Triple Crown Diary: Appalachian Trail

By Thomas S. Hogeboom

I wrote this book to tell the whole story of my thru hike of the Appalachian Trail in 1984. Not the highlights, not part of the tale, but the full story. It’s a true story of thru hiking in the era of heavy packs. A personal drama of losing and finding love and an improbable tale of a film production on the AT. My first of the Triple Crown long distance hikes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781387385249

Book preview

Prologue

I paused at the outlet of Crawford Pond. Beyond the light chop, the modest breast of Little Boardman Mountain delineated the western horizon. Warm August sunlight glinted off the wavelets, and tiny breakers lapped at the shoreline rocks. At my feet, the headwaters of Cooper Brook spilled over the remains of an old crib dam.

Two miles downstream, Cooper Brook cascaded fifty feet over a series of rock stairsteps into a deep pool. I stowed my pack in the Cooper Brook Falls Lean-to and immediately went for a dip in the pool. Clambering out just below the falls, I climbed straight up the watery stairsteps, stopping to let the cool water pour over my head and rejuvenate my feet.

Later, another hiker showed up at the lean-to. He was blonde and rangy, and after some preliminary introductions, I learned that he was nearing the end of a two thousand mile journey on foot, from Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in northern Maine. He was an Appalachian Trail thru hiker. Not wanting to let the opportunity pass, I riddled him with questions about the terrain and weather farther south, since I hoped to eventually walk all trail segments there as well, only over a number of years instead of five or six months.

Although I didn’t mention it, I was skeptical about hiking twenty mile days with an absurdly heavy pack, which many thru hikers seemed to do. It didn’t seem possible to take pleasure from such an arduous pace, and it seemed to leave no extra time for side trails and swimming and soaking up the sunshine. More importantly, I wondered how one’s appreciation and sense of wonder might suffer from overexposure. After climbing hundreds of peaks, what was another mountaintop vista?

We exchanged trail stories in friendly fashion over dinner, then laid out our sleeping bags on the sapling floor of the lean-to. At this point, the tone of the conversation changed. The thru hiker had been holding back something of emotional content and as I watched, transfixed, the dam burst.

Two hikers had been murdered in a shelter near Pearisburg, Virginia earlier in the year, he said. Further, he himself had stayed in that very shelter the night before the homicides occured. After being questioned by police in Pearisburg, he had returned home to do some soul-searching and reexamine his commitment to continuing his trip. As he went on talking, I noticed that his voice was edgy and agitated. Further, his steely blue-grey eyes were fixed on me with an unblinking and icy gaze.

Alarm bells went off in my head. ‘Why is he telling me all this?’ I asked myself, with a growing sense of unease. This question ricocheted wildly inside my skull, prompting my imagination to grab the reins of consciousness and gallop away. Anxiety mushroomed towards panic and there was no stopping the adrenaline release. My nerve ends tautened. ‘We’re alone in the middle of nowhere. What if HE was the murderer?!’

Just then, we heard a noise and turned to the pool below the falls where I had gone for a dip earlier. In the failing light, there was an apparition emerging from the woods. A moose cow ambled up to the pool. When the homely giant reached the water’s edge, she awkwardly split her front legs so she could lower her enormous head down to the water. Unaware of our presence not thirty yards away, she began lapping up draughts of Cooper Brook. We must have exhaled reflexively at the sight, or the breeze might have turned in the moose’s direction, for she lifted her head abruptly and turned back into the forest, snapping twigs as she went. The thru hiker and I smiled at one another and we both let out a little laugh.

In the morning, my paranoid flight of fancy made sense only as the fictional plot line of a story I would muse on, but keep to myself. The thru hiker was off early, and I congratulated him, if prematurely, for all but completing his pilgrimage to Mount Katahdin. Even then, early in my hiking career, I knew that congratulations missed the point, that completion of such a journey was not the main point, but rather the living of each day, in an elemental and primitive way, was. And yet, other than congratulations, what else was there to say? Any reservations I had about his way of hiking the Appalachian Trail I withheld. He struck off down the trail, leaving me alone with Cooper Brook Falls, not a bad companion to be left alone with. I set about cooking a leisurely breakfast, and watched the falls as I ate.

Another thru hiker showed up, a bearded young man who was soft spoken and powerfully muscled, like a medalist in the Olympic decathlon. We talked trail for some time. At length, I felt comfortable enough to ask him if, after hundreds of mountain peaks, didn’t they tend to run together and lose their effect, didn’t you become jaded from overexposure?

Not at all, he said, only momentarily taken aback. I wish I had recorded his words, but what he said amounted to this: Each mountain is special, every view has its nuance of season and weather, all colored by the emotions of the day. And the character of the mountains changes subtly, and then dramatically, as you move up the Appalachian mountain chain. He went on, reaching inward for the right words to distill his experiences, and I fancied in him a serenity of demeanor and a quiet strength of character, born of experience. It came to me that he was completely centered, doing exactly what he wanted to do. He was deep within the trail. If anything, his sense of wonder had been magnified beyond the point where ego matters.

After he departed, I packed up my gear and hastened along, wondering that I had burned up so much of the morning with so many miles to go to reach camp for the night. Once underway, I moved smartly. The trail followed Cooper Brook downstream, and I thumped along, occasionally catching glimpses of the brook to my right.

Just above a logging bridge, the brook whirled down a smooth rock incline into an inviting pool. The flow had abraded a shallow trough in the rock, and a light growth of moss greased and softened the slide. I hesitated, knowing that I should move on and make mileage for the day in order to keep to my schedule. Always, I felt the need to do things as they should be done.

Should, should, should, SHOULD. A word denoting obligation, expectation, discipline. A word suppressing spontaneity, gaiety and God knows what other itties.

I stood still for many moments, gazing at the brook. Without a word, I slipped off my pack, stripped down and gingerly stepped into the water. Sitting, with a gasp, at the top of the rock incline, I let the water carry me, bare-assed, down the chute and into the pool. I laughed like a little kid.

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Home. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. March 1984. I sat at my desk for several minutes, trying to work up the nerve to ask my boss for a leave of absence. I picked up the receiver and dialed the number of the WDAU-TV newsroom. Jack Scannella, the Assignment Editor, answered the phone and I made small talk with him for a little longer than usual. Then I got to the point.

I’ve been thinking about something, I began. You know those hikes I’ve been taking on the Appalachian Trail every year? Well, I’ve been thinking about doing a film on the Appalachian Trail. What I’d really like to do is follow a couple the length of the AT and do a film based on their experiences.

Wait a minute, he said, putting the phone down to leaf through piles of paper. A couple of minutes went by before he came back on the line.

Here it is.

Dear News Director

He was reading from a press release.

We are writing to you about a story idea you might pursue. Wayne Berger and I, Patricia Emmons, will be leaving Unity, Maine April 13 to begin walking the Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, a distance of 2138.5 miles, passing through fourteen eastern seaboard states. We plan to finish at Mount Katahdin September 24, 1984.

I barely heard the rest of it. What luck! Incredible serendipity! If Patricia Emmons and Wayne Berger were willing to be the subjects of a documentary, the decision was made. I was going too. And, incredibly, a couple of days later, they said yes! In no time, my request for a six month leave of absence from my duties as a freelance TV news cameraman was approved.

              .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Three weeks remained before the trek was to begin. An initial wave of euphoria segued into a frenzy of action. I borrowed a movie camera, bought film, mounted a tripod head to my backpack, wrote to potential backers and arranged with my girlfriend Becky to send fresh sixteen millimeter film and other supplies to Post Offices all along the trail. I upped my jogging distance to three miles a day, walked up and down stairs with weights in my pack and readied a 42 day supply of dehydrated food to mail to myself, care of General Delivery.

To cut down on weight, I drilled holes in an Optimus camp stove, cut my toothbrush in half, and sliced inches off an ensolite sleeping pad. I riffled through a catalog and ordered a ten ounce plastic tube tent for shelter in case the lean-tos were full.

No one had ever attempted a major professional film on the Appalachian Trail before, and no one had been crazy enough to carry heavy motion picture gear the length of the trail. The thought that I might accomplish something that had never been done before helped spur my preparations for the challenge to come. But the impetus was too strong to be explained away that simply.

Something important had happened to me in the mountains, something that I had trouble explaining. It made perfect sense to a primitive part of my brain, but very little sense when it came time to translate it into language. And I wanted, no, NEEDED to communicate to others what it was. But how could I, if I didn’t know how to say it or put it on paper?

Two of my relatives, Gail and Bob Bates, spent much of their lives in the mountains, and they intuitively understood the grip the wilderness had on me. They’d experienced and seen this kind of awakening before. In a single sentence, they crystallized everything I wanted to do into a coherent whole.

Why don’t you combine your interests in photography and the Appalachian Trail, and do a film on the AT?

Why not indeed? What better way than a film to communicate what my words alone could not?

As an occasional AT section hiker, had I become obsessed, or was I merely passionate about walking every foot of the trail? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that at work, in the car, walking through town, my thoughts flipped to memories of the Appalachian Trail.

Wind-blown clouds on top of Franconia Ridge approaching, then enveloping me. An earthquake at Jeffers Brook Shelter, jolting me wide-eyed from sleep. A moose cow stooping to drink at Cooper Brook Falls. Every trip had a healing quality to it, an unmistakable feeling of returning home, even though I had just left home.

After years of wondering what I really wanted to do, I was finally taking steps towards living a meaningful life, towards a larger goal, state by state, mountain to mountain, and inside myself. On the AT, I felt closer to understanding the pull the wilderness exerted on me, the nature of the purification performed on my soul. Physically, each trek was grueling and difficult, but the resulting mental release and assuagement was profound. The lines in my face relaxed on the trail.

Fifty miles here, one hundred and ten there, I was trying to link sections of the AT  together until I could see, in my mind’s eye, every mile of it between Springer Mountain and Mount Katahdin. And yet, after ten years of nibbling, I had only bitten off three hundred miles. If I continued at that pace, the math said I’d be 103 years old by the time I got to Mount Katahdin. Even if I lived that long, I’d be too weak to climb it. My heartfelt ambition, the only thing I really wanted to do, would never be.

It was time to take the bull by the horns, as my father was fond of saying. It was time to hike the whole trail and actually do what I really wanted to do. It was time to thru hike.

                .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

On the drive down to Georgia, I tried to steel myself mentally for what was to come, by swallowing a mantra.

At some point in the trip, a solid two weeks of rain will leave you soaked to the bone, and all your gear will be wet. You will be miserable. Accept it.

I repeated this to myself over and over and the inescapable truth of it became the bedrock of my mental preparation. Ten years earlier, my first section hike on the AT had exposed me to the full brunt of the weather. For five days, I was slapped with sleet, snow, rain, lightning and hail. What surprised me was not how awful the weather could be, but how well I reacted to it. Instead of cursing my luck at having picked a bad week, I reveled in nature’s power, unpredictability and sense of humor.

But five days of rotten weather was nothing, and I knew it. How demoralized might one get over a much longer haul, without the end of the trip and the comforts of home in sight? A five to six month, two thousand mile trek obviously demanded far higher levels of stamina and grit, and God knows what else. What about injuries? Sickness? Boredom? Insects?

I remembered the southbound thru hikers I met in New Hampshire one June. Heavy rains inundated the trail and left them churning through mud and standing water in Maine. All of their exposed skin had been pierced repeatedly by black fly bites, leaving nothing but scar tissue.

What did I know? I had done little research, and was completely clueless about the terrain in northern Georgia, not to mention the average rainfall or temperatures at higher elevations. My expectations for April weather in Georgia were based on sitting in a warm living room watching the Masters golf tournament on TV. I hadn’t stopped to consider that Augusta, Georgia was only 136 feet above sea level, whereas the starting point of the Appalachian Trail exceeded that by 3,644 feet (roughly eleven degrees Fahrenheit colder).

Pat Emmons and Wayne Berger - the couple I was going to be filming - had done their homework. Their preparations were extensive and meticulous. Each day was planned to a tee, the exact mileage, where they were going to sleep and what they were going to eat. A two week rotating menu with precise amounts of food was preordained. Over the course of the trip, they planned to consume 520 tablespoons of powdered milk, 88 packets of hot chocolate, 38.5 cups of rice and 44 potatoes. Their equipment list also left nothing to chance, with a first aid kit containing murine, betadine, ammonia, merthiolate, anbesol, Ben-Gay, Caladryl, Wellcortin, hot pack, cold pack and 39 other items.

They looked extremely fit and trim, and I secretly worried that I would not be able to keep up with them. This point caused me considerable anxiety. If I couldn’t keep pace, how could I hope to film them the length of the trail? What little conditioning I had done paled in comparison to their pre-trip regimen of isometrics, isotonics, flexibility training and endurance training. Had I been following a training schedule that included working out on bicycle and rowing machines, jumping rope, hiking ten miles with weights in my pack, leg curls, sit-ups and quadricep lift? Hardly.

The more I questioned them about their preparations, the more concerned I became about my own abilities and logistical expertise. I had basically just thrown together a bunch of my section hiking gear in the past three weeks, while Pat and Wayne had been scientifically dissecting all of the variables of the trip for over a year. They were clearly going the distance, but how far was I going to go?

I decided to eat crow and try to learn from them, even though they were eleven years younger. This paid immediate dividends, like learning a virtually foolproof way to keep a sleeping bag dry. But still, their attention to detail left me feeling inadequate.

Physically, neither Pat nor Wayne commanded a presence that could be described as strapping or brawny or athletic. Neither was heavily muscled. They were wiry, brown-haired and clean cut. Not models, not movie stars, but appealing nonetheless.

What I found especially attractive was their personalities. Both were open, friendly, talked clearly and listened well. They were polite and generous, with a sense of humor. To me they seemed meant for each other, inseparable. And they tentatively planned to marry sometime after reaching Mt. Katahdin. Somehow I had managed to find the perfect couple to base a film on.

I don’t want to leave the impression that I was totally unprepared for what was to come. Ten years of AT section hiking - 300 miles - gave me the advantage of experience. Granted, it wasn’t extensive experience, but at least it was something. I’d encountered bad weather, steep trails, loneliness, fear of the dark and fear of being attacked by bears. I’d worked my way through challenges and emerged unscathed. A good deal of my gear was trail tested. I’d done some physical training, including running and walking up and down a flight of stairs with weight in my pack. And I’d done some mental preparation to steel myself for weeks of rain. I would have preferred to have more than three weeks of preparation, for sure. The question remained: would a three week period of rushed preparations be enough to prepare me for a 2,000 mile hike?

Georgia - 77.5 miles

Monday April 16, 1984 - 10 miles. A restless night of little sleep. I lay under a picnic table at Amicalola Falls State Park, with my plastic tube tent draped across one side of the table to block a frigid wind. Gusts flapped and snapped the makeshift windbreak, threatening to tear it at any moment. The noise made sleep untenable. My body heat had escaped. I shivered and waited impatiently for dawn. Pat and Wayne were probably cozy and warm in their tent, I reflected. And Wayne’s parents, who had driven us down here, opted to sleep in the sensible place, the back of their heated van. Clearly, this was not the warm southern springtime of my imagination.

After everyone awoke, we drove down to the visitors center, where Pat, Wayne and I signed a log book and entered our destination, Mount Katahdin, the crown jewel of Baxter State Park in north-central Maine. We were not alone. A woman from Philadelphia also penned in her intention to hike all the way to Maine. Hanny Budnick spoke with a clipped German accent. She wore aviator sunglasses, a red knit cap and a puffy down parka.

When we mentioned that we were driving to the trailhead at Nimblewill Gap, Hanny asked if she could hitch a ride. The answer came back: of course!

Enroute to Nimblewill Gap, I turned on a tape machine and recorded some of Pat’s pre-trip expectations.

Tim: Tell me about some of your hopes and aspirations for the trip. What do you expect to get out of the trip...for yourself?

Pat: First of all, just personal fulfillment, the chance to say ‘I did it,’ the chance to become one with nature, the chance to be a part, and to wake up with the birds, and to learn what it’s like to be, not a person in the woods, but just a creature in the woods.

Tim: Are there any sections you’re particularly looking forward to?

Pat: No, not really, I’m looking forward to the whole trail. I want to see everything, I want to experience everything.

Tim: Even the hardships?

Pat: Even the hardships, because if you didn’t have the hardships, you wouldn’t have the good times either.

Tim: What do you expect those hardships to be?

Pat: Rain for seven days (laughs), some real steep uphills, maybe sore feet.

Tim: And what are some of your greatest fears about the trip? I mean, some of the worst possible scenarios that you could imagine happening?

Pat: I think the worst thing for me is getting on top of a ridge and having a lightning storm attack (laughs), because I’m not afraid of lightning and thunder - I like storms like that - but I don’t like to be on top of a ridge when those things happen.

[Pat’s words echoed in my ears for weeks. She knew what to expect. Steep uphills, sore feet, lightning on a ridgetop, never-ending rain. The only base she didn’t cover was hypothermia.]

It was cold when we reached the drab, brown saddle called Nimblewill Gap. After a few stretching exercises, I cornered Wayne with the tape recorder.

Tim: Tell me real quick how you feel right now, before you’re about to start your hike.

Wayne: "I’m real anxious. It, it’s been a long, long time that we’ve planned this, and it never really hit me what we were planning for, you know, we always said 2,138 miles is like a million dollars, and like, if you don’t have a million dollars, you really don’t know what a million dollars is. And driving down here, I’m finally realizing how long 2,138 miles is really going to be. I’m real anxious, I’m ready to get going and I’m nervous. It’s going to be a challenge, and a challenge that I’ve looked forward to for a number of years, but it’s finally here. I feel confident."

Before we started off, Hanny turned to us with something serious to say. The statistics showed that not many who start off in Georgia make it to Mount Katahdin, she said. If that’s the case, she continued, and some of us quit, well it’s okay, we’ll have our reasons.

I didn’t say anything, but I clearly recall thinking ‘Wayne and Pat are supremely prepared and totally committed. They’re definitely going the distance. And I could never quit. After moving out of my apartment, putting my job on hold for six months and buying five hundred dollars worth of motion picture film, there will be no turning back.’

Moments before setting off, Wayne’s father insisted that I take his heavy wool hat, for I had somehow lost my own cap. He also gave me a great big bear hug, so tight that I could feel the size and the warmth of the man. Mrs. Berger, on the edge of tears, clutched her son in a Houdini grip. This was farewell. We took our leave. A penetrating, cold wind gusted through the gap. It was time to start walking.

I was pleased that leaves had not yet unfurled from their buds, for I wanted to experience the full progression of springtime, to immerse myself in the glory of it as we made our way north. The woods, in fact, seemed lifeless. There was not a hint of green to suggest that spring was around the corner. It looked like November to me.

The pathway snaked sharply uphill from Nimblewill Gap, and our lungs almost immediately began to reach for air. Hanny quickly fell behind. Later, I learned that she made it up Springer Mountain by counting off fifty steps, then pausing for ten deep breaths, and doggedly repeating the sequence over and over.

When Pat, Wayne and I reached the peak, Hanny was nowhere in sight. Ghostly trees waited mutely for spring in freezing fog. We opened a mailbox and signed a register, then shook hands with several other thru hikers. I regretted that I was too busy loading my camera to be very sociable, and I realized for the first time that camerawork would interfere with some of my enjoyment of the trek. I filmed Pat and Wayne leaving the summit, then followed them down off the mountaintop. We were finally on the Appalachian Trail heading north!

Pat & Wayne start walking north from Springer Mtn

We were doing something real, the simple act of walking, yet it felt so unreal, so disconnected from the comfortable lives we were leaving. Lurching along with a heavy pack, part of me still had no clue that two thousand miles of trail lay ahead, and that soft beds, hot showers and home-cooked meals were receding behind me. I felt like a bronco dimly perceiving a man with a bridle. Now the saddle was strapped on but I had no idea how to react.

I snapped back to the present and forced myself to open my eyes. Despite the cold, there WAS life peeking from beneath the dead leaves carpeting the forest floor. Wayne picked up a large millipede and photographed it curled up in the palm of my hand, and yellow violets bloomed beside the path. We followed a short side trail to see Long Creek Falls, a lovely cascade. Back on the AT, the skies opened up with bursts of cold rain and sleet, punctuated by promising glimpses of sunshine.Wayne leads the way on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia

I was relieved to see that Pat and Wayne’s pace was close to mine, and pleased that we seemed to get on very well. I felt optimistic that we could stick it out for the long haul and not drive each other crazy. Both Pat and Wayne seemed unfazed by the imposition of the camera and displayed remarkable patience with my directorial instincts. Often I’d film them without any directions at all, but at other times, I’d ask them to wait while I got set up to shoot, and then motion them to move forward. Occasionally, I’d request that they do something twice, take two, as it were. In between the two shots, I’d get reset at a different angle. Having a variety of shots of the same action from different angles makes editing a pleasure and it adds immeasurably to the quality of a film.

We reached Hawk Mountain Shelter before dusk, after covering ten trail miles. Army Ranger helicopters clattered overhead, but we did not see any soldiers on maneuvers. I cooked a tasty chicken and rice curry and did not hold back on the quantity.

A fellow hiker from Erie, Pennsylvania, Tom Weiner, spread a plastic sheet over several of our sleeping bags to ward off the damp and chill. Overnight, cold rain slanted into the shelter. Thanks to Tom, our feet stayed warm and dry.

Tuesday April 17th - 8.9 miles. Rain and sleet squalls mixed with short periods of sunshine. Pat, Wayne and I hiked up ridges bristling with barren trees and down into hollows filled with laurel and rhododendron.

White Bloodroot blossoms poked through decaying leaves here and there.

Bloodroot blossoms

It was uplifting to see these harbingers of spring, but the din of military helicopters overhead ended any peaceful contemplation of nature’s beauty.

I did not wonder that soldiers trained here.

The mountains were rugged and steep. Instead of easing gently into bottomland meadows, the slope plunged precipitously into ravines, only to soar upward again at an equally stiff angle. In many places, only the trees would stop your fall if you tumbled off the path. Mercifully, the trail slabbed across the steepest slopes at an oblique angle, but it switchbacked relentlessly up and down. I realized that this was not just the soldier’s boot camp, it was ours too.

Our packs bulged, and our leg muscles strained under heavy loads. We kept our eyes on the trail ahead, hoping for stretches of flat terrain. But there were none. The guidebook read:

Turn sharply uphill and follow ridgeline. Reach Horse Gap and continue steep ascent. Reach summit of Sassafras Mountain. Descend steeply.

The trail was a gut-wrenching demon. It mocked our stamina, pushed us to breathlessness and pain. It flaunted its verticality to forcefully demonstrate that it would not be taken lightly. Pat began to fall behind on the longer climbs and admitted to feeling dizzy from the effort.

We took a break in Cooper Gap. There I filmed Pat and Wayne snacking, with an additional wrinkle. After cutting open the bottom of a plastic bag, I fitted it over the camera lens, then lay on the ground with the camera aimed straight up at Wayne. He reached into the bag, blotting out the field of view with his hand. This shot I dubbed POV Gorp, or point-of-view of good old raisins and peanuts.

Wayne about to reach into a plastic bag for some gorp

This type of footage was what I did for a living. Shooting things from a new perspective expands your repertoire of shots if you’re a news cameraman. As often as possible, I tried to frame things in a different way, to get a different angle on familiar subjects. Once I was blocked by trees from getting a good angle on an innovative solar house. My solution: climb ninety feet up one of the trees, with the camera strapped to my belt, to look down on the house from the sun’s point of view.

When a light plane crashed in the middle of a wide river, cameramen from competing TV stations set up their tripods on the riverbank, and used zoom lenses to capture the scene, but I walked right past them. Holding my camera over my head, I waded into the river, fording my way to the crash site for a clearer view. This kind of camerawork often produces dramatic results, but it can make a photographer look ridiculous. Since I had publicly embarrassed myself many times before, it no longer bothered me that much. I explained to Pat and Wayne that many of my methods might look weird to them, but to ignore me and my camera as much as possible.

Towards noon, we came upon Cindi Clapp and her black labrador retriever, Traveler, sitting beside the trail. Cindi, a former Outward Bound instructor, was happy to be able to follow her own schedule and pace, rather than lead a group whose progress is determined by the slowest member. She herself was quite obese. In fact, I was amazed to see an ex-Outward Bound teacher so markedly overweight.

We reached the side trail to Gooch Gap Shelter at three in the afternoon and wearily climbed the log steps to the lean-to. We soon had a fire going, but the wind blew smoke straight back into the shelter, causing everyone to cough and rub their eyes. The temperature at bedtime was forty-eight and dropping.

Wednesday April 18th - 12.8 miles. I awoke to light filtering through the trees, and I felt terribly cold. Even wearing heavy clothes inside my sleeping bag did not ward off the chill. Sitting bolt upright, exhaling clouds of frosty air, I knew I’d made a mistake. In my zeal to cut weight, I had decided to bring a summer sleeping bag, rated to forty degrees, reasoning that I could always put extra clothes on for really cold nights. That idea wasn’t working. The air temperature was in the twenties, and I was freezing.

Wayne’s watch lay between our sleeping bags, and a cursory glance told me that it was quarter to six. Pat and Wayne were asleep, but I remembered that we were scheduled to pick up a mail drop in the town of Suches, as well as hike nearly thirteen miles to the summit of Blood Mountain. It was time to get up and get going. I woke Wayne up and started to pull my boots on. Wayne wearily raised himself up and prepared to light his stove to cook breakfast. He felt too groggy to function properly and took a close look at his watch. The time: 12:30 AM.

I had mixed up the big and little hands on Wayne’s watch! I had mistaken bright moonlight