Coming Clean

Well, actually, I have a few bad camping stories… all of them involving rain. But most of those are generally due more to stupidity than bad luck. But the hiking story, while involving rain, is far more awful than the rest of these.

I was in highschool still — may have been 17. And we decided to do the section north Blood Mountain in Georgia — Trey Mountain. Now Blood Mountain has a reputation because it’s the highest mountain in Georgia and also considerably steep. In my humble opinion, Trey is worse, especially moving north on the trail, which is the direction we took. It is only slightly shorter in height than Blood.

This particular section is 25 miles long. Seeing as how we generally only hike weekends, we drove up the night before and camped at the trail head. Everything was great. Stars out, air crisp, all the signs for an excellent weekend. The next day, we started out fresh and feeling good. We knew that Trey was going to be hard at first, so we thought we wouldn’t break for lunch until we made the summit. And, in general, we try not to break stride until we reach a lull in a climb. Trey is uncanny in my memory because I remember no lull in the climb that morning. Nor do I recall reaching the summit until well after noon. This was by all accounts of my friends and I, unexpected.

To sum up the whole experience of this entire stretch of trail: everytime you thought you had done the last hard climb, there was next ascent looming right before you. We use to complain (only teasingly) of switchbacks prior to this trip. We now stare evilly at people who do so as though someone mentioned “rain”. To invoke the words “switchbacks” or “rain” is surely to get what you do not want — a straight up-the-hill climb or rain.

But I digress. So we reached the summit probably about 2 that afternoon. We devoured lunch and could very well have set up camp for the night… but we had at least another 8 or so miles to go before setting up camp. Besides, there was a shelter waiting for us there… and why bother setting up tents when you can get to a shelter?

So, we set out post-lunch determined to reach the shelter, and generally feeling that things should be getting better soon. At which point it begins to rain. And it wasn’t one of those decent rains that falls heavily and runs off your rain gear… it was that kind of rain that’s not quite a mist but almost should be. The kind that you can’t keep out of your face. In short annoying. :sigh: so, rain. And for the rest of this day, through the night, and the next. rain.

By evening, we reached the gap where the shelter should have been. Noticed “should have been”? We began scouting spring trails and what seemed to be side trails for the shelter. No shetler. We looked at the sign that named the gap… yup, we’re where we’re suppose to be. At this point, we were very upset. It’s raining. We’re hungry. It’s flippin’ dark now. And there’s SUPPOSE to be a shelter.

Well, tired and tired of standing around, we set up camp. In the rain. And cooked in our tents. This is the very definition of crappy camping.

The day’s stress and rain in the face made a turn for the worse for me. In the middle of the night, I developed a case of the runs. And they ran all next day. I doubt I went much further than a tenth of a mile before I dropped my pack and ran off the side of the trail. (No, I wasn’t poisoned; I’m very good at keeping my water clean… this was just one of those things)

After packing up camp, in the rain, we headed out for the last 10 miles of the hike. Running into the woods every tenth of a mile makes for very slow going. And it makes you a very good candidate for dehydration. And, as fate would have it, I did become dehydrated. I was miserable. I was thirsty. I was wet. And I’m crapping in the rain ever half hour or so.

And this is where it gets pathetically funny. I begin to hallucinate. No joke. The last 5 miles you can hear the road far below, and I was desperately hoping that around each bend I would be at the trail head. I kept on turning around because I thought I heard people coming up behind me (probably just the cars on the roads below, really). I had a whole conversation on the politeness of setting up camp just off trail and refusing to respond to questions with a boulder (which I thought was a tent whose inhabitants I was hoping could tell me how much further).

By the time I got to the end, I was a mess. AND I didn’t have any dry clothes to change into (which is why I always leave dry clothes in the truck when I go hiking now!). But it’s a trip that definitely put hair on my chest and that I think back on affectionately though not nostalgicly.