are way ahead of schedule. We also just resupplied so our packs were really heavy. We camped at Bull Gap where we set up the tent and grilled out burgers. A young guy named Alex came by and told us he might camp with us if the shelter isn't any good. He came back about an hour later and set up his tent near ours. We offered him a burger and we found out he just graduated from UGA and is attempting to thru hike. He seemed like a cool guy so we asked him stuff about college and what to expect. We didn't interview him because we felt like we have enough footage. After awhile we went back to our tent, put out the fire, then went to bed.

*Leapfrogging is when people pass each other over and over again on the trail.

Monday, April 18th

We woke up early, like around 7, and we started getting packed. We made the last bit of coffee and also made some oatmeal. We have some oatmeal, Ramen, a couple granola bars, honey, mac & cheese, and a tiny bit of sausage. We figured we would be fine for dinner tonight if for some reason we can't resupply. We finished breakfast and we were all packed up until a sort of young man came down to get water. We started talking and we found out he was an ex-soldier who completed 5 tours in Iraq. He was 37 and he was almost retired but still did a little work on the side. We decided he would be a great guy to interview so we did. He was planning on hiking 20 miles per day for 40 days and make it all the way to James River in Virginia. He then left, we filled up our water and went on our way. We hiked for 30 minutes straight then rested for 5 minutes. We did this a couple times and made a real dent on the mileage for the day. Our plan was to get to Deep Gap Shelter by noon and make mac and cheese. We executed this plan to perfection. Unfortunately the water at Deep Gap was far away (about 0.7 miles) so we dropped our packs, grabbed the water pump, and pumped water. We then decided to eat lunch and make our way to Dick's Creek. We got there at about 3:30 but our other hiker friends were there and told us that there weren't any shuttles coming to pick hikers up today. Usually, shuttles from the Top of Georgia lodge come up to Dick's Creek every couple of hours to pick up hikers and take them to their lodge for food, showers, and somewhere to stay for the night. Our hiker friends said they were just going to walk to the lodge, which was close to a mile away. So, we decided that since we have enough food for the night we will stay and camp at Dick's Creek then try and catch a shuttle tomorrow morning. We found a good spot with water and we camped there. We made the last of our food, set up our enos, and hung up the food. We are now in our enos and planning out what food we should get when we resupply tomorrow.

Sunday, April 17th

We woke up at our camping spot around 7:30 this morning. I made a fire and proceeded to cook oatmeal. I used the fire instead of the burner this time just to try it out and save our propane. After oatmeal we packed up and walked until we got to Unicoi Gap which was about 2 miles. We did not rest until we got to Unicoi which was an impressive feat. We rested at Unicoi and got some granola bars then went up Rocky Mountain. We had lunch at the top of Rocky. The night before we planned to have 2 half lunches. Meaning, we would eat half of our lunch on top of Rocky Mountain, and the other half on top of Tray Mountain. We proceeded to eat our first half lunch on top of Rocky and we met two hikers with trail names of Dirty Bowl and Salami. We interviewed both of them at the top and then they went on their way. We then left and made the trek to Tray Mountain. Rocky and Tray were two really tough mountains as we literally ascended 1000ft in elevation, then descended 1000ft, and then ascended another 1500ft until finally going back down another 1000ft in elevation. Georgia was said to be the toughest parts of the trail due to the rigid, up and down terrain. After Tray we hiked down and we planned on caping at Steeltrap Gap. We finally got to Steeltrap and we saw two dudes who took the camping spot there. I was kind of dehydrated and I was all out of water so we had to hike half a mile down the mountain to re-fill our water. After hiking down, we figured we could just set up our enos down here and sleep at this spot. There were no camping spots down there but we made it work. We scavenged for flat ground since we needed to make dinner so we sort of made our own flat ground. We made dinner and the two dudes came down to get water. We were talking and then they asked us if we were doing a school project out here. Apparently, word got around that we were on the trail doing a project. So, we told them about our project and then we interviewed them. We are now finishing dinner and planning our day tomorrow. We have to get to Dick's Creek, which is 9 miles away, so we need our rest. We have been eating a lot of the food and we think we didn't get enough at Neels so we're going to try and get to Dick's Creek a day early to resupply. We don't really know what to expect out of Dick's Creek and I think it's going to be a lot different than the store at Neels.

Saturday, April 16th

Today we woke up a little later around 9 to a chilly mountain breeze. Because we hiked an extra 3.5 miles yesterday we only had a 9 mile hike today. It was originally planned to where today would have been 12.5 miles. We set out late after not having coffee and started our ascent to a long plateau. Starting at Horsetrough Mountain we hiked about 5 miles o  flat terrain. We decided to finish our somewhat easy day by scaling Blue Mountain and staying a little past Blue Mountain shelter. After a brutal 800 foot ascent we came to find the shelter and surrounding campgrounds were all full, so we ended up setting up camp about a half mile past the shelter around 6:30. By now, we have accepted our roles for the construction of our night shelter. Every evening upon reaching camp we both quickly gather firewood, make our sleeping arrangements (tent or enos), and set up the food. I build a fire and make any necessary changes to near by logs or rocks while James cooks up some food. We noticed that this was becoming a trend as this has happened for about the third night in a row. We went to bed around 8 after some delicious Mountain House chicken & rice.

Friday, April 15th

Today we woke up at our camping spot which was about 100 yards away from the store at Neels Gap. We quickly got ready and drank coffee before heading into the store at Neels Gap. We asked if we could take a shower and it costed us $5 each. We took showers, changed, then went to the store to buy food. We bought about $100 worth of food and then bought a couple of t-shirts. For the first 4 days we had plenty of extra food and so to cut down on weight for the next 6 days we decided to go lighter on the food when we resupplied. We finally set out to finish the day with a simple 5 mile hike to Testnatee Gap since we just resupplied. After reaching our destination around 2:30 we felt like we had more in us, so we cut down on tomorrows 12 mile hike by hiking more. We ended up hiking an extra 3.5 miles to Steep Rock Top. We finally set up camp around 6:30. We set up the tent, made dinner, watched a ridiculous multi-colored sunset over the mountains, then went to bed.

Thursday, April 14th

We woke up around 8, made ourselves coffee, and were out hiking by 9. It was really cloudy when we woke up and when we started hiking. We looked at the forecast and it said it would be cloudy all day. We hiked past Woods Hole (which was where we wanted to camp last night) and got to Blood Mountain by noon. Blood Mountain was quite the hike but the weather kept clearing up for us. We stayed at Blood Mountain for lunch and stayed at an outlet spot with a cool view. After lunch, we went to the top of Blood and saw an amazing view. It was the best view we have seen so far. We met and talked to an older man named Tim at the top of Blood. We asked him if we could interview him and he said that was fine. Unfortunately, the Go-pro was full of memory so we lost the interview. We figured we might see Tim again and then we'll hopefully get the interview then. We left Blood Mountain and got to Neel's Gap around 6, which was unfortunate since the store closes at 6. We couldn't resupply there and we'll have to wait for tomorrow morning. Although we did catch some "trail magic"when we got to Neel's. A couple of men from the Cleveland Baptist Church came to Neel's Gap and got all the hikers spaghetti, salad, iced tea, and oatmeal cream pies. This was delicious and we were very thankful for the Cleveland Baptist Church. We then left Neel's and camped right by the store so that we could wake up, shower, and then resupply. We set up the tent on the ground but just the tarp. We just tried this out since we were tired and didn't really want to set up the tent and the enos would have been very cold. So we just set up our pads on the tarp with our sleeping bags and fell asleep.

Wednesday, April 13th

Today we woke up earlier around 7:30 and we managed to pack and eat breakfast quicker without having to pack up the tent. We set out to start our longest planned hike at 12.3 miles from Blackwell Creek to Woods Hole at 9. As we hiked for about a half mile, we ran across a wide creek. By using the map we determined that this was in fact Blackwell Creek and we just so happened to camp at a creek that wasn't recorded on the map. This of course added another half mile to our already long day. After hiking up and down Gooch Mountain (on top of Gooch we interviewed a thru-hiker named Gregg) into Gooch Gap and hiking up Justus mountain and down into Justus Creek we noticed a trend in our hiking. We would hike up in elevation, like up a mountain, and then straight down the mountain into their valleys or "gaps". We would do this over and over again which seemed like a never ending process. We did that for 4 hours stopping to eat lunch on top of Big Cedar Mountain, one of the biggest mountains on our trip. We then continued the previous trend for 5 more miles and 4 more hours to Jarrard Gap. We chose to camp here tonight, 2 miles short of our goal because other hikers told us to camp between Blood Mountain and Neels Gap we would need bear-resistant canisters. We did not have these. Thus, we decided to camp at Jarrard Gap and add the extra 2 miles to tomorrow. We set up the tent as it was very windy. We then made a fire and cooked and ate our dinner. We are now going to bed and getting ready for a tough hike tomorrow since we have to hike up and down Blood Mountain, the tallest mountain on the trail in Georgia.

Tuesday, April 12th

We woke up a little late, like around 10, and it took us awhile to get everything packed up as we were very slow. A little rain got through the tent and the inside was a little wet. We ended up leaving at about 11:45 after we had a little breakfast. We realized that our decision the night before to hike downhill 0.5 miles to camp right next to the water wasn't the best decision. We had to hike back up the hill this morning and the steep slopes at Hawk Mountain wore us out. We snacked at the top of Hawk Mountain and continued past Horse Gap and up to Sassafras Mountain where we ate lunch. After a nice break we went down, through Cooper Gap and then started up Justice Mountain. The plan for today was to camp at Blackwell Creek which is right before Gooch Mountain. After passing Justice Creek, where we refilled our water bottles due to other campers claiming it was the last clean water until Gooch, we ended up at Blackwell Creek to end about a 7.5 mile hike today. We decided to not set up the tent since it took so long this morning packing it. So, we set up our enos, we made dinner, and then went to bed while looking at the stars in the sky.

Monday, April 11th

Today was the first day of our hike. This morning we drove down to the lodge to get a quick breakfast with our dads at the buffet. During breakfast, a young man breakfast we were getting ready to leave until a young man asked us if we could take him to the park where we were meeting Kathy to go up to Springer. We gladly gave him a ride and he introduced himself as "Muir", his trail name. It was about a one hour drive up to Springer Mountain. The trail actually starts at Springer Mountain but since the road meets the trail 0.9 miles from the beginning, we had to hike backwards on the trail to the top of Springer. Once we were at the top of Springer, our journey began. We hiked with Muir for a good amount of time and we would periodically take breaks as we got hot or a little tired from carrying our packs. After getting to know Muir more, we found out that he is a law enforcement officer in North Carolina, he is an ex-marine, he went to Appalachian State, and he plans on doing a 7 day trip and make it to Bly Gap. After a few miles we heard Muir screech. We turned around, and he was grabbing his knee in pain. He told us he has low cartilage in his knees and since he stepped on a root wrong it buckled. He threw on a brace and began to sort of limp behind us. After about 5 more miles we stopped for lunch. We stopped at Stover Creek and we checked out the shelter just to see what they look like. We continued after lunch for 3 more miles to the cemetery where there was a service road. Here, Muir said that the pain is too much that he can handle so he called the National Park Service for a taxi to come pick him up. Muir left and we went on to get to Hawk Mountain shelter which is our goal for the day. We decided that we always wanted to either camp right before the shelter or right after the shelter. When we were about 0.7 miles from the shelter we saw camping sites with water so we decided to hike down and camp right before the shelter. It started drizzling a tiny bit so we decided to set up the tent, make a fire, and make dinner. After dinner it was close to getting dark so we put up all the food, hung it in a tree, and then got ready for bed. We are now going to get our rest for tomorrow. The first day was a success: we head really good execution on our planning and nothing really went wrong besides Muir's collapse.

Sunday, April 10th

Today, James and his dad came over to my house to organize all of our stuff in our backpacks so that we had everything except for the food that we were going to buy on our way to Amicalola State Falls. We went to Ingles to buy food for our first 4 days up until Neels Gap. We bought: 2 packs of bagels, a box of 18 chewy granola bars, a box of 8 nature valley granola bars, a bag of trail mix, a jar of pb&j, a jar of honey, ham deli meat, cheese, crackers, 4 packets of Ramen (chicken), summer sausage, 8 packets of Quakers oatmeal, 10 Starbucks instant coffee, mac & cheese, 3 packets of Beef Jerky, 10 tortillas, and snickers. After buying all of the food, we went to the lodge at Amicalola State Falls Park because we rented a cabin out for the night with our dads. At the lodge that night we had dinner with our dads and talked with the people at the lodge about how to get to Springer. We had 2 options:
1. We could hike the 8 mile approach trail from Amicalola State Falls to Springer, or
2. We could pay one of the ladies at the lodge to drive us to the parking lot at Springer.

We chose to do option 2 and pay Kathy, a nice older lady who worked at the lodge, to take us the following morning at 8. We planned to get up early, eat breakfast, then head to Springer with Kathy. When we got to our cabin we packed everything up and were ready to go in the morning. We showed our dads our plan and mapped out everything in the guide map they bought for us. Were both ready, excited, and anxious to finally start on the trail tomorrow morning.

Friday, April 8th

We left school after lunch today to get a head start on a long day of preparation for our project. We started off by taking advantage of the beautiful weather and hiked the Indian Trail on the Chattahoochee River. It was a 4 mile hike, but once we got to the end we set up our eon’s and relaxed until heading back. After we hiked, we started working on our list of questions for the fellow hikers we will meet and interview on the trail. We made a list of general questions for all hikers like “How far are you planning on going?”, “Why did you decide to hike the AT?”, and “What is it bout hiking and the outdoors that you love most?”. We also came up with some questions for trail rangers or shelter workers in case we happen to run into any of them. To end the day, we went to High Country to go over our gear and equipment and seeing if we need to buy any last minute necessary items. 

Thursday, April 7th

We worked and messed around with the GoPro, just to get more accustomed to it. We planned what we will eat everyday for breakfast, snack, lunch, and dinner. We will try to follow what we have planned to eat everyday but we believe we may eat more or less on some days. We merely just made an outline for our daily meals. Also, we resupply at Day 5, so after Day 5 we will eat whatever we buy at the food store at Neil's Gap. The store may not carry some things we have put on our list so we are going to have to make some adjustments mid trip. We sense that we may have to go into town around Day 9 to possibly resupply again if we run out. However, the plan is to not have to go into town, unless we don't have a lot of interviews and need to interview people in the town. We also hiked the trails at Whitewater Creek which was a 2 hour hike.

A typical day consists of this:

Breakfast - Oatmeal/Bagels & Coffee
Snacks - Trail mix, Granola bars, & candy (snickers/peanut m&ms)
Lunch - Sandwich (either pb&j or meat sandwich)
Dinner - Mac n Cheese
* Dinner will always be a different meal; however, breakfast, snacks, and lunch will typically be the same *

Wednesday, April 6th

We mapped out every spot where we will try and set up our campsites on the trail and we also mapped out how far we are going everyday. Our plan as of now is to follow this plan:

Day 1- Hawk Mountain (8 miles)
Day 2 - Guch Mountain (7.5 miles)
Day 3 - Woods Hole (12 miles)
Day 4 - Blood Mountain [morning hike] (1 mile), Neils Gap (2.4 miles)
Day 5 - Tesnatee (6 miles)
Day 6 - Blue Mountain (12 miles)
Day 7 - Tray Mountain (8 miles)
Day 8 - Deep Gap (7 miles)
Day 9 - Dicks Creek (3 miles)
Day 10 - Plum Orchard (4.5 miles)
Day 11 - Bly Gap (4.5 miles)

Tuesday, April 5th

We went to High Country to schedule a "shake down" meeting, which is where a professional hiker will help us pack all our materials and inform us on any essentials we need or may need to get. We got a guy's email address and have reached out to him as well. We also talked about what we will need and took notes on what packing materials (clothing, food, and important materials) we will need to bring with us.

Monday, April 4th

We did not do any work regarding the project.