Week 1, Part 2
In which I made it past the first major dropout point
Welcome back to Stairsteps, a semi-regular series about my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2026! This wildly overdue newsletter tries to highlight some of the challenges and joys of discovering thru-hiking, as told by one reluctant cellphone typist. If you have questions for me, please comment or reach out - I’ll gladly respond when I can (i.e when I have cell service).
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Hey, Yall!
Well... Oops! This post is deeply overdue.
So, my first weeks out here have been a bit of an adjustment - as it turns out, going from the routine of normal, civilized life to a routine of camping, slugging a pack around, and stinking like a stray dog is a big adjustment. Who knew?
Between exhaustion, the lack of a keyboard, and inconsistent cell signal, it’s been slow going on these updates, but I hope to finally (actually) catch up on these posts soon.
What (Else) Have I Been Up To?
Last post focused a lot on day one and my first impressions of the trail. I have to say; they were pretty bang-on for the first week. The hiking was brutal, though lovely, and the approach trail was just the prelude in that.
So, I woke up on day 2 to near-freezing winds on Springer Mountain, in an ironic echo of my last Scouts trip years ago. Lucky for me, I have more determination and realistic expectations now than when I was 12, so I “cooked” a gourmand breakfast of Oatmeal and Cliff Bar, packed my bag in the cold (this was exactly as much fun as it sounds), and headed off down Springer Mountain's slopes on my first official AT miles!
Day 2 was deceptively easy. Given the agreeable weather, the easier terrain compared to the approach trail, and the shocking lack of lingering and utter leg obliteration from day 1, I cruised along feeling confident. Along the way, I met with a pal I made on Springer - Tennyson, named after ol’ Alfred Lord himself (not a trail name either - he and his parents are literature buffs). We hiked together, talking about the documentary he's hoping to make as a part of his thru-hike. After a lovely walk through coniferous forest, we met Toby and his dog, Gavin - both thru-hikers! - near the gorgeous campsite at Three Forks, and had a good time talking to them to distract from a long uphill. All in all, it was a lovely day, and I ended it camped around the Hawk Mountain shelter1 with maybe a dozen other hikers.
Days 3 and 4 were the reminder that I am, in fact, not invincible.
Part of this was a bit of overconfidence on my part; day 3 was a 12-and-a-half miler up and down numerous hills, which I would say in hindsight was a bit too ambitious for the first week on the trail. Still, I managed it and camped down in good spirits. For the first time, I was away from shelters, camping instead at Woody Gap in a neat amphitheatre-like rock area. I even enjoyed having a few familiar faces camping with me: a guy named Ben, who I met coming up Amicalola Falls, and a duo from Hawk Mountain - Robert and Ramblin' Man.2 The day was solid, but it was something of a quiet windup.
… And day 4 was the hit. It started with poor sleep; I had a fun case of night sweats due to physical stress, undereating, and sleeping shirtless on my sleeping pad.3 Plus, as I was fixing breakfast, I found I was finally properly sore, and my IT band was acting up again. Auspicious start, this was not.
Unfortunately, my streak of good luck with weather was also at an end, and the humidity and sun rose that day with a vengeance. My hike was full of day sweating too, which ultimately ushered all my electrolytes out of my pores just in time for a climb up the already comically ominous Blood Mountain.
This was by far the lowlight of the first week. I fully had a bit of a nervous breakdown, staring up at the curve of the trail as it went straight up the side of that mountain. Exhausted, sweaty, and mildly sunburnt, I sat on a log and ate a snack in tears, trying to will myself to keep going and having my first moment of thinking shit, I can't do this.
Lucky for me, I met an experienced hiker named Bolt earlier, on the day's first brutal climb at Preacher's Rock. He passed me again as I was sitting at the foot of Blood Mountain contemplating my life choices, and made a bit of conversation with me. Seeing my obvious distress, he asked me a few questions about how my hike was going4 and assured me that we all will have days we feel like dropping out. He told me to watch my electrolytes and shared that he had been through what I was going through too, on his first thru-hike.
Bolstered by this - and realizing that the first resupply and my next chance for a much-needed shower was at Neel Gap just over Blood Mountain, I pushed on through the exhaustion after my break. It sure sucked, but I summited Blood and made it to Neel Gap thanks to Bolt's encouragement, and the company of several other hikers I met throughout the day.
In a fun mood swing, Neel Gap proved to be the highlight of the week. It's an important milestone on the AT, as it sits at just over 30 miles in (or exactly 40, if you did the approach trail like I did). There's an outfitter-hostel combo right on the trail, complete with amenities and bunks for hiker use. It's many hikers' first chance to sleep off-trail and resupply, and I was absolutely stoked to be there.
Its store, Mountain Crossings, also has a tree in front of it in which (so the story goes) hang the discarded shoes of the hikers that have arrived there and realized that the AT is too much for them. I'd heard about this tree for years as I prepared for my own hike, so seeing it was a bit of an ominous and sobering moment, especially after the day I had getting out there.
But, the allure of resupply, the gorgeous view off the back patio, and the sheer ecstasy of having made it to a place with real bathrooms snapped me right out of it. I reserved a bunk and enjoyed my first, much-needed hostel stay. The shower? Supreme. The toilets? Unreasonably good looking. The bunk fee was the easiest money I had spent on trail so far.
The company was good too. It was a full house that night, and I was glad for it; Georgia (honestly, about the whole AT) was (is?) in extreme drought, so there was a burn ban in effect. In lieu of any early campfires, Neel Gap offered kind of the first decent chance for meeting other hikers outside of dinner, which is something I had really been missing on the AT until I stopped in.
So there, I got a chance to meet and remeet several other hikers while I hung out in the cozy accommodations.
In particular, I saw (and thanked) Bolt, met up with Ramblin’ Man and Robert again, and reconnected with Ben and Grayson, who I walked down from Blood Mountain with. I also met Lauren, who I had seen in camp once before, and while we were all talking, she, Ben, Grayson, and I realized we had a similar pace and destination for the next day.
To get out of order a bit, I'll tell you all that over the next few days, the four of us formed a little 'tramily,' or 'trail family' - we began to watch each others' backs, camp and cook in a group, and just kind of generally stick together by aiming for the same stopping points each night. Though we don't always hike right next to each other due to different pace, sometimes we'll meet up along the way and chat to help make the miles pass a bit faster. It's nice, and their friendship has been a huge boon on the trail since Neel Gap.
So for proper introductions, our little group - which Ben dubbed the Merry Band (a lá Robin Hood) - has:
●Ben [or Ranger, by his trail name] - a Massachusetts-born USFS/NPS worker on sabbatical who shares his prior backwoods experience with us in the form of all things bear safety and cathole-related. He's such a real one for this, and a great set of eyes to have.
●Lauren [Dash] - a Brooklyner and computer scientist whose hiking pace as fueled by her running background makes her first in camp almost every night. She's a great pace-setter and a stellar planner, too.
●Grayson [Aloe Vera] - a Minnesotan out of St. Cloud who - as you may guess from the name - is unfortunately still getting used to the southern sun and heat, but whose sense of humor and dry wit keeps things light.
●Me [Nat Geo]5 - The guy who tracks the group's pace through Excel.6 Also the one who probably shouldn't be in the lead on group hikes because I keep stopping for plants and bugs. Speaking of:
Hey! Cool Bug!
If you believed for even a second that I would miss the chance to double-dip on showing off the bugs of the hike, you have another thing coming.
And that Other Thing Coming (slowly) is the American Giant Millipede, Narceus americanus. I have seen a lot of these harmless detritivores crawling slowly7 across the trail during (and since) week 1.
The name doesn’t lie - they grow up to 4 inches long and can be about as thick as a no. 1 pencil. They don’t do much with their bulk, though; they just kind of mozy around, harmlessly hoovering up bits of decaying plants and literal crap. When feeling threatened, they curl up into a spiral and may ooze a bit of foul-smelling, skin-staining liquid. Lovely!
Plus, they make mesmerizing little waves with their legs when they walk:
Happy trails, little dude.
Bolstered by the rest, companionship, and help I found at Neel Gap, the latter half of week 1 was thankfully a huge improvement. Though the terrain was no less difficult, a bit of companionship and a lot of electrolytes helped me feel less like rending my garments.
The lightened mood was timed well, too - the first rain of the hike hit me on day 5 during my steep ascent at Tesnatee Gap. Though it didn’t last too long, it was more than enough to show me how cumbersome and stiflingly hot rain gear can be while hiking.8 After about a half hour of me foolishly stopping to pop my jacket on and off every five minutes, the rain finally abated.
As consolation, my stop for the day was Low Gap, a beautiful shelter with a lovely stream running around the perimeter. It was lively, too - there were many folks there with me, including my proto-tramily. Plus, while setting up our tents, we watched a sparrow hawk loudly take a woodpecker to the ground in the middle of camp (though the woodpecker managed to get away)! I saw my first salamander in the stream, and soaked my feet for a while (at a respectable distance from any amphibians) to celebrate being nearly a week in. Honestly, I still think about this site a lot - it was really gorgeous!9
Day 6 was a day of testing our pace as a group. Dash, Ranger, Aloe, and I had thought we would stop at Blue Mountain Shelter, but upon getting there, we wanted to push on to put a few more miles behind us before our upcoming first town day in Hiawassee. This led to us camping along a slightly sketchy gravel road away from any shelters, and led to our first successful overnight use of our bear cans.10
And finally, the week ended with a bang, from a topographical standpoint anyways. After our first night of ‘true camping,’ as Ben called it, we woke to a long climb up Tray Mountain, which we all tackled at our own pace. After (slowly) breaking camp and pushing through the 1300’ ascent, I was rewarded with... no view. A cloud had settled over the mountain that day, so I couldn’t see much.
Undaunted by the lack of a view and the humidity, I continued on and met up with the others. We again planned to keep moving, which proved to be a minor mistake; we ran up against the now-infamous-in-our-group Kelly’s Knob, whose steep 800 ft/mi slope was a rough end to the day. We turned in at Deep Gap Shelter a bit knee-battered and slightly apprehensive about possible rain, ending the week thoroughly ready for our first zero day in Hiawassee.
So, What’s Next?
At the end of week 1, we were approaching the North Carolina border - almost one state down! Stay tuned for next post, where I’ll talk about our first town day and the milestone of reaching a new state.
-Nat Geo
Which really should be Owl Mountain Shelter, because the Barred Owls were hooting and squawking all night. Between this and the distant booms and gunfire from military drills, night 2 would prove to be a rough night for sleep.
This was the latter's trail name, not the one on his birth certificate, for the record.
PSA: inflatable matresses do NOT breathe. Don't do this, no matter how hot it gets. What I should have done was sleep on top of my sleeping bag.
Technically, I didn't get this name until week two, but Ben and Lauren didn't have theirs until later either. Mine comes from my eagerness to snap photos like that picture of the luna moth I used in the first first week post! Well, that and the constant picture-taking and rattling off fun facts in general.
You can take the man out of the engineering job, but you can't take the engineering job out of the man, evidently.
Lots of legs, but narrow strides, you see.
Waterproofing works from both sides - you kind of steam in your own sweat, like the world’s nastiest Hot Pocket.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to take my word for it - all my pictures of the site don’t show it off well enough. Damn!
Many (all?) shelters in Georgia have a large metal box to put your food in, so camping away meant we had to hide our plastic food bins in the underbrush away from camp. I’m happy to report that no bears ate us and/or our food, so we did it right.
So glad you found people to hike with. And honestly living for Cool Bug Corner
The hot pocket comparison in #8 made me Lol!