The Georgia Loop
I had an alarm set for 6:30, but was awakened long before that by the rain. It battered the van with an unbelievable intensity. I lay in the covers, trying to go back to sleep, I knew that I’d need all the rest I could get before starting out. But I couldn’t stop listening to the thunderous cascade of water being halted mere feet above me by the sheet metal of the roof.
Soon, that thin plate of steel would be gone too. I’d be heading out after breakfast to hike the Georgia Loop, a sixty mile loop in northern Georgia near the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. I had known the weather I’d be getting heading into this. Two days of rain. One day sunny with light snow showers. Another day of rain. And finally a day of unmitigated sunshine. I had brought supplies to be on trail for five days, but was hoping to be done in four, and hadn’t entirely ruled out three if I could do the miles.
But now, faced with the reality of the rain thundering over my head, I considered just giving up then. Driving back down the mountain from the Woody Gap parking lot and spending the day in a cafe or library waiting for better conditions. But as bad as the weather was coming up, it was the best window I was likely to get. After that sunny day it was right back to rain, and colder. If I was going to do the Georgia Loop anytime soon, these were the conditions, take it or leave it.
I took it.
I had found the Georgia Loop Trail a few days before while trying to decide what I’d do once Julia left. After four and half months traveling together, she was returning to Vancouver to get back to real life. I, meanwhile, was continuing van life solo, and felt that I needed to kick it off by doing something big. Find some way of coming to terms with my newfound solitude, and have some space to think about what I wanted to do next. I’d always gone to the wilderness to recharge and find some peace, so this felt appropriate. Just me out there in the woods alone.
The rain had abated somewhat by the time I was finished with breakfast, from a torrential downpour to a steady drizzle. I shouldered my pack. It was heavy. Not just the five days of food but also the three person tent that I had stuffed in the bottom. It was a great size when I’d been camping with Julia and we could split up the weight, but now that I was alone, I really wished I hadn’t left my 1½ person back in Seattle.
I moved quickly out of Woody Gap south on the Appalachian Trail, which I’d be on for the first day of the loop. Despite the pack weight and the rain, the going was easy. The trail here wound around the peaks of the weathered mountains, sticking to the gaps where it could. I made it to Gooch Gap, a distance of close to 4 miles in just over an hour. I got slightly lost then, following an old route of the AT instead of the current one, but they met back up before too long and I was on my way again.
I saw a few other hikers that morning. All with heavy packs on their shoulders marching northbound along the Appalacian Trail. Most just said a quick “Good morning,” and continued on their long walk to Maine, but one man looked eager to talk, so I asked him where he’d come from. He said he’d been with a group the night before at Hawk Mountain Shelter. They’d all gone into town to wait out the weather, but he was continuing on to another shelter near Cooper Gap to get out of the rain. The rain was still coming down and had already leached through my raincoat, so I was enthusiastic about the idea of a roof over my head. I thanked the man for the information and continued on the Hawk Mountain Shelter.
The shelter itself was very nice, three walls and two stories of raised platforms to sleep on. I arrived just after one PM. While I made myself a sandwich for lunch, I weighed my options. On the one hand, I’d made only twelve miles so far, and to do the loop in my hoped- for four days, I had to be averaging fifteen. That argued for continuing on to a campground further along. On the other hand, the forecast was for thunderstorms that night, accompanied by severe rain. If I could avoid hauling the weight of a sodden tent for a day longer than otherwise, that seemed worth missing my target by a few miles. So, sitting listening to the rain clatter on the roof above me, I decided to stay put.
But that raised the question of what to do in the meantime. I hadn’t thought to bring a book. My phone was out of service, and I wouldn’t want to drain its battery anyway if I could help it. There was the check-in book, which I read, but it was mostly people announcing their arrival and their new trail names, this being a mere eight miles from Springer Mountain, and little else. There was one man who had written, “I’m so hungry I could ride a horse,” and then drawn a picture of a cow, which was the highlight in my opinion.
The logbook finished, I walked back down the trail and loaded up on water. I watched a millipede crawl across the trail, then checked out a giant army truck that had been parked by the side of a forest road. It had stopped raining by now, but the rain had been replaced with a thick mist, visibility dropping to thirty feet, then twenty. The trees backlit by the directionless light that filtered down became stark black lines against the haze, twisting strangely upward. I took the trail back through this haunted forest to the shelter.
My dinner that night was mushroom flavored Knorr’s rice. I was halfway through simmering it when my company for the night showed up: three local men, two heavily bearded, walked into the camp. Two of them were fairly quiet, but the third, a large man named Bud with a chest length dark-gray beard, was talkative. I learned that they were section hiking the AT together starting with the section from Gooch Gap to Springer Mountain. I told them I was doing the Georgia Loop and Bud recommended I go a bit out of the way to see Long Creek Falls.
We all made dinner together out on a picnic table, and then the rain started again so we returned to the shelter. The other guys had cell service so they called their wives and let them know where they were.
I lay alone in the top bunk of the shelter, the rain pattering down above me and the other hiker’s voices filtering up from below. I wished that I had service then. Even just for a quick check in. It felt very lonely out here in this strange foggy woods, a continent away from anyone I knew.
I was woken up in the middle of the night by the rain. At first it began beating on the tin roof above my head in uneven droplets. The crazed tattoo of an avant-garde drummer. Thunder rumbled in the distance and the rain picked up, lashing down on us like the rain that had woken me that morning. Then, as if that still wasn’t enough, the rain came down so hard, so fast, that I could no longer distinguish the individual drops, just a single roaring noise, like a solid river rushing from the sky to us. The shelter was illuminated by a blinding flash of light, followed by an ear-splitting crack of thunder.
Finally, the storm moved past us and the rain returned to beating ceaselessly, arrhythmically, on the shelter.
The next morning it was still raining when I awoke. I made a hot breakfast of an oatmeal packet and french vanilla instant coffee. I can recommend neither.
While we cooked and ate, Bud got the news on his phone that Trump was acquitted. They all seemed pleased. He asked me who I supported to be president next, and I told him Warren. Pressed for a reason I said I liked how detailed and thought out her proposals are in comparison to the other options. He thought about that a second, “Yeah, but I think she wants to take away our guns.”
I said I didn’t really know, but didn’t think that any of the remaining candidates were supporting gun seizures. He said he wouldn’t really consider a Democrat anyway, but he might vote in their primary to help the weakest one get nominated and give Trump a hand. I asked who he thought was the weakest candidate against Trump. He said either Biden, because of the Ukraine scandal hanging over him, or Sanders, because he’s a socialist, and just look what’s going on down there in Venezuela and Brazil. Not sure why Brazil got dragged in, seeing their current government is not particularly socialist, to say the least, but I let that slide. Instead I pointed out that the model Sander’s wants to emulate is more that of the nordic socialist countries. He pointed out that they don’t have enough guns in Norway.
I asked him to explain why their socioeconomic ordering would affect gun laws. After all, most European countries have tight gun restrictions, socialist or not. He said, “Well, if times get hard, you know, people are going to get to stealing. And don’t you want to be allowed to protect your home?”
I said, “Sure, but my question is why you assume socialists by definition support gun bans? They seem like separate issues on the face of it.”
He promised that he’d get around to that, and then explained how a lot of people use their food stamps to buy crack. He used to be a cop. Saw it all the time. You’d bust a crack dealer and their den would be stuffed with food stamps. So anyway, doesn’t it seem wrong that we, the taxpayers are spending all that money on crack, when really we should just make people take drug tests to get their food stamps.
This line of reasoning went on for some time and never, to the best of my recollection, returned to the topic of guns in Norway.
Once I’d finished my breakfast, I thanked Bud for the talk, but said I had to be heading out. I wanted to get sixteen miles in before it got dark, and it did that alarmingly early this time of year.
It was raining when I started. Not hard, but steadily. The only people I encountered were a troop of army rangers, out for some training purpose. They were all in camo plastic bags, three men to a bag, that looked like strange misshapen rocks out in the middle of the woods. It looked odd, but at least dry.
I, meanwhile, was quickly becoming quite wet. My clothes, which had dried out nicely in the shelter overnight, were quickly dampened again by some mix of sweat and rainwater. While my raincoat kept the cold water from running right through, some of it always found a way in. But the wool shirts I had on underneath insulate wet or dry and I was, if anything, too hot.
I went to see Long Creek Falls as Bud had recommended. It was pretty, swollen by the recent rains to a raging torrent. But I think I may have become slightly jaded in regards to waterfalls after our tour of the parks of the west. It’s hard for anything to stack up against Tower or Ribbon Falls or the many cascades of Maligne Canyon. But luckily, I hadn’t come to the Georgia loop for natural splendor. I’d come for solitude and wilderness, and I was about to get all of that that I could possibly hope for.
After the falls, the Appalachian Trail curves south, but my path then was to the north, along the Benton MacKaye Trail. Like the Appalachian, Benton MacKaye began by winding between peaks. Now that the fog had abated some, I could see them looming about me, dark-gray masses against a slate gray sky.
Noon passed, and still the rain kept falling. I was drenched now from head to toe. Every step I took, water squelched past my foot. I could feel hotspots beginning on my feet. Heels of course, but also new more painful ones on either my middle or index toe. I couldn’t tell exactly, it was just a sensation of vague, non-localized pain. I thought about stopping to tape up, but in the rain dissuaded me.
I skipped lunch, finding nowhere to stop and instead subsisted on handfuls of gorp.
A bit past one, I pulled out my phone to check the time and saw that I had signal here. Julia had texted me a picture that she thought I’d find funny. I responded with a thinking emoji. She asked if I was back. I said no, still going. Will probably be tenting in the rain tonight. It felt nice to be back in communication again, like the whole world was drawn in close to me. I could text whoever I wanted and get live updates on the upcoming weather. I pocketed my phone and kept going, Waiting for the next text.
But it never came. The next time I checked my phone, it was dead. Probably just a cold battery, I thought. But the day wasn’t that cold, and my battery had never had that problem before. The world suddenly seemed a bit bigger. A bit less predictable.
It rained as I descended out of the John Dick Peaks. It drizzled as I crossed the Toccoa River Swinging Bridge. There was a faint misting of water as I made my way up the side of Tooni Mountain. And then finally, coming back down, the precipitation stopped.
I stopped too then to tape up my feet. I put moleskin over my heels, although it’s grasp on my wet skin seemed fragile at best. I discovered that my middle and index toe were rubbing together strangely in the wet socks and developing a nasty blister where they touched. I wrapped them in medical tape, which had itself become sodden and was losing it’s stick. I had to wrap each toe eight, nine, times to get the tape to stay in place. But my feet did feel better now that the rubbing was stopped.
I checked my phone again, it was still dead. I didn’t want to go fishing through my bag for my external battery. I’d wait until I’d gotten to camp.
The Benton MacKaye trail descends steeply to a valley floor where state route 60 cuts through, then it rises again as steeply to the summit of Wallalah Mountain. This was my first taste of going all the way to the top of a mountain on this loop. It would not be my last.
My plan had been to continue past Wallalah Mountain and Licklog Mountain, to a flat plateau on the far side of Licklog near a stream. Everything I’d need for a campsite there. But coming down off Wallalah, those plans were dashed. The rain started again. At first just a few drops, and I pressed on. But then the sky opened up and the rain came down in earnest, rattling off my only recently dried shell layer. The sky grew dark, and with the rain lashing at me, I realized I needed to stop. The other campsite was still a long way and if the rain got any worse it would be impossible to set up anything.
I set my tent as quickly as I was able, throwing the fly over the moment I could to preserve what dryness I could inside. Then I threw my pack in. Perhaps the greatest benefit of having a three man tent to myself is that I could let my gear out of the rain and still have space to lie down. I set up my sleeping pad sleeping bag beside it. The mouth of the sleeping bag had gotten damp at some point during the day, but with a liner inside, it seemed like it would be alright.
Then I went out in search of water. I still had a bit of water left, but I knew that it would barely last until morning. It felt ironic, scouring the slopes and gullies for water as water splashed down around me in big fat drops from the sky. But I was too high up on the mountain for streams to form and the slope was too smooth to make puddles. There was nothing for me to collect. I considered trying to move my camp further along, but the sky was darkening, and if I couldn’t find water in the daylight, I didn’t like my chances stumbling along by headlight beam.
The rain let up long enough for me to cook a dinner of reconstituted mashed potatoes. They were salty and dry and I only ate half of them. I wasn’t hungry, and every bite I took I had to pair with a mouthful of my precious remaining water.
Finally, I crawled into my sleeping bag. It was damp inside and out. From leakage in the pack, from getting rained on while I took it out, and from the drops of water seeping in through the rain fly that I really should have re-waterproofed. But with a poly thermal liner inside, I found I had no problem staying warm and the liner did a good job of wicking the worst of the moisture off me. I finally found my charger and tried to plug my phone in. It briefly flashed the “out of power” symbol and then turned off. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last symbol of any kind I’d get out of it. I was alone then. The isolation surrounded me then like a second layer of darkness.
I woke early the next morning, and was unsure weather or not it was even dawn yet. Dim light suffused everything around me, but it didn’t seem like the light of day. Instead I thought it was maybe the light of an uncommonly bright moon, or strong light pollution. But the clouds should cover any moon, and Atlanta, the nearest city, is two hours driving from here. I wished I could check the time, but my phone was dead and I hadn’t brought any other timepiece.
Assuming it was a pre-dawn glow, I considered getting up right away. But as if on cue the rain began again and I decided to wait it out. The forecast was for snow starting that night, and I’d much rather pack up in snow than rain.
I drifted back to sleep to the sound of rain pattering on my tent, and when I woke again, the pattering had changed in character. It was softer, and more even. The sound of snow on a tent fly. I looked outside and saw it was finally dawn.
I got up and quickly packed up my things. My hands were numbed from the challenge of dismantling the tent poles, which had filled with rain and then frozen at the joints when the weather got cold. I drank the last mouthful of water I have left and set off down the trail, hoping I can find the stream I saw on the map.
I descended off Wallalah and on the plateau between the two mountains looked around, but there was no water to be seen. My stomach was rumbling, but I was determined not to eat yet. All my food was too salty and would just make my growing thirst worse. I climbed over and down Loglick, light snow swirling all around me in the crisp morning air. On the far side of Loglick, I couldn’t see the stream as it was shown on the map. I decided to press on until the base of the next Mountain, Rhodes, and if I hadn’t found water yet, to turn around. There was a river back at route sixty where I could get water. But that was too much backtracking. I knew if I went that far I’d have to abandon the trail and hitch a ride back, an option that was seeming admittedly better by the moment.
I almost walked right past the sign, it was just a small brown square nailed to a tree. There was a weird sideways squiggle in the center in a dark shade of blue that in the flat morning light almost matched the brown. But then I looked again, it wasn’t a squiggle, it was a “W”. A blue “W”, for water. With a small blue arrow above it pointing to the right. I followed the arrow, descending a steep gully some ways until I came to a fresh cold spring bubbling from the rocks. I filtered all the water I could carry, and then had a breakfast of the frozen leftover mashed potatoes. They were bad, but not actually much worse than they’d been hot.
After that the day passed unremarkably. I turned off the Benton MacKaye Trail onto the Duncan Ridge Trail and pushed through as many miles as I could. The weather was on my side. The snow was merely a dusting, frosting the leaves on the side of the trail but not hindering me in any way. The temperature was right below freezing. Cold enough that I wasn’t overheating, but not so cold that my water bottles were in danger of icing over. As I walked, my clothing dried out for the first time in days.
The way was hard, going over every peak on it’s way, but the view was magical. To my right was the Georgia wilderness, brown rolling hills turning slowly to white. The valley to my left was a landscape of green fields dotted by colorful farmhouses. I felt like I was floating over them all on this snowy white ridge line, my legs carrying me like a bird over the clouds.
I finally made my camp at Whiteoak Stomp near another “W” sign. It wasn’t quite as far as I had wanted to go, but it put me in easy striking distance of the van tomorrow if I put in a big day. The forecast was for rain, but I’d walked through plenty of rain and I had a dry change of clothing to look forward to when I got back.
This night I woke again from the cold. I put on some more clothing and felt better, but had trouble falling back asleep. From outside the thin walls of the tent came many soft noises. Snow still pattered on the fly, and trees creaked in the cold. From time to time I would hear a gust coming up the valley towards me. It would start far away, a low rumble, then quickly build as the wind raced along, shaking the leafless trees in its path. Then it would be upon me, violently shaking the fly, the branches above me clattering together, snow whipping against the tent. And finally, a return to silence.
In the distance I heard a loud baying in the night, like the barking of a dog but then morphing into a weird high pitched yelp. It couldn’t be a dog though, it was coming from the south, and that was all wildlife preserve there. I lay in my sleeping bag shivering some more. I heard something cracking in the forest beside me, and strained my ears, was there something coming? I heard nothing else from that direction though. Probably nothing more than falling snow.
And then the barking and yelping again, but this time the lone voice was joined by another, and another. It finally clicked in my exhausted brain. It wasn’t a dog. It was a pack of coyotes, howling in the night. More voices than I could distinguish. They sounded close, certainly in the same hollow as me. But then they took off, their shrill voices fading away into the night.
At dawn it had still not started to rain. It was in fact snowing harder than ever. I viewed this with some satisfaction. If it could hold off raining long enough for me to pack I could avoid some water weight on my gear. I got up and dressed, shivering as I put on my cold outerwear. Then, getting out of the tent, I was faced with the challenge of putting on my boots. Overnight, they had frozen into solid blocks, and it took me some working to get them open enough to jam my foot inside, and more to get the tongue pulled back closed and the laces wrapped out of the way. They were far too loose in most places, too tight in others, and freezing everywhere. But I needed to get going so I put that out of my mind.
I stomped my way to a nearby spring to filter water for the day. It was feeding from underground and the water felt surprisingly warm in the bitterly cold morning air. By the time I returned, the snow was beginning to come down hard and accumulate in a meaningful way. That was something to worry about. The Duncan Ridge Trail is inconsistently marked and I had relied the previous day on following the trodden path. If that was covered in thick snow I might lose it. On top of that, I needed to make significant miles today if I wanted to reach the van, thirteen miles and over seven thousand feet in elevation change. A fairly easy day in rain, but not if I was breaking a trail the whole way.
I decided I’d first go as far as Woods Hole Shelter, a rough halfway point on my route, and then see how I was doing. If I could, I’d walk out. Otherwise, I’d stay in the shelter for the night.
The trail out of camp started up immediately towards the crest of Wildcat Knob. The snow was falling heavily now and the path was slippery under my feet. When I reached the summit, I was panting and sweating under my layers. I found that my boots had finally thawed and tied the laces tight before I started down.
And it was good that I had the full use of my feet back. As hard as the uphill was though, the down was worse. I had to take each step carefully, in case a loose rock or patch of ice was hidden under the snow. Without any way to tell time, I couldn’t say how fast I was going, but it seemed very slow.
At the base of Wildcat Knob, the trail crossed route 181. The road hadn’t been plowed, so I could tell that only a single car had been through this way since the morning, leaving a pair of dark tread marks along an otherwise untouched strip of white two lanes wide. I crossed the road and began up Slaughter Mountain on the other side.
Slaughter Mountain seemed to go on forever. Every time I thought I saw the end it was a false summit, although now the snow was coming down so hard I could see little one way or the other. The path here had even fewer markers than ever, often going on through several switchbacks before a blaze was left on a tree. A few times I almost missed the turns of the switchbacks and continued off into the forest. The snow was now deep enough that I was having to kick through itI, making the climb even harder.
When I finally reached the summit, I began to sense that I wasn’t going fast enough. I didn’t even know what time I had started that morning. I had thought it was near dawn, but with the overcast sky I couldn’t say for certain. For all I knew I hadn’t even started walking until ten or eleven. And now I’d been slogging over these hills for what felt like an eternity. I began to reset my expectations for the day. I probably wouldn’t be reaching the van today. The Woods Hole Shelter may be all I could manage.
As I started down the other side of Slaughter Mountain, I slipped, hitting my right elbow on the way down. I picked myself up and kept going. A few steps later a rock I hadn’t seen slipped under my foot and I only barely caught myself with my trekking pole. After that I made myself slow down, taking easy deliberate steps down the mountain. Here I was in the middle of a snow storm. My nearest link to civilization was a road that no one was driving on. I couldn’t afford to roll my ankle now. But those careful steps were costing me more time. I resigned myself to a night spent in the shelter.
I found the Woods Hole Shelter a couple miles along from where the Duncan Ridge Trail rejoined the Appalachian Trail. It was less that I’d hoped for: little more than a roof over a raised platform just wide enough to lay a sleeping pad. The wind howled through and snow lay on one side of the platform in a drift. I sat and made lunch in a corner that offered some protection from the elements. Outside, the sky was the same even white color it had been since I got up that morning. The snow still fell heavy around me.
As I ate my sandwich, I deliberated over what to do next. I assumed it was at least two, maybe later. That meant that if I started walking now it would most likely be dark by the time I got back. Walking through the night on these snow covered trails seemed risky. I could easily miss a turn and end up stumbling through the woods. On the other hand, staying put wasn’t without its downsides. I was already shivering sitting here in the shelter, I could tell it would be a very cold night coming up.
And it wasn’t just the night. Even if it was three, there were still hours until sunset. Hours with nothing to do but flip through the shelter’s log book. Watch the snow fall. Huddle, shivering, in a corner and think about how much colder it was going to get. I decided a hike by the light of my headlamp wasn’t so bad in comparison. Worse come to worst, I would always have an easy trail of footprints to backtrack along.
I got going and found that while I was at the shelter, someone had passed by on the AT, leaving trails northbound. Too bad, I thought, that I wouldn’t be able to see them and get the time. But at least I had a boot pack to follow. I started down the trail at a rapid pace. It felt good to have an easy way to follow on this wide trail that went around the hills instead of over.
Then, a man came around the corner ahead of me. He was wearing a rain jacket and an OR rain hat. I said good afternoon and he asked, “Is it really afternoon already?”
I said I thought so and he checked his watch, “Oh, you’re right. It’s a few minutes past noon now.”
I was elated. Somehow I’d made over half the miles I needed and most of the elevation change and it was only noon. I thanked the man for that info and continued along happily.
As I walked, I could feel the adrenaline that had been carrying me through the morning drain out of me. With no more need to hurry, my steps became shorter and slower. My back was suddenly aching. The blisters on my feet, somehow forgotten as I struggled up Slaughter Mountain earlier were suddenly burning in my sodden boots. My right arm hurt from my fall earlier.
But none of that seemed to matter. I had all afternoon now. I passed a sign telling me there were seven miles left to Woody gap. I could walk one mile an hour and still have daylight. So I took it slow from there. One foot in front of the next. Steady on the uphills. Careful on the downhills.
For the first time I noticed how beautiful the snow was. A soft white cover over the hills, with more flakes drifting peacefully through the gnarled leafless trees. I saw strange polygons drawn in the snow all around me and wondered what was causing that. Then I saw a clump of powder tumble from a tree to the ground. Where it landed, it formed a perfect trapezoidal hole in the surface. Strange. Wonderful. The snow muffled any noise and I was surrounded by an impenetrable silence.
