With Seth’s pack fully loaded down with all of our gear and 5 days worth of food, we exited our Clayton motel room grinning at the silliness of only having one backpack for two backpackers. This was going to be interesting. (Wondering why we would ever do such a thing? You must have missed Chapter 1). We dubbed our experiment The High Low Method for Backpacking because the hiker carrying the pack is under high effort, while the hiker without any pack enjoys a low effort break.
The Southern Appalachian Loop Trail (SALT) is a 350-370 ish mile trail that includes the Appalachian, Bartram, Foothills, Mountains to Sea, and Art Loeb trails. The loop traverses four states: NC, TN, SC, and GA. The loop is hard.
Second section: 112 miles; 5 days; Bartram, Foothills, Palmetto Trail, Raven Cliffs State Park, Jones Gap State Park
[Note: Seth was testing a super secret pack prototype while on the SALT. Thus, I have left out pictures of the pack, and blurred it out when necessary.]
After we hitchhiked back to the Bartram, Seth took the first carry, and we established rules for the strategy as he took straining steps and I hiked along free as a butterfly. The person with the pack would always hike in front in order to keep us hiking at a nice moderate pace with the heavy thing. The person hiking behind, carrying only trekking poles, would be responsible for stopping to fill up water along the way or scouting ahead for the trail while the backpacker continued to plod along. How much did it weigh that first day? We estimate 65 pounds.
As we hiked along that first hour of the day, I began to realize that something was really wrong with my back. I had incorrectly assumed the day before that the stinging, prickly pain was a result of dirt and grit being rubbed into my back due to being wet for four days straight under the ill fitting pack. But after a shower and sink laundry in town, my back started to flare up sans pack. Uh oh. I broke my cardinal rule of no phone usage in the backcountry to quickly google my symptoms. The answer: heat rash. I stumbled over rocks as I read the recommended treatment for heat rash out loud while continuing to hike. Keep the rash dry and clean. Avoid sweating. Stay out of hot or humid environments. I realized with a sinking feeling that we were hiking straight into the perfect storm for aggravating heat rash.
During the morning hours until lunchtime, we each carried for an hour and then would switch off to take a pack break. We remarked to each other how it was such a unique way to backpack! The hour of pack free hiking was delightful, which seemed to make the heavy hours worth it.
Lunch proved to be the turning point for the day. The terrain changed into hot, humid hiking next to the Chattooga River. There were countless blowdowns on this section (thanks, Bartram), and navigating over, around, or underneath them with the heavy pack sapped our energy. And the heat rash was intensifying. Each time I put on the heavy pack, it felt like I was rubbing shards of glass or cacti into my back and hips. That feeling remained for the first ten minutes of the carry until it would thankfully fade away. Additionally, when I was hiking without the pack I noticed that whenever I would have a small surge of adrenaline, whether that be when I tripped or I watched Seth occasionally stumble in front of me, the pinpricking sensation would flare all over my back. Needless to say this was a miserable day.
In the late afternoon we crossed from Georgia into South Carolina, and the Bartram inexplicably changed blaze color without warning, leading us to try to decipher the laughably low quality maps on the trailhead sign for ten minutes before just giving up and hoping that it was still the Bartram. Oh it was still the Bartram indeed, evident in the lush stinging nettles, thorny vines, and poison ivy that grew into the trail. By this point we were switching the pack back and forth every 30-40 minutes since we were both becoming exhausted. To make matters worse I slipped in a creek crossing and smacked my elbow on a rock. Seth heard me go down and responded with the incredibly alarming question: “Did anything snap?!”
One of the many beautiful campsites on the Foothills Trail
We surprisingly arrived at camp relatively early (6pm), allowing us to take river baths and eat a leisurely dinner. As I was sorting through gear and Seth was river bathing, I thought I saw a frog near me on the ground. I opened my mouth to shout to Seth “a frog!!!” but just at that moment I realized with true horror that it was a HUMONGOUS WOLF SPIDER. So instead I just made an “aghhhhh” noise. Seth came to my rescue and tried to get it to scurry away with his trekking pole. But he accidentally tapped it, and hundreds of tiny baby spiders scattered on the ground. The mom spider, who we named Margaret, scurried ten feet away. The tiny spiders immediately stopped moving and became invisible. When we stomped on the ground, they all moved a little closer to mom, but then would stop and become invisible again. I reclined on my sleeping pad while we cooked and ate our cous cous dinner, keeping an eye on Margaret to make sure she wasn’t going to sneak up on us.
Luckily, I had bought Benadryl in town in case the poison ivy rashes on my ankles started spreading, so I took one in the hopes that it would help clear up the heat rash. I zonked out dreaming of pain free hiking in the morning.
I opened my groggy Benadryl-ed eyes to find that Seth already had the water boiling for coffee and grits! I’ve found that in endurance sports/activities such as ultra running and backpacking, having a short memory can be helpful to maintain enthusiasm and optimism (or you could just call me delusional). As such, I awoke and adopted the positive mindset that the heat rash would be gone today and I’d be able to enjoy the day of hiking. Since we had camped at the junction of the Bartram and Foothills Trail, it meant our time on the rugged, deserted Bartram was over. We were in a celebratory mood.
Seth started with the first carry of the day, and the morning miles really were delightful. Sunlight filtered through the trees onto the gently graded trail. When it came time to switch the pack, we employed our system which allowed us to switch it without putting it on the ground, thus avoiding having to pick the heavy thing up again. As I cautiously put the pack on, I realized that the heat rash pain from the day before was almost completely gone! I happily hiked on without the dread that accompanies being sick or injured in the backcountry. Free from the painful pinpricking, I could enjoy how comfortable the pack was, even while overloaded.
Lunch break!
The hiking did get a bit more difficult in the afternoon since we hiked down into a gorge, but it was worth it because the rapids, fed by the recent deluge of rainfall, were beautiful! And Seth saw a baby pig in the forest. I attempted to carry the pack for the last 3 miles of the day since Seth had just carried it through a tougher steep section. The minutes dragged on. Noticing my legs trembling as I went up a few steps, Seth asked if I wanted to pass it off, and I relented. We felt like we were riding a fine line with this heavy pack between making our legs stronger or instead breaking them down. Still 65 miles or so from the next town, I wondered to myself if my body was strong enough to make it there…
The hiking was hard from the moment we left our serene campsite next to a waterfall, indicating that the Foothills trail had tricked us! The rolling southern section had been replaced with steep ascents and lots o’ stairs. Still more pleasant than the Bartram, as there were almost no blowdowns and definitely no bushwhacking. We made okay time through the morning of hiking, though the first section through Gorges State Park was quite boring. We arrived at a suspension bridge over wide River/Lake Jocassee around lunchtime, so we happily dropped the pack on flat sunny rocks adjacent to the river. It was a beautiful day, and we were going to enjoy it.
We shed some, but not all, of our sweaty hiking clothes (there were other humans around! Unlike the Bartram, people actually visit this trail!) and prepared to swim and bathe in the cool river water. Ever fearful of slitherers, I asked Seth if there were any snakes in the water. “Not likely,” he replied. We eased into the water, and it was grand! “…except for that black snake right there…which is…it’s a water moccasin,” he added. The sneaky snake was coiled on a side of the rock that we couldn’t see from where we got in the water. I immediately exited the water with a frown and stood dripping on the middle of the rock. Seth soon joined me, and calmly pointed out another water moccasin coiled in a bush. We watched Water Moccasin A glide into the water and swim upstream, then get back on the rock next to our drying clothes. Water Moccasin B seemed to be minding his own business suspended in his bush over the water. As we ate our ramen lunch (!!!) I came to terms with these guys. Yes, I know, we’re in their habitat. And I have to admit, even though revisiting the image makes me grimace, the way that Water Moccasin A deftly swam upstream by darting between rock and water was pretty cool. Still, I ate that ramen with my head on a swivel and enthusiastically left the rock to begin the afternoon of hiking.
The next section, which we’d heard about from a few people on trail, was titled “Heartbreak Ridge” on our map set. Supposedly there were a lot of steps in a short distance. And soon enough, the steps came into view. I was determined to carry the pack all the way up them without stopping. 289 steps later and pouring sweat, I turned around with satisfaction to look at the lake now significantly below us. Seth took the pack and then the trail took us straight back down. I guess that was the heartbreak part.
And…straight back down.
The rest of the day was more tough hiking, and the steep inclines with a heavy pack took a toll on my body. I started feeling tugging pain in my right calf (specifically the soleus), so Seth took the pack for the remainder of the climbing to our campsite. We had tortellini night, which is always my favorite night on any backpacking trip – pro trip: if you pack two dinners worth of tortellini you can have two favorite nights. We mixed powdered pesto sauce with garlic salt, coconut oil, and the pasta water, then added garlic instant mashed potatoes to cream it up. After mixing it into the full 1.8L pot of tortellini, and adding our nightly tuna, we topped with flaky Maldon salt and red pepper flakes. Now that’s a good backpacking dinner!
“I woke up feeling exhausted and sore for some reason this morning,” reads my journal entry. In retrospect it all seems too obvious, but when you’re in ‘go’ mode in the woods sometimes it’s easy to forget how strenuous these activities are. We began the day with a climb up Sassafras Mountain, the highest point in South Carolina. We didn’t have any maps for the next part of the loop, but luckily there was a semi-helpful map at the Sassafras trailhead. We took a picture of it in the hopes that it would provide enough guidance to get us to Raven Cliffs State Park. The answer: just barely.
We could see that we were supposed to leave the Foothills Trail behind and follow a blue blazed jeep road, but that was about it. This (insert expletive) (insert one more) jeep road began by repeatedly plunging up and down – that kind of trail that’s so steep you have to almost jog down it. Eventually we entered a weird open forest, and then a random, unexpected burned section that made it feel like we’d dropped back on the PCT. We descended down a bit, and then looked in front of us in disbelief at the road, which appeared to go vertically straight up. Seth offered to take the pack because in his words, “that can’t be real.” I huffed my way up it with the darn pack, grumbling about its existence since no car would ever be able to drive up it, and then we promptly gave up and stopped for lunch. I ate quickly so that I could take a glorious twenty minute power nap wrapped up in the rainfly for bug protection.
The only view in this whole section
For the rest of the afternoon we continued in this weird no man’s land between Sassafras and Raven Cliffs. There were no signs that anyone had used the road recently, no signs of humans, and also no signs. Without cell signal, we were flying blind. The blue blazes abruptly disappeared at a junction (how convenient), one road going down ish to the left and one going up to the right. We took the fork on the right, since our insufficient map showed some switchbacks in the middle ish part where we thought we could be. There was a huge, I’m talking huuuuuge, rock high up above us. It looked like a spaceship! It might have been the back of Caesar’s Head State Park, but I’m still not sure. After a few stressed discussions and a little bit of noncommittal backtracking, we decided to keep going forward. Fifteen minutes of hiking later, we found a faint blue blaze! Sigh of relief.
This is what we were working with for navigation
We took a nice snack break and soaked our legs in a mysterious stream. Very rejuvenating, but where was the water coming from??
Eventually we connected with Raven Cliffs State Park, which honestly felt miraculous. If anyone ever needs to hide a dead body, may I recommend the jeep road in between Sassafras and Raven Cliffs. It’ll be more than safe there. You could leave it right on the road and it’d be just fine. As we went to bed that night, we contemplated being stuck in that maze forever if we’d taken the left instead of the right. I shudder.
Also I will note that my calf started hurting again near the end of the day. This is important to the story!
Here’s why: my calf hurt from the first minute of hiking. Not a good sign. To add to this inauspicious start to the day, we now were approaching the one part of the loop that is incomplete. There are no trails to connect Jones Gap State Park to Dupont National Forest, so our PDF included a series of gravel roads to get us there. The key would be finding them. With minimal maps and zero to limited cell service, this was difficult.
Our PDF listed “Rainbow Falls trail junction” followed by “Rainbow Falls trailhead” and then “CCC road.” We took this to mean we should hike the Rainbow Falls trail up to the falls. After that, we weren’t sure. The park map didn’t show any trails leading out the falls, but we thought maybe the map was old or inaccurate. Then this imaginary trail we found would probably lead to the CCC road, right? I carried the pack on the climb up to the falls, which I shouldn’t have. If my calf wasn’t done in already, this sealed the deal as a definite injury.
Rainbow Falls. Beautiful!
Rainbow Falls was absolutely gorgeous! If you’re in the area, I highly recommend. We enjoyed for a couple of minutes, and then turned our attention to the left of the falls. There appeared to be a rough trail leading up the rocks. We followed this trail, and man it was steep! The trail skirted alongside the vertical headwall above us. This felt quite adventurous. Were we on a real trail? Would this trail lead anywhere? How were we going to get up through the headwall?
We came upon a white bandana tied around a tree branch, which definitely meant something but we didn’t know what. Then we got to a near vertical section that required a few climbing moves (a stem here, a mantle there). We found a ratchet strap hanging down from a tree and used that to haul ourselves up the slippery rock and also reassure ourselves that humans had done this before. After crawling up a dirt section by pulling on multiple rhododendrons, the trail leveled out to a gently graded climb. We came to a trail junction and picked left, leading up and out of the woods.
Thank goodness for the ratchet strap!
We emerged in a large pasture with some fences and a barn. Not a person in sight. As we walked by the barn, all I could see were the feet and lower legs of the horses standing in it. For some reason this was very eerie to me. After making it out to the two lane road, we re-evaluated since there was no CCC road in sight. We decided to try walking left on the paved road, and soon found a bubble of cell phone service. We tried to use Google maps to locate the CCC road, but we couldn’t find it on the partially loaded map.
We kept walking down the road, doubting ourselves more and more as the CCC road didn’t appear. We looked at the map again and realized that we were walking in a different direction. Faced with the choice of backtracking almost an hour to the cell service to try to figure things out more, or continuing on in a different direction, we decided to divert from the loop but maintain the goal of making it to Brevard on foot.
Eventually we connected with Highway 276 and took a lunch break in the town of Cedar Mountain. There were two eating establishments in this town. One was a beer hall that didn’t open until 5pm. It was 1pm. The other was a café, closed on Tuesdays. It was a Tuesday. So we sat on the side of the road in some shade and ate our remaining snacks. There is a direct correlation between proximity to a closed beer hall and unhappiness.
Pack blurred to protect its identity.
My calf was really killing me, since I think all the road walking was adding stress. Seth brilliantly realized that Rich Mountain Road, which the PDF had been trying to lead us towards, intersected 276. Soon we turned onto Rich Mountain Road and estimated that we had 7-9 miles left to Brevard. I’d been limping all morning, but at this point in the day it had become really painful. I began wondering if 7-9 miles of limping would be a smart decision, especially when we were planning to hike out of Brevard the next day. It was still relatively early in the day, so if I took the easy way out, I could have a half day of recovery and stop causing any more damage.
We formulated a new plan: I’d take the pack and hitchhike into Brevard, and Seth would take only his phone and camera (no water, as he refused repeatedly) as he hiked the rest of the way in. I didn’t like splitting up, and I didn’t like bailing from the loop. I finally rationalized with myself that if I had to choose between hiking the next 7-9 miles or hiking the rest of the loop, the answer was easy.
The view from Rich Mtn Rd, so I’m told
After a successful hitchhike into Brevard, I walked to the grocery store and ate a lot of fruit in the café. As I unpacked the pack and laid all of our plastic shopping bags out on the table to get reorganized (we’d been using shopping bags as a food bag), I noticed that I had attracted the attention of a gaggle of middle school girls hanging out at the table next to me. They stared since I probably looked homeless to them. Seth ended up running the last three miles down into Brevard, so imagine their surprise when a dirty, sweaty bearded man ran straight into the store, arrived at my table, and wordlessly gulped down the coconut water I handed him. You’re welcome for the show, girls!
Seth’s good friend Joe met us for delicious Mexican food in Brevard, where we drank copious amounts of beer and ate so many chips that they stopped offering to refill them.
We slept well that night because we knew that salvation from the High Low Method for Backpacking would be coming the next day. Stay tuned for the final chapter!
Seth took all of the great pictures in this blog post! Check out his photography website here. I took all of the poor quality iPhone pictures. I don’t have a photography website, sorry.
