Day: 019
Date: Saturday, 13 May 2023
Start: Phil’s Gap (AT Mile 263.9)
Finish: Hot Springs (AT Mile 275.0)
Daily Kilometres: 19.1
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 464.5
Weather: Mild and sunny in the morning, overcast and warm in the afternoon.
Accommodation: Hotel cabin
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Patty melt & chips/Hamburger & chips
Dinner: Nachos, ice-cream.
Aches: Dave - fatigue and a few niggles; Julie - nothing to report.
Highlight: Descending to Hot Springs on a glorious sunny morning we had long stretches of trail bordered by flowering mountain laurel and the blossoming trees were visible throughout the woods. It was an avenue of flowers.
Lowlight: None really.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
It did not rain overnight, but there were no drying winds either, and everything we packed into our damp packs in the morning also seemed damp. Putting on our wet hiking clothes and socks and our wet boots was a particular joy in the pre-dawn light! The tent fly was also wet, so we had plenty of things to dry out when we reached our destination for the day, Hot Springs.
We started hiking soon after 7:00am on what promised to be a beautiful morning though, of course, it was steadily uphill. On the plus side, we were soon generating enough heat to warm ourselves up and begin the process of drying out the clothes we were wearing.
After that first climb, the rest of the 11 miles into the small town of Hot Springs was downhill, with a couple of notable exceptions. The sun-dappled trail was in good shape, often covered in soft leaf litter, and we had views glimpsed through the trees of cloud-covered valleys far below.
We took a break mid-morning and saw a few hikers for the first time, a small group of male day-hikers enjoying their Saturday morning outing and a couple of thru-hikers.
Although still a beautiful morning for hiking and mostly downhill, Dave was certainly ready for us to arrive in Hot Springs from which, for the last half hour or so, we could hear the sounds of civilisation - traffic noise, machinery, dogs barking - and occasionally glimpse houses through the trees below.
We arrived just before 1:00pm and stopped on our way into the very small town at a diner we had heard about for a scrumptious lunch and some long cold drinks,. Bill Bryson, in his book about the Appalachian Trail called “A Walk in the Woods” (very good read), says that thru-hiking is about deprivation. The longer you are away from a town, the more you appreciate ice-cold drinks, junk food, showers, etc. - things you would not ordinarily think about very much. Arriving at the diner at the same time as us, was a sports car club (Mazda MX-5 Miata according to Julie) so we had to get our orders in quickly.
From the diner it was a short walk to our “hotel”, which is really a set of cabins behind a hotel, where we were given early check-in (2:00pm). Then it was time to empty our packs and spread everything out to dry, including the packs, and we were fortunate that there was a verandah to our cabin and some outdoor seating outside by the river which flows behind our cabin. No laundry here, so we showered and hand-washed our hiking clothes which also needed to dry. Thankfully there was a warm breeze blowing and things dried quickly.
Then Julie did our shopping while Dave rested up and later we went to the next door brewery, which included a Mexican restaurant, for dinner and ate outside enjoying the balmy evening and bluegrass band, along with many others. Hot Springs has changed since I passed through while hiking the AT in 1986. Then, it seemed the town was dying with, from memory, one cafe and one motel and many closed shopfronts, and I was the only thru-hiker in town. Now the town has embraced the hiking culture and obviously developed itself as a weekend destination with an outdoor store, white water rafting outfit, and a number of cafes, restaurants and lodging options. The trail goes right down the main street and has the AT logo embedded in the footpath/sidewalk. There were many thru-hikers in town as well as people obviously visiting for the day or weekend. Good to see the revival.
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