THE GRANDSON'S FIRST

BIG HIKE

When my grandson, Clayton, was 8 years old, I told him when he turned ten I would take him on an overnight hike down in the Smokies. So last September when he turned ten I started looking at what we would be doing. I decided to take him up to the Spence Field shelter from Cade's Cove and then hike 3 miles of the Appalachian Trail the next day over to Russell Field and then 5 more miles back down the mountain to the cove.

We got up at 3:30 Thursday morning and drove the five hours and got our permits and everything but we had to do some changing of things because they told us in the permit office the spring at the shelter was dry. I knew we would have a stream to follow going most of the way up so I got 4 extra bottles of water to take with us and took out 2 of my meals and one of his to make room in the pack for the extra water. That added some weight to the packs but I wanted to make sure we had plenty if the spring really was dry. I split things up to make his pack lighter (since he weighs only about 70 lbs but he still had about 25 to carry or so.

So....after getting everything done and the packs on the next thing we had to do was find the trailhead. That took a little extra work but finally we started up.

The next five miles was all uphill. No downers whatsoever. There were some pretty steep places in it too and for a while I was beginning to wonder if I was giving Clayton too much on his first big hike. But he was really doing pretty well. There was a pack of boy scouts that we leap-frogged with back and forth. Those boys were 11-15 years old and some of them struggled as they were going along. I don't know why but they were all wearing cotton shirts and two of them had their shirts completely soaked with sweat. They were the ones struggling what appeared to be mild cases of heat exhaustion. I had Clayton in all synthetic and he was having no problems at all, plus I was making sure he stayed good and hydrated.

It took us about 5 1/2 to 6 hours to get to the shelter. That included making stops for water, and air of course since it was thinning out as we were climbing, and a snack now and then. (I wasn't in as good of shape as I was when I was when I do my 73-mile hike so I was huffing and puffing some too.)

Just before we got to the shelter Clayton wanted to take the lead for the last 3/10ths of a mile. As we came into the shelter area there were 9 other guys there and you should have seen the looks on their faces. It was like they were saying, "What's this little kid doing up here?" LOLOL!!!!!! Actually Clayton turned out tho be the icebreaker. At first the guys were staying in their own little groups then one of them began to start a fire in the fire pit. Clayton jumped up and started gathering sticks to put in and they started talking to him and everybody started talking about him and to each other. Clayton kind of brought everybody together.

Later as it got dark I finally had to settle him down some to get him to bed. Even after that tough hike that day he was still bouncing with a lot of energy and I didn't want him to use it all up since we had 8 miles to do the next day. After it got dark we had a coyote start howling about 40 or 50 yards from the front of the shelter. That didn't bother him either although he was a bit worried about any bears showing up.

Well he woke up about 4 am the next morning but did go back to snoozing a little later. About 6:30 others began to mill around a little bit and Clayton started moving around more too. We both finally got up and started getting things back in shape for the next section of the hike.

We finally got our water bottles all filled. (The spring was running by the way with just enough water to be able to handle all 11 of us there. It wasn't a ton but enough and I'm still glad we took the extra with us just in case we did need it.) All of the other guys at the shelter called Clayton by name and told him to have a good hike down. I think he really impressed them.

We got going on the AT and first had an uphill then then a downhill. We then started another uphill and I was beginning to wonder again if I was giving Clayton too much so I stopped and asked him if he wanted to go ahead like we were doing or keep going the way we were. Well, his answer was pretty quick..."Let's go forward." he said. So off we went again. We did the 3.1 miles to the Russell Field shelter in just under an hour and a half. He stayed with me the whole time and we didn't take a whole lot of breaks. We both seemed to be in kind of a zone at the point and he did just excellent. It actually put us ahead of schedule for the trip back.

Then we started the 5 miles back to the bottom and it was actually tougher than I expected it to be. There were a lot of rocks and root wads we had to go over and we had some 60-75 degree verticals along the side of the trail. I wanted to make sure Clayton hung to the side because I knew if he tripped and fell he could be in for a bigger fall than either of us wanted. He did take two spills about halfway down, one of them being kind of half fall and the other one he went all the way down. It was just because his legs were getting tired. Mine were feeling it too. But he picked himself right back up and we kept going. One funny thing was when we would stop to take our little breaks, when he was ready to go again he would kind of say, "Okay....let's get to hiking." And not one the entire hike did he ask me to help him put his pack on. I even offered a couple of times and he said he would do it.

By the time we were getting close to the bottom he was pretty wore out. His shoulders were starting to get sore from the pack too. I'm going to have to get him a better fitting pack for next time. I got it for him for Christmas and it didn't fit quite as well as I thought it would. Next time he'll have a better one that won't bother him so much.

When we got to the last mile he wasn't walking behind me anymore but beside me. I have to say as I looked down at him I couldn't help but smile at that. We gave each other a high five at the bottom when we got to the end.

After that we decided to drive the nature drive loop there in the cove. We saw 3 bears on that trip, including one that was only about 30 yds from us that I got a bunch of pictures of. She was a 200 pound female.

The rest of the family came down to meet us in Pigeon Forge and then after getting cleaned up we went back to drive the loop again. Of the last three days I ended up seeing 12 bears and Clayton saw 10 of them. My wife saw 9 and the rest saw 7. That was a record for us.

It definitely goes into my best hike list. Clayton has already said he'll go again with me. At one point up on the mountain he said, "Now I see what I've been missing by not going." He's ready to go back to the mountains like me. Next time though I'm going to have some better gear for him.