[at-l] Trip Report - Pine Mountain Trail - Part 5 - Day 4 and conclusion

[Jack.Bulkley@sas.com (Jack Bulkley)]

Day 4 

This is a continuing report by Jack Bulkley, SoulFull, on a family-backpacking trip on the Pine Mountain Trail in Georgia. The other hikers were my wife Jenny, 10-year-old son Kyle and 8-year-old daughter Mallory.

It got clear and cold in the night. The water bottles didn't freeze but it must have been close to freezing outside and windy in the morning. I made pancakes for breakfast. Everyone was feeling pretty worn down, so we decided to adjust our plans. I pointed out that the last road crossing was less than ½ a mile back up the trail, but Jenny wanted to make it out on our own. Looking at the map, we could see two places to take side trails and get us to the end of the trail in about 7 miles. That became the plan. We wanted to walk to the truck. 

I filtered a little more water. It was a little brown from the rain runoff across the leaves and pine needles. I reminded everyone that the filter claims to make safe water not pretty water. We packed up and hit the trail. Mallory and Kyle went ahead again and reported another mile marker and then the turn off for the first alternate trail. Once we were back on the main trail, we took a rest at Sparks Creek Campsite, our original target for the night. The day had turned sunny and we started taking off layers of clothes and stuffing them in our packs. After nearly four hours, we caught site of the TV tower, which is next to the parking lot that held the truck. The last part of the trail winds around a beaver pond, but we did not see any beavers. Maybe we were too busy trying to catch a glimpse of the TV tower, but more likely we were just too noisy. Jenny got in the lead during part of this section. She did see a deer and twice flushed either pheasant or wild turkey. I suspect
having the kids out front had kept us from seeing any other wildlife. We reached the end of the trail around 12:30 - all in all a pretty good hike for the day. 

Home

The tentative plan was to drive as far towards home as we felt like going. I had figured we would want a shower bad enough to stop pretty early. But once we went through a drive-thru and got some food, we felt pretty good. Don't get me wrong. We were definitely pretty ripe. Later we stopped for gas and there was a Dairy Queen attached to the gas station. The girls behind the counter weren't too keen about me. I know I looked pretty scraggly and I suspect they could smell me from 30 feet away. Some milk shakes and ice cream got us on our way again. The driving went pretty well and Jenny pressed on (she drove all the way again), reaching the house around 9:30 pm. After a little unpacking and a lot of bathing, we went to bed. I did weigh the packs before I unloaded anything. Jenny's was still 27 pounds and mine was 47 pounds. We are not leaving with that much weight in the future. It was an adventure - a hard adventure, but also an accomplishment. We made it from end-to-end, even
if we had to modify the original plan. I was proud of all of us. In the future, we will plan on fewer days with more miles per day. Although the next few times, we will probably just setup a base camp near the truck and do day trips from there.

Soulfull
Jack.Bulkley@sas.com
Apex, NC
Anyplace is within walking distance if you have the time.