Life in the Highlands

When chatting with other thru hikers the conversation will almost definitely come down to two topics; Everything to do with food and the thing you miss most about life off trail. When asked the latter question in Damascus VA my answer was easy. The thing I miss the most is instant access to potable water. Processing water for our daily consumption out here is a serious chore that takes up a lot of time and energy. Our relationship to water is ever changing as we move through different regions, into the next season, and are around more people. Here are some tricks we have learned through 800 miles on trail that help to make our relationship with water a little bit more manageable.

Don’t hike with more than a liter of water at a time, especially when traveling up hill.  It took a few weeks on trail for us to get comfortable carrying small amounts of water at a time. The fact of the matter is that it is rare to go more than 6 miles without hitting a water source on the AT. When we do hit a stream we use it as an excuse to rest our legs. We guzzle as much as we need and filter a liter to carry with us. Everything we drink is squeezed through our Sawyer Mini filter.

The only time we carry more than a liter is if we are ending our day at a spot with no water source. In this situation we need about 4.5 liters to cook dinner/breakfast and to drink. That 4.5 liters feels like an extra ton in your pack, usually right at the end of our day. We try to fill no more than 2 miles from our end point. Temperature effects our water consumption on either end of the spectrum. We spent the winter sleeping with our filter to prevent it from freezing over. As it gets warmer, streams will dry up and we will have to adapt to a water scarcity on the trail. Finally, as we are around more dirty hikers, in a state that has deemed privies unnecessary there is generally a bigger risk for viral infection in the water. To adjust for this we have begun to chemically treat our water as well as filtering, specifically around shelters. Im sure you all are just exhausted  even reading about how we deal with water on the trail! The point being, I will never take a big glass of water, poured from a faucet for granted ever again.

The grass is greener across the Tennessee/Virginia state line. In my last post I mentioned that we had seen winter's dying breath. I was wrong. To finally see the trail coming to life around us is a huge morale boost. It almost feels like a special in-between time where the ground cover plants are all over, but the canopy is yet to fill in. This gives us the best of both worlds where everything is green but we can still catch amazing views through the trees. This will not be the case in a few weeks as the “green tunnel” closes in on us.

The biodiversity of Tennessee is immense. It has been completely refreshing/hard to hike quickly without stopping to take photos constantly. Within 2 days of being in this state we have come across 2 waterfalls, walked alongside rivers, scrambled straight through rock outcroppings, picnicked on top of balds, and gone from below 1000ft to 5000ft in a two mile stretch. 

It seems that once we got above 5000ft we tended to stay there for days on end, only to descend for a quick restock in town. Something that constantly blows our minds about being this high in the mountains is the sudden change in surroundings as you hit 5500ft. It is here that we have grown used to one minute hiking through a tunnel of rhododendrons, to a dark forest thick with spruce at the drop of a hat.

These spruce/fir forests only exist above this elevation in the Southern Appalachians as the only remnants of glacial ecosystems that have mostly vanished in the region as the climate has warmed over thousands of years. It is also only above 5500ft elevation that you will hear “Lord of the Rings” references every 10 minutes.

Aside from providing a breathtaking change in scenery, the first two days in Tennessee have given me one of the most interesting hostel experiences of my life. (Interesting is the word Americans use to say painfully awkward right?) Lets keep in mind for me, the experience of friends getting robbed and witnessing French people get beat up have exclusively been “brought to you by...” HOSTELS! I am not writing this to slander this hostel since it is genuinely a very special place, for the point of this story it shall remain nameless. We slept in late after a 22 miler, knowing that our 10 dollar tent spot came with a complimentary breakfast. After lumbering up the hill to the kitchen we sat down to a crowded table. The room was full with hikers of all ages and a dread-headed traveler couple who I believe were doing work for stay. As we dug into our breakfast the atmosphere was friendly and casual. People were mainly discussing the usual topics; gear and mileage, except for whenever the talk bounced around to the couple. They tended to chime in by bringing up the typical breakfast talk of beastiality law in Mississippi and the fact that Florida happened to be the only state where it was legal to kill and eat pigeons. The conversation was riveting, but not enough to distract me from scarfing down as many donuts as possible before 9:30am. It was around this time the breakfast came to an abrupt stop when the male half of the dread-headed duo returned to the kitchen with a freshly skinned mouse. His cat had dragged the carcass in earlier... He proudly announced “Oh did I mention? We tan and collect roadkill pelts!” as he proceeded to clean the hide in the communal sink. The room evacuated quickly. As a rule, we don’t judge anyone out here... but I washed my cook pot in that sink! This was just too much. To think we were worried about getting sick from dirty water on trail. Definitely an “interesting” experience.

The trail provides. Our first two months on trail have been filled with moments of shedding item by item from our packs. Evidence of this is sitting in two large boxes in Roanoke VA. After 800 miles we are finally feeling lean enough to hike efficiently. For me this means there is room to add a few luxury items, and the trail seems to have a way popping up with things here and there about every 30 miles or so. The Damascus library has a “free for hikers” section where I picked up a raggedy copy of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika”. Turns out Kafka is a tough read at the end of a 20 mile day. My plan is to leave each chapter in serial installments all along the trail for my SOBO companions. I would never buy this item in the store, but at a shelter in Tennessee someone left a half burned Thermarest butt pad. After a lot of deliberation I decided to cut the non burned half of this pad off and take it with me. I now refuse to sit anywhere without it. At the aforementioned hostel, we ran into a couple that were finishing up at long section hike who were unloading some things before their flight home. From them we scored a full fuel canister and a bag of powdered milk. I would never have thought it, but the addition of powdered whole milk to our meals has been a game changer. Our mac and cheese has become so much creamier, and my morning cup of black tea has become so much more British. I could go on and on. Ultimately these things add up to make life just a little more enjoyable, and the trail feel a little more like home, especially enjoyed with my partner in crime Emma “Peak-a-Boo” G. And here she is boogying on down in the Roan Highlands...