I am heading to Georgia on Friday. Plan to hit the approach trail Saturday morning and spend a week heading north with my son. I will be proudly displaying my "whiteblaze.net" patch on the top of my red and black Kelty backpack. If you see me stumbling along, say Hi!

:banana

I am heading to Georgia on Friday. Plan to hit the approach trail Saturday morning and spend a week heading north with my son.
Color me jealous, Jim! Have a great time with your son,

Thanks TJ ......

Heavy storms delayed us getting to Georgia. We hit the approach trail at Amicalola Falls Visitor Center about 3 pm. The first chuck of the trail is a bit steep. There are several signs warning that the trail difficulty is Strenuous. Also, there is a sign that listed Springer Mountain 7.25 miles. Cross the road and another sign says Springer Mountain 7.3 miles?!?!?!? The trail is rough in sport but overall it is well maintained and blazed. The assent angles generally are not very steep even for a overweight 50 year old like me. There are quite a few “Camp Sites” along the approach trail. Many of these were in use as we went by. We decided to stay on Frost Mountain since the sun was going down and is was getting cool and windy. We had a hot meal and a good night’s sleep the off to Springer.

Sometime during the day my son hurt his back resulting in a laceration/abrasion right where his hip-belt rubbed. He suffered through and we made the top of Springer by about 1 pm. It was windy and cold on top. There were plenty of folks including a number of North Bound Thru-hikers. Since my son’s back was bothering him we decided to stay. We camped at the tent site on the Springer Shelter trail, no far from the dandy new composing toilet. There was lots of wind and temps hit 28 by morning.

We shifted about 10 pounds to my pack and gave the trail a try. It was clear that he could do it but it would not be fun. I decided to get him off the trail. His injury was not too bad (a cut on his back) but it was enough that he could not really carry a pack with even half his trail load. We got down to Forest Service Road 42 a bit more than a mile north of the mountain. I left him with our gear at the trail head and backtracked over the mountains to get the car. It took me the better part of a day to hike out even without a backpack and then I had a drive of more than 50 miles by road to circle around to go get him. Quite an adventure but not what we had planned.

We took a day to recover in Atlanta before turning our backcountry vacation into a road trip. We drove the back-roads of Alabama some then worked our way over to and area I have hiked a number of times around Taos, New Mexico. He is off to college next in a semester or two so I enjoyed the time but as my wife said I spend more time packing for this trip than I did on the trail.

I am planning to do some volunteer trail work for the Continental Divide Trail Association in August. Maybe I a can still get to the AT sometime this summer we will see.