Julie and I are hiking the Appalachian Trail in the US from Springer Mt, Georgia, to Mt Katahdin, Maine, in the north, a distance of almost 2,200 miles (3,540 km). Our journey will start in early May 2023 and is expected to take about five months. We will be mostly camping, carrying 3-5 days of supplies to get us between resupply points, where we will be staying in hostels/hotels/motels where we can. I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail back in 1986 so it will be interesting to see how much has changed and how much it has stayed the same.

Appalachian Trail - Day 013 - Mollies Ridge Shelter to Silers Bald Shelter

Day: 013

Date: Sunday, 07 May 2023

Start:  Mollies Ridge Shelter (AT Mile 177.7)

Finish:  Silers Bald Shelter (AT Mile 195.5)

Daily Kilometres:  29.0

GPX Track:  Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos

Total Kilometres:  331.5

Weather:  Cool and foggy early, then milder with occasional sun, with thunderstorms and heavy rain in the evening.

Accommodation:  Shelter

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts/Honey bun

  Lunch:  Wraps and peanut butter

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals

Aches:  Dave - not a good day with fatigue from yesterday and the recurrence of an old ankle injury; Julie - nothing to report.

Highlight:  The highlight had to be arriving at Silers Bald Shelter at 6:00pm to find it empty (after seeing the previous shelter five miles back was filled to overflowing with hikers) and then, two minutes later, having a thunderstorm with heavy rain unexpectedly arrive.  A heavy rain event had been forecast for several days, but kept getting pushed back.  When it arrived it was without warning.  We stayed dry and our tent stayed dry.

Lowlight:  The middle section of the day saw a string of enervating steep and technical ascents and descents around Rocky Top (5,442’) with no view from the top because of fog.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We set out at our usual 7:00am on a cool morning and enjoyed good hiking for the first few hours, though we did miss sighting a bear that a thru-hiker who passed us said he had seen a short distance behind us.  The vegetation changed from the usual woodlands around Spence Field to small grasslands and what looked like orchard trees as though it was some long abandoned farm.


From there, the trail grew more difficult, and Dave was dragging the chain, courtesy of a long day yesterday, a poor night’s sleep and a bothersome left ankle.  It was clear the day was going to be a long one for him and Julie patiently waited every ten minutes or so for him to catch up.


The Rocky Top section was paricularly arduous and slow and we were not rewarded with any views.  A lunch stop around 1:30pm was most welcome and our wish, that the trail become a little easier, seemed to be granted with gentler grades and less technical rocks from then on, but it’s all relative and the climbing continued.


We did at least see some deer in the afternoon and the fog cleared and we had the usual mountain views filtered through the trees.  Dave’s focus was just on reaching Silers Bald Shelter, which was not highly rated, rather than the much more highly rated Double Knob Shelter, 1.7 miles further on.


Our arrival there was fortuitous both because the shelter was empty and because the heavens opened and the rain started immediately after our arrival.  It is still raining heavily now, two hours later as I write this, and we have been joined in the shelter by two bedraggled thru-hikers who arrived some time after us.
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