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The following has been transcribed directly from the journal that I kept while hiking the Appalachian Trail (AT).

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Wednesday, April 26, 2000
Woke up at 7:41 am. Couldn’t tell, but it is clear and sunny. Breakfast is 2 Cream of Wheat packets and some dried apricots.

The man and his daughter and someone we haven’t seen before have already passed us. It’s 8:53 am and we are finally breaking the tents down for movement. Sleep was ok-don’t think it got any cooler than it is now. Kept waking up every few hours. Definite pain in my right hip-might be tough to walk? Shoulders are really sore also. Looking to hit Gooch Gap today-it is about 12 miles away.

10:08am. 45 degrees. Arrived at Long Creek Falls-going off the trail .1 miles to take pictures. Everybody is talking about their shoulders hurting-yes Sir! It hurts badly. The hip is feeling great-no pain anywhere but my shoulders and they hurt pretty bad.

The falls drop about 60 feet and have two tiers. Mike got too close and almost slid right into the pool.

11:50 am. 49 degrees. Taking a break after the long climb up some steps climbing the Mountain. Pretty tough. Now we are headed down to Hightower Gap then up the HUGE Sassafras Mountain. Looks pretty level and down to the gap.

My Achilles tendon on my left heel and my shoulders hurt badly..whoooohoooo!

After climbing some nasty tall, steep trails, we had lunch. Stopped at 1pm just above (before) Horse Gap. Rough going today. From where we are we can see Camp Merrill, which is the mountain phase of Ranger School. We are all tempted to stop in the Ranger Camp for a shower and food. From here we can also see Blackhawks flying out of the Camp. It is 56 degrees. First crap for Skye and I. We moved off the trail and did our business.

Stayed at lunch for an hour and soaked up the sun. Hurting badly. Hills are steep so we break (or at least I break) often on the ascents-on the other hand, I speed race down the steep descents.

Back down the hills working on Sassafras Mountain, which hurt too. Down Sassafras to Coopers Gap where we stop to figure out what to do about going into the Ranger Camp. It’s 3 miles downhill on a gravel road. No one can totally decide so we resort to a coin toss. Heads for the Camp and tails to continue on. Best 2 out of 3. Both tails-destiny calls. March on.

Next up-Justus Mountain and Phyllis Spur.

Justus is bad cause it goes up steep and levels out-BAM-then back up and through some bramble thickets-lots of trees that seem to have blocked the trail when they fell. Steep downhill to Phyllis Spur. 4 hikers camped out on their backs. Guess this may be a good place to stop. We fill lots of water-actually clogged the filter cause I had it in the sand. Cleaned it (porcelain filter) and it worked again.

Dinner is Velveeta Mac-n-cheese. Good! Used 8 oz. of water. Also mixed up a packet of Oral Rehydration Salts.

*Lunch was Salami and crackers again.

Total today: 9.6 miles
Overall Total: 21.2 miles

The following has been transcribed directly from the journal that I kept while hiking the Appalachian Trail (AT).

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Tuesday, April 25, 2000
7:00am alarm goes off-more jokes about not going and everyone is comparing the weight of their packs-Donny seems to have the heaviest. So here we go. We had breakfast, laughed and procrastinated about leaving. It’s 9:14am and still foggy. We will not go see the falls due to the fog. We have our picture taken in front of the lodge.

9:30am – 46 degrees, foggy with light mist. The hike is on! Stopped at the sign to mark the approach trail and took some pictures.

Hiking starts off easy for the first few steps but quickly develops into sharp inclines. The packs are heavy-my shoulders are burning after only an hour or so on the trail. We take breaks every hour or so and the group quickly is dividing into 3 groups of hikers with varying paces. Mike and Skye can really belt out some good strides-but it is equally hard on all of us.

We climb Frosty Mountain which takes you from 2,700 feet to 3,350 feet in 1 mile of uphill climbing. We all stopped on Frosty (we didn’t know where we were yet) and tried to guess how far we came: 3.7 miles so far. At this point we ran into a father and daughter who are going all the way to Maine. They just finished 200 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail for a train-up. He confirms that we are on Frosty (found out that he hiked the entire AT before). Next up is Nimblewill Gap where there lies a memorial for a man whose plane crashed near this spot in 1968-the memorial was placed in 1996 upon removal of the plane.

After Nimblewill begins a 750 foot climb-extremely steep over 3/4 of a mile which leads up Black Mountain. We crest that mountain and head right back down 500 feet at which we begin our final ascent of Springer Mountain and the beginning of the AT.

The Appalachian Trail begins atop Springer Mountain, Georgia. There are many ways to Springer, but we chose the most difficult, a grueling 7.3 mile hike from the Amicalola Falls Lodge to the southern Terminus (Springer). My reasoning-if you are going to walk all these miles on the trail, why would you want to leave out a mere 8 more miles? Really made you appreciate and actually become a bit apprehensive once you reach the AT.

Wow, what a climb-steeper than Black Mountain with a series of switchbacks that made me stop very often for a breath. Shoulders are smoked. Finally hit the crest of Springer-fogged in and can’t see any of the view. We take more pictures, meet a few people, and sign in on the visitors log (the visitors log is just a spiraled notebook which is hidden inside of a large boulder on top of the mountain. There are similar books in the shelters along the way also). We start on a long descending hike. on the way we stop at the Springer Mountain Shelter for some lunch. The shelter, like most along the trail, is a 3 sided wooden house measuring about 10×20 feet. Lunch for me is hard salami and crackers. I notice that there are mouse turds on the beams of the shelter and there is a small loft in this one. Someone is sleeping up there.

4 more miles to our campsite for the night-in between 2 creeks. The shelter at Stover Creek was full so we continued to hike until 5:30pm or so. We saw a nice spot of fairly flat ground and we set up our tents, filtered water for everyone out of a fast running creek and cooked dinner: Stove top stuffing and minute rice with some dehydrated chicken tossed in. Also had some tang and apricots.

Bed time at 8:30pm. Clouds started to show a little sun and blue sky but still cloudy when we went to sleep. It is 45 degrees.

* Note: Dehydrated chicken-we made the first batch maybe 3 weeks ago and it turned moldy on me. I suppose 2 weeks is a good planning time for use. At least I found out how to tell when it is bad: fuzzy green mold.

Total today: 11.6 miles

** Something to note: There are many different ways to compute mileage on the AT but only one that counts: “how many miles you actually walked on the AT itself.”  However, that will not be the total amount of miles that you have actually walked. Miles add up when you go off trail to towns, side trails and shelters. In my account, the total mileage will be what we walked, not including any extra miles for water or shelters.

The following has been transcribed directly from the journal that I kept while hiking the Appalachian Trail (AT).

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Monday, April 24, 2000
Set the alarm for 4:30 am, but kept hitting the snooze button so I could grab those last minutes of warmth from Stef and little Anabelle.

Departed the house at 5:10am-headed for the Raleigh, North Carolina Airport. Temp is 57 degrees.

Arrive at Raleigh with no problems at 6:40am. Plane leaves at 7:25 am. Being just after the Easter holiday there were a lot of travelers and I believe my flight was full.

Uneventful flight of 1 hour and 35 minutes. Arrived at Nasville, Tennessee Airport at 7:55am CST. Slept for part and read a book for the other. The book is, “The Arab Israeli Wars” by Chaim Herzog. Makes me realize how little I know about world history.

So, am I nervous? Hmm…I felt a touch of the butterflies as I stepped aboard the aircraft, so maybe I am. I suppose it is more curious about what I have gotten myself into.

NASHVILLE – 7:55 am. 49 degrees. Rain. I just realized that I forgot my gloves – either left them in Ryan’s car (he drove me to the airport) or they are laying on the floor in the house.

I found my backpack pretty easily and stepped outside to unwrap it and wait for Mike. I had my pack shrink wrapped in cellophane to keep anyone from tampering with it. Also found that it weighed 49.2 pounds and this is without water, fuel and gloves.

I am sitting outside the baggage claim parking area. There is some light construction going on-they are repairing the road. Anyhow, 2 guys are applying a coating to the road and 1 guy is vacuuming up the water that is pooling from the rain-he just spilled the shop vac-water almost made it to the newly painted area.

Mike, a great friend from Flight School, was delayed in signing out of his unit-we both ended up PCS’ing on the same day. He picked me up at 9:30 am, central time.

We took the 2 and a half hour drive to his mother’s house in Cartersville, Georgia-via Ryans Steak House where we both got steaks. Temperature is down to 46 degrees.

5:25pm, we depart for Amicalola Falls. It is foggy- can only see about 20 feet in front of the truck. 1 and a half hours later, we arrive. His parents drop us off and take our picture outside of the Lodge.

The hotel at Amicalola Falls is amazing, a beautiful fire glowing in a huge great room that overlooks a green, lush mountain valley. The fog breaks for a few moments and we can actually see the vibrant greens of the new spring life down in the valley.

Mike and I decide to buy postcards to send home and mark the beginning of our adventure.

8:30pm-The others arrive-Donny, Todd and Skye and the jokes continue about not going out there. Everyone is joking about not even leaving.

Off to bed…tomorrow the hike begins.

July 4th, 1999
Independence Day. United States of America.

After many weeks of researching and learning about the Appalachian Trail I decided to take my first steps on it and see what it was all about.

The Appalachian trail stretches more than 2,160 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mount Katahdin, Maine. It traverses the ridges of some of the most beautiful mount peaks east of the Mississippi river.

It passes through 14 states and is the longest marked footpath in the World.

On the 4th of July in 1999, Rob Stark, Tim Beebe and myself, Gordon Cimoli, decided to begin our journey on this legendary trail.

We walked only 13 miles that day, from North to South from Crandon to Bastian, Virginia. We had no packs but we did carry water.

During our 6 hour walk in the woods we experienced the full beauty and wonder of the Appalachian Trail-the AT…and from that experience I set off to continue the journey.