Cleaning up Miles, Hitch Hiking, and Celtic Food
The best way to celebrate an anniversary is by doing something that you love. When that anniversary happens to be for walking from Georgia to Maine, you take a hike. On September 7, 2021, I concluded my 169 day thru hike of the Appalachian Trail. This year on my “trailiversary”, my partner, Cade, and I decided to spend the day doing what we love: hiking. Cade and I met on trail during our thru hike, and since summitting Mount Katahdin in Maine we have centered our lives around the outdoors. We both work as hiking and backpacking guides in Gatlinburg, TN, and spend our free time planning for future long trails and adventures.
Playing Catch Up
As a toast to our time spent on the AT, Cade and I decided to hike the 8ish AT miles from Clingman’s Dome to Newfound Gap on September 7, 2022. These were new AT miles for me because during my 2021 thru hike, I took a week off trail in order to go home and get my covid vaccine. When I got back on trail, I decided to skip ahead to where my trail family (tramily) was. I got off trail at Fontana Village (mile 164) and got back on trail at Max Patch (254). I skipped the entire AT section through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and several miles after the Park boundary.
I have some guilt surrounding my decision to skip those miles and often question whether or not my hike was authentic because I didn’t do all 2193.1 miles from Springer to Katahdin. When I look back at my time on trail, though, I am reminded that the reason I didn’t get back on trail at Fontana Village was because I wanted to be with my tramily. The friends I made on my thru hike are still in my life to this day and had I not sacrificed miles to be with them our friendships may never have flourished. I also think that had I not skipped those miles, I may never have met Cade.
No one can discredit the miles I did hike, and hiking 2,000+ miles is more than most people will do in their entire lifetime. For those reasons, I have to get outside of my own head and find confidence and satisfaction in the miles I trekked on the AT. Naysayers are out there, but they can never take away the relationships I built or the self-discovery I underwent on my journey north.
The real irony in this admission is the fact that I now work as a hiking and backpacking guide in the Smokies. This job has allowed me to still feel connected to the trail, and I get to tell clients about my thru hike every single day. People are so curious about the kind of person that spends five and a half months wandering in the woods, and I have developed a love of storytelling as I recount experiences from my thru hike to clients.
I have struggled with feeling like a poser when I take clients on backpacking trips on the AT within the GSMNP. I don’t often advertise the fact that I skipped the Smokies, especially because our clients hear that I’m a thru hiker and naturally assume that I hiked through the Park. Our clients are so gracious and recognize that I have a wealth of knowledge and experience when it comes to backpacking and recreating responsibly in the backcountry, despite not covering those Smokies miles on my thru hike.
One of the benefits of my guiding job is the fact that I am slowly making up my Smokies AT miles as the seasons goes on. As of September 2022, I only have around 25 miles left of the 72 AT miles in the GSMNP. I still have to make up miles from the northern boundary of the GSMNP (Davenport Gap Road, northbound mile 238) to Groundhog Creek Shelter (northbound mile 248), and I have already hiked the 6 miles between Groundhog Creek Shelter and Max Patch in the fall of 2021. Technicalities aside, I am so thankful to have gotten to hike 50 miles of the AT in the Smokies as part of my job and to get to share the trail I love with clients.
Hiking for Smiles Instead of Miles
Part of what made celebrating our 1 trailiversary so special was the fact that this was one of the few occasions where Cade and I hiked for ourselves. Cade and I are literally paid to hike, and we rarely hike for fun anymore. Since moving to Gatlinburg to begin work, we have only hiked on our own time once. Obviously, we love hiking and backpacking, but since we do it all the time, our days off are usually reserved for relaxation.
We also don’t get to hike at our own pace or for our own enjoyment when we’re guiding, we are constantly entertaining and ensuring the safety and enjoyment of our clients. This was our first day hike in months that we got to turn on the jets and hike as fast or slow as we wanted, take breaks when we needed, and stop and enjoy the scenery as much or as little as we desired. We managed to cover the 8ish miles in 3.5 hours, a distance that our guided backpacking trips spend all day covering.
Scenic Views and Forgotten Car Keys
The miles between Clingman’s Dome and Newfound Gap were beautiful! We had perfect hiking weather: overcast and cool with patches of sunlight and brief glimpses of distant views. Cade recently invested in running vests for us, and we were able to carry our water, snacks, and water filter in our vests rather than having to lug around a pack. It’s incredible how much faster and stronger I feel without carrying 30+ pounds on my back. I felt like I was flying over the rocks and roots, and my trekking poles helped me to be more agile in navigating the uneven terrain.
Because of my work as a guide, I have learned so much more about the flora and fauna within the Great Smoky Mountains. Cade and I took plenty of breaks on our hike to admire the various mushrooms we found along with the conifer trees and mosses. Hiking fast doesn’t mean we can’t stop and smell the roses or in this case the toothed jelly fungus.
In true hiker trash fashion, several miles into our hike Cade realized he has forgotten his car keys. Before we started our hike, Cade parked his car at Newfound Gap and I drove us to Clingman’s Dome so that we could essentially hike from car to car. His keys were back at Clingman’s Dome along with my vehicle, so we were basically stranded at Newfound Gap. Rather than hiking back to Clingman’s Dome, we decided to push on to Newfound Gap as we had originally planned and try to hitch back to Clingman’s Dome.
Hitch hiking is a dying art form, but one that is alive and well on long distance trails. Thru hikers often have to hitch into town to resupply, and it’s a skill I quickly developed along the AT. Unfortunately for Cade and I, we were hitching around 6:30pm on a road that sees little traffic in the evening hours. We stood at the junction of Newfound Gap Road and Clingman’s Dome Road for 30 minutes before deciding we should bite the bullet and begin the 7 mile road walk back to my parked car. In that time frame, only 3 cars passed us heading in our desired direction, all of which passed us by.
After walking a mile on the road with our thumbs out, our deliverance came in the form of a midwestern family. A white Dodge Ram truck drove passed us, slowed, and gradually pulled over to the curb to allow us to hop in the cab. Our saviors were a middle-aged couple and their 77-year-old mother-in-law who were visiting the Smokies for the first time. During our drive, we got to hear all about their time touring Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, and we explained the irony of two backpacking guides being stranded and unprepared. The trail truly does provide, and the family was rewarded with instant trail karma for picking us up in the form of a black bear running across the road.
As soon as the family dropped us off at my car in the Clingman’s Dome parking lot, the bottom fell out of the sky and we were caught in a downpour. We were so thankful to be warm and dry inside my car rather than walking on the road hoping to catch a ride. We drove back to Cade’s truck at Newfound Gap and made our way into Gatlinburg to treat ourselves to a trailiversary dinner at the new Celtic Pub in town, Boudicca's.
Reflections After 1 Year as a Professional Dirt Bag
I still have several miles to make up in the Smokies, but I feel like this was the perfect way to celebrate our first anniversary of finishing the AT together. Cade and I are both slowly chipping away at completing all the hiking trails within the GSMNP, lovingly referred to as the Smokies 900. I am grateful for a day to honor our 2021 thru hike and am even more thankful to have been able to spend it with the man I love doing something we enjoy together. Magic and Truffles have big plans for the future, I can’t wait for all the miles and adventures to come!
