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Published: November 27th 2007
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Posted By: Onaxthiel: And now, a day to cover three states. Leaving Raleigh from A's place was easy enough, being a Sunday morning on highways. We made one more stop off at E's place in Fayetteville to see if he wanted to go shooting, but he had a sizable hangover and wasn't up for loud banging sounds. After a brief stop, we moved on to the long, indirect route down towards Dahlonega, Georgia. There really isn't much to tell about the drive to the mountains. I got pulled over and ticketed by a Georgia State Trooper. I was smiling and polite the entire time, since I was in a pretty good mood up until the light appeared in the rear view, and still got ticketed. Next time I will have to try belligerence.
The next day we headed into the mountains of the 5th Ranger Training Battalion. I first took Obfuscator to the area where basic mountaineering is taught, to show him the loveliness that is around the area of the training camp. For anyone that is in doubt of the severity of the drought in Georgia: When I was a trainee at this post back in the winter and
summer of '05, the river running through the mountaineering stations was about three feet deep and there was a thunderous falls at the top of the area that put out enough water to soak anyone near the base and make the rocks nearby somewhat treacherous. Now a gentle stream bubbles lightly over the rocks, serenely dropping to the meandering little brook below.
Once we had seen this little detour, we headed north through the park to the ranger station on the far side. There we received some maps of the region and advice on the various sights to be seen towards the southern terminus of the Appalachian trail. We drove into the area of the mountains that I remembered tromping around years ago, and surprise surprise, we found Rangers training. Not wanting to interfere with their training, we moved on to our camp a bit further up the trail on Springer mountain. Also the Grey Suiters in charge of them chased us off. Kinda felt like old times.
Springer is the first mountain in the chain that makes up the Appalachian trail, or the last one if you are coming from Maine. From the top you can see
a nice valley spreading out bellow you with virtually no development, the plaques placed on the peak memorializing it as the start of the trail, and several signs warning that black bears attack hikers that sleep on the peak, so why not sleep in the designated area only three hundred meters off the trail? I'm not sure why the bears care that much about a few hundred meters, unless they like a picturesque view as much as the hikers, or if there would be black bears out this late in the season, when they should be hibernating. But we decided to humor the signs and just go camp near the ingenious pulley systems that the care takers of the area had rigged up to keep our food away from Yogi and Boo Boo.
Because of the drought, there is a fire ban throughout the park, and we had to Sterno our meal. At altitude this is really annoying, since the reduced air pressure raises the temperature that water boils at, and getting used to having real fires again recently made it harder to wait for the watched pot to boil.
There was also a pretty intense mist over everything
in the night, so we put our poncho hooch up early and went to bed.
Lessons learned:
Georgia tickets don't have an assigned cost, so I have to call the judge assigned to my case and call him to get an amount to pay. My assigned court date is a long way away, making it quite inconvenient to fight, and also I am pretty sure the reason I was chosen to receive a ticket, as the only questions the officer asked me were “Do you own this vehicle?” And “Just passing through, or will you be staying awhile?” Next time, belligerence.
Having learned our lessons about water and GPS on a previous hike near the car, we thought we were well packed to move to our camp. Unfortunately, it has been so long since we last went backpacking, that we forgot to double check a few other essentials. I didn't have either my headlamp or windy light. It's a good thing I always carry two alternate light sources, or the night would have been far more annoying. Squeeze light LEDs. To own 'em is to love 'em.
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