Trail Tips
 

First Tip:  These trail guides were written before the GPS became available.  By all means get a good one with a good battery.  Shield it from the rain and streams and use it carefully.  But don’t rely on it totally!  Have a plan of what do you will do if it should fail or its battery run out. “Flight Plan” every mission a day or two before you begin the hike.  Review it again before you leave. ALWAYS take someone with you, notify friends and family where you will be, and be ready to fall back on the methods used by hikers in the past.

Always carry a COMPASS.  I always carry two:  one of them is a good, expensive one that is able to provide bearings accurately enough to plot positions; the other is smaller and cheaper and can be tied to a string and secured to either a shirt pocket or belt, and then left hanging in a pocket.  The second one is the only one I ever refer to on my hikes, because I usually just want to get a quick glance at the general direction in which I am going, or the stream is flowing, or the ridges are running.   I do have a good sense of direction, and can easily take visual bearings from the sun; but both of these capabilities often become suddenly useless in the mountains.  The more expensive compass has a mirror with it and could be used for signaling (not very likely) or for checking out scratches on your face.  Usually they have an inclination needle that  shows degrees of elevation of various objects (trees, clouds, peaks or whatever) and that is either very useful or totally useless, depending on your needs.

A TOPOGRAPHIC MAP is both a necessity and a pain.  One good hike can ruin the thing, filling it with holes and covering it with mud, sweat, blood and tears.  If you make notes on it, and the map is still usable, the messages will confuse the tarnation out of you on subsequent hikes.  (“What does this ‘7 15’ mean?” “Was that a.m. or p.m?” “Or  July 15?” “or was it 2/5?”)  I like to carry a new map to a good copy  machine and run off several copies of the areas I will be hiking.  That way, I am hiking with an 8 X 10 inch piece of paper that cost from 6¢ to 10¢ instead of a 28 by 21 inch (or bigger) piece of paper that cost $4.00 or more.  I can fold the copy up so it shows only the area I am interested in, and take notes on it and then later throw it away, or file it away.  Where is the real map during the hike?  It’s folded up all nicely and neatly in my backpack, fanny pack, or vest, ready for emergency use if needed.  A 1:100,000 map is also nice for figuring out which lakes or peaks are visible from a high mountain top.  There are several good maps that can be purchased at the U. S. Forest Service office in Franklin or the local Chamber of Commerce.  
 
HIKING BOOTS are required for any serious hiking.  Their magic lies in their ability to provide a)  support for the ankles, b)  protection against sharp rocks, c)  traction in mud and on steep slopes, and d)  ability to still be usable after walking through 2 to 6 inches of water.   But - don’t forget to keep the bootlaces tight and tidy!  You don’t want big bows flopping abound  that can catch on knobs of twig stumps as you are climbing over deadfall trees.  Sometimes, on a steep slope, that can set you up for a nasty fall.  

WALKING STAFFS.  Besides serving as a kind of ID badge for a hiker, do these staffs really serve any useful purpose?  You bet they do!  They help you up steep slopes, and they help you back down them later on.  They are incredibly useful when you cross a fast-flowing icy stream on moss-covered rocks that are just below the surface of the water.  They can help steady a camera (although not very well).  They can help serve as a “rope” from one hiker to another to help up, down, or over.  They are useful for poking and prodding things found on the trail, lifting up flowers or leaves, and for pointing .  And those falling leaves, of red and gold, that drift by your window back in town, remember them?   Out on the autumn trail they hide all those little sticks and rocks and roots that you have been tripping on all spring and summer. When leaves cover the trail you can’t see them until you’re on your way down!   A walking staff can help you maintain both your balance and your decorum.  Does one size fit all?   No way!   Probably, a good fit is to get one that reaches about half way between your elbow and shoulder.  That’s what I try to get, and it has always been perfect.

WATER.   Bring  your own.  You should count on about 8 ounces of water for every hour you are hiking.  Bring more if your trail has a lot of steep climbs on it because you’ll be doing some heavy breathing and all that huffing and puffing will dry out the mouth.  The water on all of the trails is not safe for drinking unless it has been boiled for at least 18 minutes or filtered with an adequate filter designed for the purpose.  Almost all the hikers I see on the trail now are using filters.  If that works for  you, then it solves a lot of problems, because there is a lot of water in these mountains, it just needs to be cleaned up before drinking.  Remember to be careful and not contaminate your filter.  I  use one called First Need, but MSR, Katadyn, SweetWater, PUR, and others are competing in this new market.  You can make it even easier if you get one that fits onto a bottle and just pumps the purified water right into the bottle.

FIRE.   Bring your own.  If you want to boil some water for tea or soup, don’t plan on using twigs and branches that could be found along the trail.  These trails are heavily traveled, and fire-makings have been mostly used up.  Don’t forget the trees  need those things too for minerals and humus. Fires cause damage to things on and under the earth like humus, grasses, mosses and roots.  Also you must absolutely make certain that all fires are completely dead before you leave.  With my Coleman Peak stove this takes about two minutes  (to cool down) then, it’s back in my pack. If you feel like a fire, bring along a gas-fired stove.  I usually don’t take a stove on a hike less than about seven or eight hours, or unless there are four or more hikers.

SHORTS.  A lot of the through-hikers on the AT wear shorts.  Ok, those guys are really not hikers, they are marathoners of a sort, but they are definitely not people just out for a day of fun.  I always wear long trousers, usually jeans (blue or otherwise), and usually a long sleeved shirt with a tee shirt under it.  Often I will roll up the sleeves of the shirt, but I still like being able to roll them down when that feels comfortable.   The long trousers absorb the feeling of wet grass stroking your bare legs, they deter mosquitoes, and can help discourage ticks if the cuffs have been sprayed with repellent; they help deflect the oil of poison ivy, and they snag on brambles and blackberry thickets instead of my bare skin.  

Toting barges and lifting bales.  WHAT TO CARRY?   Some people have solved this problem, very well; they go only on short hikes, and they carry nothing; tee shirts and shorts, one small water bottle and a small camera.  I usually carry 14 to 20 pounds of photographic gear and wear a vest.  I also carry about 30 oz of water and sometimes a water filter.  That’s pretty heavy for me.  What you want to carry depends on  your experience.  Some things to consider are:  water, ponchos, snacks (eat all you want while hiking!), photo gear, binoculars, police whistle, compass, map, snake bit kit, a bandanna or two, and so on.  All this will fit inside a small fanny pack.

TIMING.  I often speak of hiking at a speed of 2 miles per hour.  That is slow; and I actually do clip along at about 2.4 mph.  It is often useful to add about fifteen minutes for every 1,000 foot climb, or subtract the same for an equivalent descent.  On the Lower  Ridge Trail, I crawl to the summit at about 1.5 mph, and blast back down at about 2.5 mph.  And that does average out to about two mph.   However, I usually am busy making 2 or 3 photographs (at about 10 minutes per shot) and try to identify  strange plants, (totally unknown to any plant book!) so the 2 mph rate seems to hold up pretty good; at least until the thunder starts to get close!  So, just what is 2 mph?  That’s 10,560 feet per hour, or 1,056 feet per 6 minutes, or 176 feet per minute, and yes, 3 feet per second!  At 2 mph, 1/10 of a mile will be covered every 3 minutes.   My little finger is about 2/10 of a mile wide on the 1:24,000 topo maps, so I can do a “little finger” about every 6 minutes.  My thumb covers about 1/3 of a mile on those maps, so I can do a “thumb” about every 10 minutes.  That comes in real “handy” (pun intended), but that’s me; check out your own digital computer references,  they are a lot easier to use than trying to find the legend part of the map, which is always printed on the wrong end of the map.

10  NAVIGATION.  Basically, there are only 3 ways to navigate.  Fix-to-fix, pilotage, and dead reckoning.  A “fix”, in navigational terms is an absolutely known position.  When you cross the forest service road bridge over the Nantahala River, you have a “fix”.  Technically, a “fix” is comprised by the intersection of two or more “lines of position”, or “LOP’s”; in this case, the forest service road is one LOP, the river is the other LOP; when you are at their intersection, you have your “fix”; you know exactly where you are and you can plot it on a map.  You can run from fix-to-fix when you are traveling a well defined LOP, like a Forest Service road that has a number of well marked intersections.  Pilotage is usually best used when you have the destination in sight; a good example is the docking of a power boat.  In this case  you keep adjusting direction and power until you establish a desired closure rate.  Dead reckoning is the applying of time and distance to a chart, and it is at the heart of all navigation.  It is determining, say, that you are traveling at 30 mph headed 270°, and have been doing this for 1 hour, therefore, you “should” be at a certain position  which can easily be figured and plotted .  †hat would be called a “Dead Reckoning Position”, or a “DR Position”, and it is where you “should” be; it also is almost certainly not exactly where you actually are.  Problems complicating DR positions usually are wind or drift.  Fortunately, we don’t have to contend with that in hiking; unfortunately, we do have to contend with maps that are not exactly accurate.  Also, we don’t need to plot our direction, because we are on a trail - that gives us a constant LOP, even though it may twist all over the place; we know we are somewhere on that trail, we just don’t know exactly where.  Now, if we know we have traveled on the trail for 30 minutes, I know that is about 3 “thumb-widths” from the last position.  So, before I get 30 minutes out, I will see what that place should “look” like on the map.  What do I expect the trail will look like, does it bend, or change altitude?  Is there anything that looks like it would be easy to find?  The best looking place might be 20 minutes out, 25, 30, 35, or so on.  So, I will try to find a switchback, or cove, or something that should be observable.  If there looks like a nice cove out about 2 and 1/2 thumb-widths, then I will assume that’s about 25 minutes.  If it’s 11:14 a.m. right now, then I can mark that place and indicate that I intend to reach it at 11:39.  By 11:33, or so, I’ll be on the lookout.  When I get a position, I draw a line out to the right of my direction of travel and write the time down there.  If I come back the same way, the times would be attached to lines running the other direction from the trail on the map (still to the right of my direction of travel).     
     

LIGHTNING.   My research into the literature concerning lightning protection has revealed very little firm information, and much of what I have found tends to conflict with itself.  It is easy to find suggestions such as not to get under a tree, and not get left out in the open.  What else is left?  The Sierra Club  advises to choose shelter under several trees of more or less uniform height and avoid tall, isolated trees.  They also advise to avoid open meadows,  rocky outcroppings, and the edge of cliffs.  In short, don’t be be the tallest object around, and don’t be on, under or around a tall object.    Horace Kephart  believed that beech and birch trees were safer than oaks, poplar and maples.   The Ortho Problem Solver says that not only tall trees and isolated trees are vulnerable to lightning but also so are trees that are dead or decaying or trees that grow in soil that is unusually moist or near water; also that vulnerable species are oak, poplar, tulip tree, spruce and pine; less vulnerable are beech and birch.   They also point out that no tree is completely safe from lightning.  Now then, I find that most birch trees grow near water, and the beech trees tend to grow on higher places.  The average tree of uniform height in most of our forests are poplar, oak and maple.  Much of our forests were clear cut 40 years ago, and we are in the second stage of secession, which is poplar.   Also, you will not normally be choosing from all possible places in a forest, but only from what you can see at the moment, and if the trees are tall, and there is a lot of rain or wind, it may be difficult to identify the species of the tree.  Fortunately both birch and beech are easily identified by their trunk.  Many books advise you to count the seconds between lightning strike and arrival of thunder.  Each five seconds of that period indicates that lightning strike was 1 mile away; however, it does not mean that the storm is that far away, or that the next lightning strike will be that far away.  The only reason for counting is to determine whether or not the storm appears to be approaching you.  As long as it is, you probably ought to be moving toward whatever area appears to be safest.  Usually, in the mountain forests, you can’t  see the lightning strike and have to go by whether the thunder is getting louder or occurring more often, or if the sky (which you usually can’t see very well either) is getting darker or lighter.   I sometimes teach at the community college extension in Franklin, and occasionally give multiple choice examinations.  And when I do, I tell the students that if they can’t find a perfect answer, to choose the best one.  Sometimes, a student will tell me that he or she doesn’t like choosing the best answer from among basically incorrect answers when their final grade might turn on that.  Well, that’s the way it sometimes is, and that may be what you find when lightning comes close to you in the mountain forests, that there may not be a perfect answer provided, and you find yourself having to choose from the best of what is available  - and yes, your final grade may depend on it!    There is no “safe” place, but some places are safer than others.  Stay out of clearings, off of mountain or ridge tops, keep away from rocky prominences, avoid very large trees, stay away from bodies of water, get under trees that are generally low and uniform in height, keep away from cliffs, either at the top or bottom, avoid pine trees; that helps to improve your odds, but guarantees nothing.  Usually, if I get caught in the rain, I am on my way back to my truck, so I just keep going.  But I do keep away from those open areas and avoid any very large isolated trees.  

TICKS.  I have not had a lot of problem with ticks in the mountain forests.   In fact, I have never picked up one from hiking; I’ll probably bring home a batch next time out!  Ticks usually are creatures of grassy areas, and seem to love tall grass.  There is plenty of grass in the mountain forests, especially in the clearings and bald areas.  I remove ticks from my dogs with a flea comb and swab a dab of alcohol  on the wound.  Ticks often carry diseases, and I do not use my bare hands to remove ticks.  It is imperative that all hikers familiarize themselves with the symptoms of tick-borne diseases, because those diseases can be permanently debilitating or fatal, and they do respond well to early treatment.  It is also important to remember that many people infected with these diseases do not recall having noticed a tick on themselves.  Some of the disease-carrying ticks are, essentially, the size of the head of a pin.   Some of the worst ones are not much bigger than a period.  Consult a physician for better understanding of the treatment of  ticks.              
    When I put on my hiking boots, I begin with cotton socks (or polypropylene) which I pull up my leg, then I pull on heavy wool socks that I turn down above my ankle, then come the hiking boots.  All this I spray with insect repellent, then pull my jeans down over the socks and boots and spray the cuff of the jeans.  I also spray my sleeve cuffs, collar and hair.  I make my own spray and use isopropyl alcohol and an essential oil.  The essential oils that seem effective for me are citronella, juniper (smells like a martini!) basil, myrrh, and rosemary.  Are these sprays as effective as Deet?  No, but they actually seem to run a pretty close second.  If I were going into terribly infested areas, I would probably go back to Deet.  However, the oils I have mentioned do work very well.  They seem to be effective for about three to four hours, can be easily carried and reapplied, and the smell is pleasant and soon gone; unlike Deet which can persist hours even after several showers.  The mixture I use is about 12 ml of essential oil, to 240 ml of alcohol.  (About one tablespoon oil to one cup alcohol.)

CLOTHING.  I’m writing this on July 25, 1996, at 4:15 p.m.  The forecast weather today was 50% chance of rain, clearing later, high in the mid 80’s.  Sounds like a good day for a hike, right?  It did rain last night and this morning, then cleared up from about noon to 1:30 p.m.  Then the rain intensified, two and a half inches have fallen since 2:00, the temperature has fallen to 57° and the wind has picked up and is gusting at 30 to 35 mph.  At the summit of Standing Indian, it is probably closer to 45°, and the wind gusts are certainly higher.  I don’t have any windchill tables that go up to 45°, but you can bet that if you were there, and soaking wet, that you would be encountering some windchill factors that are close to freezing.   So, you always carry your parka when you hike here in the summer?  Of course not, but those hikers in shorts and tee shirts would enjoy (actually, they really wouldn’t enjoy anything under those circumstances!), but they would at least be glad that they have strapped to their fanny pack or backpack, a long-sleeved shirt and a poncho (and a hat or cap).  They won’t be dry when they get back to their car, but every little bit can help when the weather turns wicked.  Such weather is not common, but it is not rare either.  I encountered the same thing in 1992, out of Graveyard Fields on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  At 5,000 feet, temperatures dropped from 80° to 45° in about 30 minutes in a series of thunderstorms with heavy rain and hail blowing sideways across the ground.  

COMMUNICATION.  The hikes I made and recorded here, were mostly done in the 1990’s, almost always alone.  That was before the era of the GPS and cell phone.  I did carry a portable CB radio in case of problems.  Now I carry GPS, cell phone and weather radio on all long hikes into the Beautiful Mountains.  PLUS – notify friends, family, or somebody, possibly rangers, where you intend to go and when you intend to return.  Write down on a piece of paper your name, the date and time, where you intend to hike, when you intend to return and who to call in case of an emergency with the phone number.  Leave that on your dashboard where it can be read from outside.  Might someone see that and decide they have time to break in your car?  Could be, but those people are mostly back in town, and if a great search is necessary to find you, that could be important.  It is up to you to decide.  I do it.
 
CROSS COUNTRY HIKING:  Sounds like great fun!   You hike out on a trail, unlimber your compass, get out your topo map, chart out your course, and head off the trail into the bush on your own.  Wonderful!  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, how much time do you have?  The biggest problem right off, on cross country hiking, is that the maps are not that reliable.   You may hike off 90° heading for FR82, which is about 3 miles away, and actually hit FR 1043, about 2 1/2 miles away, which is not on your topo because it was put in after your map was printed.  Ditto for streams.  If you plan to pick up Bluecow Creek, but then hit an  unmarked creek that runs in roughly the same direction (at first) then you may be in for a lonely night in the woods.   Or two.   If you have a good compass, you can get bearings from mountain peaks, cross the bearings and find out where you are.  That’s pretty simple.   What is not simple is finding a peak while  you are out in these woods, (‘specially in the summertime haze!) then even more of a problem is identifying it accurately.  Then you have to get a good bearing off of it - what you may choose as the peak may very well be a ridge, far from the actual peak.  Then you have to find at least one more peak that you can identify.  Then the peaks and you all have to be on the same map.  What I’m saying is that while that may work fine out west, in the deserts and high country of Arizona or Colorado, it doesn’t go here.  Then, most of the shortcuts run over high ridges or descend into deep places out of which you then have to climb again.  There are a lot more canes and briars and catclaws and other thorny  items off trail than on, also boulder fields which can look very substantial and permanent as you approach them often turn out to harbor extremely heavy, very well balanced rocks that will tend to roll as you step on them - they can weigh from 200  to 8,000 pounds - and can move faster than  you can .  Often there is a swift and deep creek there, too.  Injuries are rare, on trail, more likely off-trail; then too, the trails are heavily traveled.  People will come by.  If  you are off-trail and injured, well, who knows?  I stay on trail.  There are enough trails already located in the best places.  I have been off-trail before, and it usually gets tedious and slowly becomes alarming; and I find that I do a lot of backtracking.  If  you insist on off-trail travel, make certain that you have landfall capabilities:  like knowing that the Nantahala River is off to the east about 2 miles, you can always break through to it; or US64 is a couple of miles to the west,  you can always find it (and hear it).  Also, if you are going cross country, go in a party of at least four capable and experienced hikers.  But don’t just head off into the woods unless you live there.  Or don’t mind if  you do.

CAR TRAVEL ON BACK ROADS.  If you do a lot of hiking in our mountains, you’ll do a good bit of driving over the back-country roads.  The condition of these roads vary from excellent to catastrophic.  Even fairly good roads often have at least one good reason why you really shouldn’t try to get through.  I use a 4WD pickup with ten inch vertical clearance  and steel plating underneath.  This is minimal for back road exploration, but totally unnecessary for driving to most trailheads.  Also I usually carry about forty topographical maps and have a good compass and altimeter in the truck.  I also stop a lot and check and recheck my  position.  One thing is certain, the maps are usually out of date.  Also, a lot of the roads are “approximate”; meaning that it often does not jog when its map counterpart jogs,  it may, but then again, it may not.  Church positions usually don’t change, but their names sometimes do.  Cemeteries are usually reliable.  I pull off the road a lot, the first time I travel on it.  I make absolutely certain that I have  1) a departure fix (i.e., an absolutely known position),  2)  positively identified the road, and 3) am heading in the right direction.  I will also  update names of roads, churches, etc., on the map as I go.  Obviously I don’t use all 40 maps, but I got tired of running off of the map I was on and not having a map for where I had gotten to.  As far as using the car-mounted compass goes, I have found that to be most useful on driving the backroads when I use only eight directions, the four cardinal directions, and their midpoints:  north, north-east, east, south-east, south, etc.

HUNTERS AND HIKING:  Hunters vary from being considerate to dangerous.  It is good to know which hunting season is currently open, so that you can assess your dangers.  The danger from bird hunters is generally low, since much of that shooting  is done with shotguns fired into the air, and often under the guidance of birddogs.  The main danger from bear hunters comes from being run off the road, as some of them drive very fast over the back roads chasing the radio signals being emitted from their dogs’ collars.  Their dogs, which have radio  transmitters on their collars, chase the bear, and the hunters chase the radio signals.  When the dogs chase the bear up a tree, the hunters converge under the tree and shoot the bear out of it.  So the danger (for hikers) from that is not great.  I have heard some rumors about vicious bear hounds tearing up people or their family dogs, although all the bear hounds I have seen out in the woods look pretty mild, and usually seem exhausted.  Deer hunters probably pose the greatest danger to hikers.  Some deer hunters will establish blinds and sit in there for hours, some say dozing off now and again, possibly drinking various beverages,  awakening sometimes to fire at noises in the bushes.  Experienced turkey hunters have sworn to me that the good ones are really crazy, they dress in full camouflage, smear their faces, stick feathers in their cap and clothing and sneak through the woods “gobbling” with special turkey calls.  You probably don’t have to worry about them, just don’t try to sneak up on a turkey. Some hikers feel inclined to wear orange hats/jackets during hunting season, others only during deer season.  Other hikers (usually old hunters) say you might be as well off one way as the other - what they can’t see is harder to hit.  I also hope that any hunter would like to get away from hikers while hunting.  The last thing a hunter needs is to be near a hiking trail, especially a busy one, with people stomping down it, singing and whistling;  a new group passing through every five minutes or so.  Unfortunately, the hunting season is also the most beautiful season for hiking in the mountains.  So I hike, but I generally stay on the Appalachian  Trail during the deer season.  Perhaps, someday, hunting will die off.  Meanwhile, I have heard of hunters shooting themselves, or each other, or their dogs, or cattle, but I can’t recall ever hearing of a hiker being shot by a hunter.  If you do think you are being shot at - YELL! - (What do you say?  Anything that sounds human!  Don't grunt, roar, or shriek!)  Above all, don’t run; that won’t do any good, and will probably convince the hunter that he is indeed after some of God’s creatures instead of just a human being.  
    Finally, don’t forget that there are great dangers from logging or mining interests coming in to rip out entire forests, maybe all us, hunters, hikers, fisher people, bicyclists, etc.  need to consider crawling into the same bed.  Our beautiful mountains may need us all in the near future.

Poison Ivy.  Generally, you will not find poison ivy in the mountain forests.  It really seems to need a bit more sunshine than usually is present there.  It will grow beautifully in meadows and clearings and into and from the edges of the forest.  It can be almost unrecognizable there because of its huge size great height and extreme reaching out from the trunk of its supportive tree.  Some of the largest poison ivy I have ever seen has been in the outskirts of the great forests, and some of them reach out three to five feet!  Everyone is a potential victim of the plant.  Even if it doesn’t cause problems on your own skin, it can be transferred from your own skin and clothing to those of your fellow hikers. What to do if you have brushed up against it?  Well, wash it off – but how?   Furthermore, it doesn’t wash off easily with soap and water.  Sometime, go smear butter all over your hand, then try to wash it off with soap and water.  The butter will smear and run and that is what the chemical elements in the poison Ivy do.  Even though you won’t see the chemicals, and you won’t feel them, they will act a lot like the butter did in this experiment.  It might be helpful to carry a small vial of white vinegar in a plastic baggie and have that to cut through the oil.  Rinse onto the forest floor – and not back immediately into the stream, then repeat.  So you will stink for a while, and probably make yourself hungry.  Probably will cut the chance of getting the skin eruptions later.