4-day, 3-night Benton McKaye Lazy Loop
May 10-13, 2018
Five Tango and I hopped into his vehicle and motored up to the north Georgia mountains to wander the paths less trod this past weekend. Leaving my house about 5am, we arrived at Amicalola State Park shortly after 7am. We based our arrival time on the information on Amicalola's website which stated that the place opens at 7am. [http://www.amicalolafallslodge.com/ga-state-park/] Unfortunately, the sign on the visitor's center there indicated that they open at 8:30am not 7am. Keep that in mind for future jaunts. However, the super nice and accomodating Ranger lady running the place was arriving early for work and let us in early so we could fill out the required forms and get on the trail by 8am.
Being relatively mature, we dodged the stairs and parked up top where we could pick up the approach trail. By 8:15am we were on our way. There was a brief moment of excitement early in the hike when Five Tango came within half a stride of stepping on Charlie Copperhead. The snake, deciding that discretion was the better part of valor chose not to strike and retreated under a rock. After that little heart racer, we continued on. We gabbed and dawdled our way up and reached Springer summit in the early to mid afternoon. With thunderstorms threatening, we headed off down the Benton McKaye Trail.
As we rounded Owen's Overlook, the wind was kicking up and the thunder and attendant lightning were getting closer. We stopped long enough for me to don Frog Toggs and a pack cover. Five Tango deployed his umbrella, then the bottom fell out. For the next 30 minutes as we descended past mile 1.7 the rain pounded sideways and we shouted to be heard. We agreed that as long as we were heading down, we'd keep going, but we wouldn't climb up a ridge in a thunderstorm.
After half an hour of mother nature's abuse, the rain slacked off, the wind diminished and we squished our way over a small ridgeline and down to a creek at mile 2.2 where we found a campsite. Though it was small, we found four trees that were good enough. I set up my tarp first, then we used that as a base for our gear while Five Tango got set up. Finally, I got my hammock up and we were set for the night. It was around 6pm by then. The rain had stopped, so we fired up stoves, put on dry shirts and had our first hot meal of the trip.
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We turned in early, slept well and woke to a freshly washed morning that promised sun and blue skies. After a leisurely breakfast, we set off up the trail. Five Tango rock hopped a couple of streams, and I made my way across as well, climbing up at a gentle pace and soon crossed over the first BMT/AT junction.
Somewhere in here, disaster struck, though it would be hours before we realized it. Five Tango's kit bag containing all his hammock suspension, fell off the back of his pack and neither of us knew it. We walked the BMT along the ridge and down, down, down to Three Forks where I took care of a potential hot spot on one toe and grabbed a bit of water before we continued up the trail.
We took in Long Creek Falls and then kept going about another mile before pulling off to camp in a secluded spot. That's when Five Tango realized he was missing all his suspension. While he turned out his pack, I walked back down the trail looking and asking anyone I met if they had seen a small kit bag. No one had.
With time pressing, we decided to improvise. Being hammockforums.net members and true hammock bigots, there was no way we were going to let Five Tango spend the night on the ground. For those who are interested, here's what we did: I took one of my whoopie slings off one end of my hammock. I found two trees barely far enough apart that my tarp would fit between them. On one end I used my remaining whoopie and my tree strap as normal, whoopie from the hammock to a marlin spike hitch. On the other end, I becket hitched the tree strap to the continuous loop on the hammock and I was off the ground.
For Five Tango, we used my other whoopie sling larks headed around the tree. The other end we managed to becket hitch to his continuous loop, or maybe it was a j-bend. I'm fuzzy on exactly how we did it because amsteel doesn't hold knots well. Suffice to say, we had a bight or two holding that end up. On the other end, we took my spare amsteel dogbone around a tree and used my spare amsteel soft shackle to connect to the hammock and we were done. Five Tango found that he did have a spare tarp ridgeline, so we were in business.
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It was another good supper and a solid 10 hour snooze in 55 degree coolness before dawn...well...dawned. We strolled out of camp determined to find the missing suspension. Our original plan had been to do the BMT north and come back south on the AT to the extent that we could, but we both agreed that to find the kit bag we might have to just backtrack. On the climb out of Three Forks we were meeting and talking to hikers who were northbound on the AT. Two young men (hi Tod!) said they were looping around on the BMT later that day and offered to look for the kit bag. That allowed us to stay on the AT instead of backtracking that climb out of Three Forks on the BMT, so we stayed on the AT south out of Three Forks.
At the first AT/BMT intersection we came to later that morning, we did backtrack a portion of the BMT and proved that fortune favors the foolishly optimistic. Lying dead in the middle of the BMT where it had fallen 24 hours earlier was Five Tango's kit bag with all his suspension. Finding that equipment was like a visit from Santa Claus, a surprise birthday party and getting off work early all in one. We grinned like idiots the rest of the day as we strolled south to arrive at Black Gap shelter to spend the night.
There was only one person there when we got there, though others began to drift in as the afternoon waned. We watered up, set our hammocks back away from the shelter and had a leisurely supper. We spoke to several other hikers, compared gear and bruises until it was time to lie down. I don't know about Five Tango, but I drifted off to sleep and had a glorious rest. I woke early, retrieved my food bag from the bear box and had my first cup of coffee as the sky lightened and the camp began stirring.
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Not much more to tell. We packed our backpacks for the last time and sauntered down the remainder of the approach trail, arriving at the car around noon. A Whopper later, we were back home. We had just enough adventure to make it interesting without being so dangerous that it got too scary. We got to practice our walking in the rain skills, our improvising skills, and the rest of that outdoorsy stuff that keeps us safe and having fun while we wander around outside.
We had the only hammocks that we saw, but we weren't the only hammockers. We ran into a couple of hammockforums members, Skittles and Soda Pop, who were out for the weekend. Speaking of hammockforums, we owe all you guys a big thanks for what you've taught us. We're better hikers and better hammockers because of you. I doubt we could have kept ourselves off the ground that second night without suspension if we didn't have the knowledge we've gained hanging around here.
Cheers.
PS - I'll get a trip video posted on youtube approximately whenever I get around to it. Work gets in the way of more important pursuits.
Cheers.
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Originally Posted by johnspenn
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