The Sisyphus Comments

Brothers Backpacking The Appalachian Trail – Part I

As you know, I hung out the “Gone Backpacking” sign and headed out to the Appalachian Trail this past weekend. It was a real treat to have a hiking partner along for the two day, 20 mile trip. My youngest brother Lee made the trip down from Pennsylvania to experience his first backpacking trip. The idea for the weekend backpacking trip had its genesis about a year ago when he go bit by the fitness bug and started walking and biking regularly. He had lost a ton of weight, made significant improvements to his aerobic fitness level and was ready to take on a new challenge. Unfortunately, life events kept getting in the way and we could never make the trip happen. Fortunately, neither of us gave up on idea and this year he was able to break away.

Although little brother’s fitness level had gone down and his weight had gone back up since last year, his determination has remained strong. There is no such thing as an “easy” backpacking trip on the AT but I wanted to make sure that the route was not so tough that he wouldn’t want to do it again. I selected the 20 mile route from Catawba Mountain to Troutville, which is arguably one of the most scenic routes on the AT. Like all good backpackers, we had to figure out how to make good food part of the trip. Of course, when you are starting your trip about 3 miles from the Homeplace Restaurant finding great food is not too difficult. If fact, our Friday night dinner was so good, we had trouble pushing away from the table and getting started.

My wife finally dropped us off on Route 311 at the top of Catawba Mountain at nearly 1900 hrs., which was a little later than we had anticipated. As a result, it got dark long before we reached the shelter where we planed to spend the night. Like a good boy scout, I had packed two LCD head lamps but when I took mine out of the pack, it opened up and I lost one of the batteries, although I didn’t initially realize it. At first, I thought maybe the batteries had gone dead, although I had tested it earlier that day. Fortunately, I brought along some fresh batteries but when I changed the two batteries that were in the light, it still didn’t work.

Since we only had one light, I wore the light and lead the way while he followed closely behind me. A little while later, I got to thinking about the other light and something told me that it “should” be working. I stopped again, opened it up and realized that the light required three batteries. Once I put in the third battery, my brother’s path was brightly illuminated. We probably walked about a hundred yards before he tripped over something on the trail and did a nose dive. Fortunately, the only thing that was hurt was his pride. In his defense, when you hike by flashlight at night, you have very little depth perception so you have to be really careful where and how you step.

After a little over an hour, we arrived at the Catawba Shelter which is about 2.5 miles in from our drop off point. We laid out our self-inflating air mattresses and our sleeping bags, hung up the food bag so the critters couldn’t get at it, talked a while and called it a night.

I wish I could say it was a nice restful night – but it wasn’t. The temperature went down into the 20’s and the wind was blowing most of the night. That, in and of itself, would not have been a problem but it appears that our sleeping bags had shrunk while hanging in my basement during the past year. That’s right, for some reason, neither of us could zip our bags up over our shoulders so it got a little brisk later in the night. I don’t think my wife bought my theory about the sleeping bags having shrunk but she was kind enough not to suggest that my brother wasn’t the only one that had added a few pounds over the past year. I am gradually coming to the conclusion that getting old pretty much sucks in a variety of ways. However, it is nice to know that I am not alone in my journey into old age.

For the record, even though we were a bit chilled throughout the night, just being able to spend some long overdue time with my brother made day one a winner. As Paul Harvey would say, tune in tomorrow for the rest of the story. . .