Meditations on Appalachia

April 7th, 2009

I am no longer an Appalachian Trail hiker, but an Appalachian Trail Survivor. Snowed last night, about four inches in the gap where I stayed at Standing Bear Farm, but hiking back up the mountains the drifts got up to 12″ with an average of 8″. It snowed periodically throughout the day, too. Very long hike, so many uphills and even slower in the snow. My back / sholders are killing me. I can barely tilt my head down. I’m at Roaring Forks Shelter, but it was quite full by the time I rolled in so I had to pitch my tent in the snow. I built a windwall about it which is working pretty well. This will be a real test of my gear. It’s 23 degress out, and unfortunately some of my clothes are still wet. But that’s not the survival part. Our second big mountain with a bald on top was called Max Patch.
First let me define a southern bald: a natural clearing on top of a mountain, different from being above timber line like in New England. A bald often has posts every ten yards or so to mark the trail, which is comical in the daylight but life saving in the fog.
Now, I’ve done some stupid things in my life, and i’ve done some crazy things, but I have never been so scared in my life as when I was crossing max patch. The climb up to it was near vertical, the snow drifts were up to my waist, and there were no blazes in sight so I wasn’t even sure I was on the trail. And I knew I was the last person for the day going over; no one was coming up behind me to help. The wind was aweful, almost blew me over. Got to the top but couldn’t see anything but a post in the distance so I went towards it. As I did another post would appear. The wind was so bad I had to hold my hat on, so I was only using one hiking pole. I thought I was going to lose my fingers; I only had those flimsy black gloves. I was breathing so hard, like the opposite of hyperventilating. I just wanted to lie down and take a nap and wait for the storm to pass, but I took that as a sign of hypothermal deleeium and pressed on. Miraculously the sky cleared for a second and I could see the four guys ahead of me. Rolling Stone was really nice and waited at the edge of the woods for me, the patch must have been half a mile across at least. I’m crying right now thinking about it. I really thought I could die here, but kept telling myself ‘no, I will survive, I must keep walking, don’t stop. Don’t die’. I think I was in shock.

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