We start the day with a steady up hill climb for 4 miles, mostly at a gentle gradient following an old road. Other hikers pass us, as they walk fast and we walk slow. "Babes in the Wood" is our name for Crafty and Samantha, two young women who have come together to walk this trail, rather than walk alone. Samantha is finishing her final year of school, and this AT hike counts for credit. 'Not like when we went to school', Digby and I both mutter to ourselves. We enjoy their company. Turtle strides past in her lime green accessories - matching lime green sunglasses, t-shirt, socks, looking very stylish. We follow an old road to Chattahoochee Gap.
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| Alison at Chattahoochee Gap - look how pudgy I am! |
We meet Jo Siegal, known as 'Domino Dude' who gives us a $20 gift voucher for a Domino's pizza. He uses his mobile to call a taxi to meeti him at the next road crossing to collect all this warm winter gear, so he can lighten his pack. He comes from Kentucky, as franchises for Dominos, and regales us with hiking stories as we hike.
We stop at the road crossing of Unicoi Gap. 12 thru-hikers have accumulated there. Turtle cooks up mashed potato on her stove. Two hikers are dropped off by a vehicle - they had hitched into the town of Helen for pizza, but said ' the pizza was terrible - too much cheese.' Turtle says 'pizza is pizza' - better than instant mashed potato.
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| Crafty and Samantha |
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| Turtle at Unicorn Gap eating mashed potato |
On the next climb, I move into my steep climbing rhythm - slow steps at a steady pace which you can maintain for ever without having to huff or puff or stop to rest. We call it 'polay, polay' which is swahili for 'slowly, slowly' and taught to us by our porters and guides when we climbed Mt Kilimanjaro. Next minute I have Crafty and Girl in Sky following my footsteps - I feet like a mother elephant with the babies in tow behind me. But we move very smoothly up the climb and they dont lose their breathe and they don't need to stop.
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| Digby, Turtle and me |
Turtle says to Digby ' I think your trail name should be Wizard from Oz'. Digby is delighted to accept such a name, and he becomes known as Wizard for short. My own trail name has been hatching for some time. I started off as 'capetribber' which is my internet persona. But the americans could not hear this properly and it was heard as capetripper. Then as I started tripping all over the place it went from tribber to tripper. But the americans still had trouble hearing 'tripper'. They would ask 'what is your trail name?' and I would reply 'Tripper' and they would respond 'oh trooper' and i would say ' no 'triiiiiiiipper', and they would say 'what?' It must have been my accent. Anyway our trail persona become Tripper and Wizard. But hikers would ask 'have you seen the two aussies?'
We decided to carry water and make camp at a flat spot about 1km above Unicorn Gap. The rest of the hiking cohort continued on with plans to make another 4 miles. We know our limitations. Ten miles was quite enough for us.
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