Days 8-14 | Zero Days, A Bear in the Night & The Long Road Back to Trail

Day 8 started with breakfast at the Green Dragon Hostel. Bill and Donna’s famous French toast, somehow caramelised on the bottom with honey in a way that I still can’t fully explain, just that it was extraordinary. Then a goodbye that felt harder than expected. Some people you meet on this trail leave a mark. Bill and Donna are those people. Kind without trying, generous without keeping score. The kind of hosts that make you feel like you belong somewhere. Even when you’re just passing through.

Judy, our shuttle bus driver from the day before, had offered to drive me over to Helen, Georgia on her way. Trail magic doesn’t always come in a cooler by the side of the road. Sometimes it comes in the form of a woman who just says, I’m heading that way, hop in.

What you need to understand about Helen, Georgia is that it has absolutely no business existing the way it does. Deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, population 531, sits a fully functioning Bavarian alpine village. Timber framed buildings, cobblestone streets, flower boxes on every window. In 1969 this was a dying logging town. Three locals sat down in a restaurant and decided to do something about it. They called in an artist, he sketched a Bavarian village, and they built it. By law every building in town must maintain that German alpine look. Every single one. Even the Wendy’s.

Before the Bavarian makeover, before the loggers, this was Cherokee land. A Native American burial mound built somewhere between 1350 and 1600 sits just outside of town. A quiet reminder that a thousand years of history lie beneath these cobblestone streets.

I spent Day 8 settling in and immediately decided to take Day 9 as a second zero. The Helen Songwriters Festival was on, live original music filling the streets all weekend. I rode the alpine coaster. I ate schnitzel and potato salad and worked my way through more beer tastings than was probably wise. I did a resupply run for the trail ahead. And I met a group of locals at a bar who wanted to know everything about the AT. Where I’d come from, what it was like, where I was going.

When they found out I was Australian they insisted on buying me a Foster’s Oil Can. I hadn’t drunk a Foster’s since about 2003. We all had one together. Two days of indulgence, good food, cold beer, and live music. Sometimes the trail is exactly what you thought it would be, and then it’s also this.

By Day 10 I was ready to get back to it.

I wasn’t.

Day 10 — The Day Nothing Went Right

I’d organised a shuttle to take me from Helen back to Dicks Creek Gap to get back on trail. They didn’t show up. Didn’t answer their phone. I stood there waiting, called again, nothing. So I decided to hitch.

Two hours. Two full hours on the side of the road with my thumb out and my pack on and my best I’m-a-friendly-hiker-not-a-serial-killer smile plastered on my face. Not one person stopped. Not even someone slowing down to explain they couldn’t take me the whole way. Nothing. Just cars passing a very tired Australian on the side of a Georgia highway.

To make things worse the shuttle company eventually called me the next morning, asking where I was, as if they were supposed to be picking me up that day instead of the day before. I had the text messages to prove otherwise. They decided not to honour a refund. I decided to let it go and keep moving. Some things aren’t worth the energy, and out here you learn quickly what deserves yours.

I eventually got a different shuttle organised around 3:30 in the afternoon. By the time I got to Dicks Creek Gap at mile 69.3 it was late and I set up camp just south of the road. The same spot where I’d stumbled across the Fantastic Five camping a few days earlier. It rained that night. Wind picked up. But I was dry in my tent and I slept.

Then I woke up to the weather warning.

Day 11 — Storms, Cold Sores & the Georgia-North Carolina Border

The morning of Day 11 brought a severe weather alert. I made the call to go back into town, wait it out, and get back on trail when it was safe. One of the hotels, the Holiday Inn, let me sit in their foyer, drink free coffee, and stay warm while the storm passed. I sat there in my hiking clothes surrounded by normal people doing normal things, thinking about how strange and good this whole experience was.

I also woke up that morning with cold sores on my lips. Two days of schnitzel, beer tastings and Foster’s Oil Cans had apparently caught up with me. The trail has a way of reminding you that the body keeps score. There’s no hiding from what you’ve done to yourself out here. It shows up on your face, in your legs, in the way you move on the first mile of the morning.

By early afternoon the weather had cleared enough. I caught the free shuttle back to Dicks Creek Gap and got on trail around 1:30pm.

I had miles to make up and I knew it.

What followed was one of the hardest and most satisfying afternoons I’ve had on trail.

From Dicks Creek Gap at mile 69.3 I was pushing for Muskrat Creek Shelter at mile 81.2. 11.9 miles on a half day with a full pack. The trail had other ideas about how easy that was going to be.

I crossed the Georgia-North Carolina state line at around mile 78 and felt something shift in me. One state down. Thirteen to go. There’s a wooden sign nailed to a tree at that border and I stood in front of it for a long moment. I’d been dreaming about this trail for twelve years. I was actually doing it. The sign didn’t care about any of that, but I did.

The last three miles to Muskrat Creek Shelter were brutal. Straight uphill. The kind of climb where you can see what looks like a summit ahead of you, dig deep, reach it, and discover there’s another one behind it. Then another. I was exhausted, carrying a full pack, the mist rolling in, daylight disappearing fast.

I got into camp at 7:30pm. I was the only one there.

I hung my food bag. A PCT hang, something I’d been practising for over a year before ever setting foot on the trail. The kind of hang that when you get it right feels like a small victory in itself. My pack went up on a nail near the shelter entrance. Nothing inside with any scent, every snack and toiletry in the food bag swinging safely from the tree. I set up in the shelter instead of pitching my tent, layered on everything I had, and ate a quick dinner. The signs in the shelter mentioned bear activity in the area. I noted them and moved on. I was so tired I could barely think straight.

I should have thought about those signs a little longer.

The Night the Bear Came

I want to tell you this honestly because I think it’s important.

Around 9:30 or 10pm I heard it. A sound that wasn’t wind and wasn’t rain. Then the unmistakable crash of my food bag and toiletry bag hitting the ground.

I lay completely still.

I didn’t know what to do. Every instinct told me to go out there, to make noise, to scare it off. Every rational thought told me to stay exactly where I was. I stayed. I pulled my quilt up and I listened to a bear go through everything I had. Ripping. Shuffling. The sounds of packaging being torn open. The sounds of my carefully planned food supply being eaten in the dark.

I turned my headlamp on and off. On and off. Every rustle sent me back to high alert. I was genuinely frightened. Not in a dramatic storytelling way but in the real, animal, chest-tightening way that comes when you are alone in the dark in the wilderness and something large and wild is very close to you. I kept thinking about whether the bear would come into the shelter. Whether the smell of my pack, hanging nearby on a nail, food-free but carrying five days of absorbed trail smell, would be enough to bring it closer.

It didn’t come into the shelter. But I didn’t sleep. Not really. Every sound for the rest of the night pulled me back to the surface.

I lay there in the dark thinking about what I was doing out here. Twelve years of dreaming about this trail and here I was. Alone, afraid, listening to a bear dismantle my food supply in the North Carolina mountains at 10 o’clock at night. There was no one to call. No one to help. Just me and my headlamp and the sounds of the forest and the slow deliberate work of staying calm enough to get through the night.

That’s the version of this I want you to know. Not the funny story I’ll tell one day, and it will be funny one day, but the real one. The one where I was scared and held on anyway.

When dawn came I got up, walked around the campsite, and cleaned up every piece of packaging the bear had left behind. Leave No Trace applies even when a bear has done the leaving. Somewhere in the debris I found my Doterra Correct X. A small tube of wound cream, completely untouched. I laughed out loud. A bear had destroyed everything else and left the wound cream. I took that as a sign.

Day 12 — Four Miles and the Kindness of Strangers

I hiked the four miles from Muskrat Creek Shelter to Deep Gap at mile 85.2 and made a call. I reached out to Donna at the Green Dragon Hostel. Miles away, still looking out for me. She helped me organise a shuttle driver whose trail name was Sherpa. Like everyone in this community with a trail name, he’d earned it through years of being so deeply woven into trail life that the trail had claimed him as its own.

Sherpa picked me up at Deep Gap and drove me into Franklin. The Grove Hostel was full. They made room for me anyway. A makeshift futon in the sunroom, more than comfortable, looked after by Willow and Bluebs. Two more people in a long line of extraordinary humans who have made this trail what it is. People are awesome.

Day 13 — Franklin, North Carolina

If you’ve never been to Franklin, North Carolina, picture Main Street USA. Maple tree-lined streets. Kind people who mean it when they ask how you’re doing. A town that has fully embraced being part of the Appalachian Trail community, that genuinely roots for thru-hikers, celebrates them, takes pride in being part of their journey. Franklin has been a trail town for decades and it shows in every interaction.

On Day 13 I went to Outdoor 76, the outfitters in town, and sorted everything out. New bear canister. Non-negotiable after what had happened. Bounce box packed and sent forward to the next resupply point. And a t-shirt I could not leave without.

Safety 3rd. A guy riding a bear with a beer in his hand.

I’m calling what happened at Muskrat Creek a bear encounter now. The t-shirt felt like the right way to mark it.

The rangers I’d spoken to the day before had reassured me. The bear was after food, not me. I knew that rationally. But there’s a difference between knowing something and feeling it. Standing in a shop in Franklin buying a Safety 3rd t-shirt was part of me deciding which version of the story I was going to carry forward.

The Grove Hostel also had a hiker drop-off box that contained a brand new titanium mug and stove. Exactly what the bear had taken from me. I walked in with nothing to cook with and walked out sorted. People are awesome.

I also ordered a new water pick for my teeth online. The bear had taken that too. I didn’t know how much I’d miss it until it was gone.

It wasn’t until I sat down that afternoon and called my family that I really felt the full weight of what had happened. The adrenaline had been keeping me moving, keeping me functional, keeping me practical. But sitting in a warm room talking to the people who love me, I let myself acknowledge it. I had been alone in the dark, metres from a bear, for hours. I had been genuinely scared. And I had held it together.

That matters to me. Not as a boast. As a fact about who I am becoming out here.

Day 14 — Back on the Mountain

Sherpa drove me back out to Deep Gap at mile 85.2 the next morning. Not one mile missed. Not one section skipped. I got out of the car, put my pack on, and started walking uphill immediately. It’s always uphill out of a gap.

The first two hours were slow. My body was recalibrating. Two days off trail, hostel food, town comforts, and processing a frightening experience. The trail doesn’t care about any of that. It just asks you to keep moving.

What I noticed today more than anything was the spring unfolding around me. Not in a single dramatic moment but in layers. Different elevations, different aspects of the mountain, different amounts of sun reaching the forest floor. On the shadowed north-facing slopes the trees were still bare, branches reaching up into grey sky. Then you’d turn a corner and find yourself in a tunnel of green. Ferns pushing up through the soil, rhododendrons already thick and waxy, the forest floor lit up with that particular soft light that comes through new leaves. Higher up the leaf-out hadn’t happened yet, the views opening up between bare branches. Lower down it looked like it was already summer.

The forest was teaching me to pay attention to things I would have walked past before.

I also learned something important about bear canister logistics today. My food used to sit on top of my pack. Easy access, always there. The canister lives at the bottom now, nestled inside my quilt with the down stuffed around the hard edges so I don’t feel it against my back. Better weight distribution. But I forgot to pull my lunch out before I set off and spent the afternoon surviving on Jolly Ranchers and a Lara Bar from my hip belt.

When I arrived at Carter Gap Shelter at 2pm I unpacked everything, did a video showing how I’d repacked the bag, and there was my lunch, waiting at the bottom. I ate it at 2:30 in the afternoon like it was a perfectly normal thing to do.

Some lessons you learn in the dark. Some you learn with a Jolly Rancher and a late lunch.

I was a different hiker than the one who had started.

Days 8-14 — By the Numbers

Dicks Creek Gap (Mile 69.3) to Carter Gap Shelter (Mile 106.8)

Miles this week: 41 miles

Total miles from Springer Mountain: 106.8 miles

Zero days: 3 — Days 8 and 9 in Helen, Day 13 in Franklin

States: Georgia ✅ North Carolina underway

Bear encounter: Mile 81.2, Muskrat Creek Shelter — Night of Day 11

Lowest moment: Alone in the dark listening to a bear, 9:30pm Day 11

Highest moment: Crossing the Georgia-North Carolina state line, Day 11

Best meal: Donna’s French toast at the Green Dragon Hostel

Best unexpected find: Safety 3rd bear-riding t-shirt, Outdoor 76 Franklin NC

Trail name confirmed: Cheshire

People are awesome: Judy, Bill and Donna at the Green Dragon, Sherpa, Willow and Bluebs at the Grove Hostel

If you want to follow along as the journey continues, every step is being documented on YouTube. New videos every Wednesday and Saturday at 9am AEST.

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Let’s go.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​