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 016 - Newfound Gap to Tricorner Knob Shelter

Day: 016

Date: Wednesday, 10 May 2023

Start:  Newfound Gap (AT Mile 207.7) but staying at Gatlinburg

Finish:  Tricorner Knob Shelter (AT Mile 223.4)

Daily Kilometres:  25.0

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

Total Kilometres:  376.6

Weather:  Mild, sunny in the morning and partly cloudy in the afternoon.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Cereal, eggs & sausages, waffles & syrup.

  Lunch:  Ham & cheese sandwich/Italian sub

  Dinner:  Soup & rehydrated meals.

Aches:  Dave - left ankle giving him some grief; Julie - nothing to report.

Highlight:  We have spent the last two weeks hiking the Appalachian Trail hoping for a black bear sighting.  This morning, while we were having breakfast in the motel dining room, a black bear walked past the window and spent a few minutes wandering around the motel courtyard checking out the garbage cans and dumpster (all bear-proof), then disappeared!

Lowlight:  None really.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We woke at 6:00am and had breakfast in the motel dining room where we had our first bear sighting of the trip (see above).  After breakfast, Dave tried several times to get an Uber pickup to take us back to the trail, but with no success.  So we checked out of the motel and started walking to where we thought a good hitch-hiking point would be on the edge of town.  Dave tried Uber one more time as we walked and, holy-moly, we could get an Uber in 20 minutes.  We booked the Uber and sat down by the side of the road until it arrived and then were driven back up into the Great Smoky Mountains and Newfound Gap where we had left the trail on Monday.  It was a beautiful sunny morning and already some of the trailhead carparks were filled to overflowing with hikers’ cars.


At Newfound Gap it was less busy, but still quite a few people around though, when we started hiking northwards along the AT, we were soon on our own.  The first morning after a zero day, is always tough, inevitably uphill with full packs and full bellies, but by late morning we were back in the groove.


The trail was impressive, often along the top of razorback ridges with just a metre or less either side of the path before a steep drop-off.  There was still brush and trees beside the trail so only filtered views to the mountains and valleys beyond most of the time, but still awesome.  And, in a few places, there were rocky outcrops offering fabulous vistas.


Away from the ridges, we were walking through peaceful moss-carpeted conifer forests on broader ridges or along the side of mountains.  The trail was generally good with moderate gradients, but still plenty of up and down as we oscillated between 5,000’ and 6,000’ most of the day.


We saw a few other hikers along the way, one of whom told us a female hiker had been bitten on the butt by a bear last night at one of the shelters we were to pass later, but we never had this story confirmed.


We reached our goal for the day, the Tricorner Knob Shelter, at around 5:30pm and found there was already quite a noisy gathering of hikers.  Rather than join them in the shelter we found a sloping campsite nearby and had a relatively early night.  We are still within earshot of the shelter.  Hope they don’t keep us awake tonight.
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