Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail Read Online Free PDF Page B

it down. As I later learned, this was misguided, because higher elevations often lack any water sources at all.
    I had belatedly put on a rain jacket, when I realized just how drenched and cold I was from the steadily increasing downpour. But now that I had begun chilling it was tough to warm up again—a classic rookie mistake. But what was even more unnerving was that I had started feeling lightheaded, which could have been caused by my having walked as hard and as fast as possible with very few breaks for about seven hours. Or maybe it had something to do with waking up at four o’clock. Or maybe it was all a figment of my imagination.
    However, I wasn’t hallucinating about the fundamentals: It was cold and getting colder; I was soaked; the trail was getting muddier by the minute; the visibility was poor and getting worse the higher I climbed; my water supply was running low; the howling winds were adding to my paranoia; and nobody else was on this trail as night approached.
    Finally, I saw a wooden post that I hoped would be for Blue Mountain Shelter. But instead it read Brass Town Bald, a name every Georgia school boy knows because it is the highest point in Georgia. This fact contributed to the forbidding feeling that I really was stuck in the mountains, and that I was totally reliant on the remaining energy in my legs to get me out of there in one piece. One of the scant comforts I could honestly conjure up was that I had made out my will before starting the AT.
    I kept straining to hear the sound of cars from the road, down at the bottom of the mountain. But every time my hopes were lifted by what seemed like a whirring sound, I would look over to my left and realize that it was just another powerful wind gust sweeping over the mountain. Trees swayed as if they were going to bend in half. I began to wonder if I would ever see another human being.
    As I cleared the next rise in the fog, the trail began to flatten. It’s the summit . I looked ahead expectantly for a descent that would lead straight to the road. Instead, it was a false summit and the outlines of yet another mountain appeared in front of me. I was exhausted and felt unable to continue.
    A friend back home with hiking experience had told me that if immobilized and faced with high winds and rain, I should just take out my tarp and wrap it around me like a burrito. I pulled out my tarp, wrapped it around me, and lay in the middle of the AT. I attempted to relax and breathe deeply, only to be buffeted by cold, slanting, merciless sheets of rain. This wasn’t working. Now all the concerns and paranoia of the last few hours morphed into a full-fledged fear for my life. As cold and soaked as I was, I didn’t think I could survive the night exposed to these elements.
    I began envisioning my funeral. In a perverted way I even felt “embarrassed” for my family, that I had so ceremoniously undertaken this long journey only to die the first time the weather turned sour. I had to get out of there quickly and decided to do something that had been at the back of my mind the last couple hours. I would abandon my backpack. I rushed it over to a clump of trees, quickly gulped down some Tylenol from the first aid kit, and grabbed the remaining quarter-liter of water. Then I urinated again for approximately the tenth time since Low Gap Shelter three hours before—a telltale sign of hypothermia.
    Then, deciding I was in a dead-even situation and that this was my best chance, I took a deep swallow of my precious remaining water, said a quick prayer for faith, and resolved to walk very slowly up the mountain. Concentrating on each step, I felt a tangible difference without a backpack. This was a relief. Within about 200 or 300 hundred yards I began to make out through the fog yet again what looked like a summit. As it flattened at the top I wondered if I was in for yet another false summit. But then the trail seemed to be descending, and finally it started down