Rabun Bald Day Hike
September 27th, 2010 Day HikeSure Foot day hikes are as much about meeting new people and building community as they are about physical exercise and experiencing the natural beauty of north Georgia.
Though I did not know any of the hikers who had signed up for this trip, when I arrived at our meetup location at the Days Inn in Clayton, GA, I began to realize what an unusual and outstanding group of hikers I would be spending my day with.
Somehow I had not realized that Gary’s son was not an adult. But after I shook Gary’s hand and I met Zach, a 10-year-old who was playing his Nintendo DS and sitting in the trunk. Gary assured me that Zach loved the mountains and was a strong hiker.
Two other hikers met us at the Days Inn. Mitch is a recent retiree who used to lead scout outings. Tracy is a sci-fi buff and excellent photographer who had actually messaged our Meetup group before the trip to ask if we though she would be fit enough to do the hike. Of course we encouraged her to come!
We all piled into cars and drove to the trailhead, where we met up with Corey and Katie. And from the start, we found that our 10-year-old, Zach, would easily be our strongest hiker. In fact, on the way down the mountain, he and Tracy led our group, discussing their mutual love of Star Wars the whole way down.
Rabun Bald is billed as the most difficult day hike that Sure Foot offers, and I found that our participants signed up for this one because they were looking for a challenge. Corey and Katie even told me that they wanted to get “their money’s worth” so they signed up for the longest hike available.
As our group wound our way up the Bartram Trail towards Rabun Bald’s summit, we admired the lush greenery, tunnels of rhododendron, and views of the valley. We learned about Mitch’s career with Kroger and Tracy’s adventures at Dragon Con, Gary & Zach’s hikes in the Adirondacks, and Corey’s t-shirt business.
With sweat running down our backs, we finally reached the stone observation deck on top of the mountain. Skies were blue and we sat on top of tower admiring views of Standing Indian Mountain, Scaly Mountain, and the small towns of the mountain valleys. What a reward for our hard work hiking the 4 miles and 1500 vertical feet up the mountain!
After an hour of relaxation at the mountain peak, we started down. Zach and I found a geocache hidden near the peak, and our group then settled into a rhythm of walking and conversation that soon brought us back to our vehicles. Tired, but proud and invigorated by our accomplishment, we drove back to the city with good memories, new friends, and beautiful photos.
What we did on our summer vacation…
September 13th, 2010 Camping,Chickens,Day Hike,Family Camping Trip
In homage to the inevitable first writing project assigned once school starts, we thought we’d write the story of our summer here at Sure Foot Adventures.
Our summer started in a exciting way with a camping trip along the Chattooga River with a group of Quakers from the Atlanta and Athens Friends Meetings. If you’ve been in the southeast this summer, you know that this summer has been REALLY hot and punctuated with heavy rain storms. 
Our Quaker Camping Trip demonstrated that summer was here. Hot and muggy on Saturday, the rain held off and gave us time to swim in the river and relax in the sun. It rained during the night but we were able to have a dry breakfast. It was a great way to start the summer with an intergenerational group of people ranging in age from pre-teen to 70+.
After that camping trip (our fifth in as many weeks), we took a break from overnight trips and put our focus on day programs. Earlier, in the spring, we had started our Sure Foot hikers club. Then, in early June, our day hikes were the featured “Deal of the Day” on livingsocial.com. We spent the whole weekend before honing our website and making sure we had all the correct information posted about our day hikes and overnight trips. The deal offered one of our day hikes for $10 (usually $20/person) and we sold hikes to 272 people! The day of our deal was great fun for us because we received so many calls from new hikers and so many emails from new and old friends telling us how excited they are about our company.
So all summer, we’ve been leading day hikes with lots of people who are new to Sure Foot Adventures. Though (as on any adventure) there have been some misadventures – a missing geocache on our Geocaching Day Hike, a short-lived wrong turn on our Blood Mountain Day Hike, and a bridge out on our Emery Creek Day Hike – the hikes have been great fun. Catie and Jonah, who have led most of the hikes, have really enjoyed meeting lots of new people. We’ve hiked at Amicalola Falls, Emery Creek, Raven Cliff Falls, Blood Mountain, Vogel State Park, and Anna Ruby Falls.
Jonah also led a couple “custom” day hikes – one for a young man named Hunter who celebrated his 17th birthday with a hike and one for a group of O
rthodox Jewish young men and women who were doing a summer program at Congregation Ariel in Dunwoody. For both hikes, we visited the East Palisades Trail along the Chattahoochee River. Both groups had special adventures. Jonah and Hunter ended up bushwacking down a cliff and then climbing in a bamboo forest. The group from Congregation Ariel rolled up their pants and happily waded into the river, eventually sitting down and lying down in the water.
But our day programs weren’t just limited to hiking. On July 24 (one of the hottest days of the year), we teamed up with Bicycle Tours of Atlanta and the B*ATL Festival to lead a bicycle tour of the Civil War Battle of Atlanta.We had more than a dozen participants and completed an 8-mile ride, visiting the historic sites of the battle while Sure Foot’s Jonah told the story. We sweated a lot and consumed a great deal of water, but it was nothing compared to how soldiers from both sides must have felt marching endless miles while wearing wool uniforms and poor footwear.
Then, in August, Jonah taught another Raising City Chickens Class & Tour. Ten hopeful chicken owners met Jonah’s chickens (including Spilly the Blind Chicken) and visited four other coops in the Kirkwood neighborhood. We are particularly happy with our chicken classes because so many of our participants have now successfully started their own coops. We’ve designed the class to be practical and hands on and we’re pleased that participants feel so confident afterward that they often order their birds that day!
Finally, we ended the summer with two fun camping trips – the YouthPride Summer Camping Trip and then the Fall Family Camping Trip on Labor Day weekend. Both times, we camped near Dicks Creek Falls, hiked along the Bartram Trail, and were able to spend hours basking in the summer sun along the riverbank.
So, our summer was well-spent, successful, and lots of fun. In all, we welcomed more than 100 participants to Sure Foot programs. Dana took a Adventure-based Counseling class (as part of her masters program), Catie’s been running the Georgia Tech challenge course (her other job) as well as leading Sure Foot day hikes, Nancy has developed a seamless grocery-shopping system for Sure Foot and even joined us on our recent Quaker Camping Trip, and Jonah led lots of Sure Foot programs and was even hired to be a storyteller at a birthday party in his spare time.
So, what awaits us in the fall? More day hikes, camping trips with the Friends School of Atlanta and Arbor Montessori, a custom backpacking trip with the Garrett family, a nature-photography day hike with David Foster, and a new program – Cumberland Island camping trips.
We’ll also be working with schools doing environmental and outdoors education programs. Dana and Catie are developing a Sure Foot Challenge Course, and Jonah is always scouting new locations in the north Georgia for Sure Foot hiking and camping trips.
We hope to see you on an upcoming trip!
Fall Family Camping Trip
September 7th, 2010 Camping,Family Camping Trip
Labor Day Weekend 2010 was possibly the most beautiful three days of the year, and we got to spend them camping in the mountains! Our small group of two 3-year-olds and three adults had a fun weekend exploring the woods and wading in the Chattooga River.
There was zero chance of rain and the sky was a deep blue all weekend. It made for great photographs, but also for a particularly enjoyable camping trip. It was as if the weather knew that September was here. The temperature dropped and the humidity was as low as I remember it all summer.
I was afraid that we’d have a hard time finding parking and then a campsite since it was Labor Day weekend. And when we arrived I was correct about parking. We parked no more than 200 yards from the trailhead and then walked towards the campsites. The two little boys immediately ran to the front of our group. Though they were carrying backpacks, their excitement propelled them forward. To our surprise and glee, the best campsite was still available, so we pitched tents and made it our home.
Even with kids this young, I saw a lot of growth on this short trip. About a month ago, a huge storm blew through the area, toppling trees, raising water levels in the creeks and washing out bridges. As a result, whenever we went hiking this weekend, we had to step or climb over blow-down trees. On the hike from our vehicles to the campsite, we reached the first of these obstacles. The boys said, “There’s a tree over the trail!”
“How are you going to get over it?” I replied.
So, the boys both worked and worked to climb over the tree, pulling themselves up, then sliding down, and pulling themselves up again. Finally, after many tries, they both made it without any help from the adults.
The next day, after climbing over many more trees, the boys had so much more confidence in their abilities, I once saw them jump right over a tree. One the way back to our vehicles, they reached that same tree that had vexed them and climbed over it without even a pause.
(Just to provide a little reality check and reminder that these are 3-year-olds, on this last tree, the second young man climbed right up onto the fallen trunk, but then got his foot stuck in a crevasse in the bark, and fell backward, twisting his leg a bit. He then spent the next couple minutes crying from the scare. Nevertheless, it was his confidence that I was impressed with.)
My favorite part of the trip was standing the water of the Chattooga River watching the boys play in the shallow water and helping them maneuver the small rapids. The sun shone brightly in the bluest of blue skies. The still-green leaves rustled in the light breeze, and our group forgot about all of our cares of city life and simply focused on the beauty of the scenery and joy of the small boys in our midst.
That evening, we built a fire and cooked tortellini and buttered toast over the flames. Since the kids hadn’t had a nap, we decided to go to bed by 8pm. But the early bedtime was not to be – the boys were too amped up from the day to fall asleep quickly. After several potty attempts, I suggested that I could tell a story to calm them down before bed. I told one of my father’s stories – “What’s the Name of that Tree?” (you should hear him tell it – and buy his CD!) and then we all were able to go to sleep for the night.
In what seemed like the middle of the night (but was probably only 9:30pm), I got up randomly to check on the fire’s embers and saw a headlamp coming through the forest. Nervously, I stood my ground and announced myself to the intruders. They said “I’m so glad we found you – we were paddling the river when it got too dark to continue, so we pulled our boats onto land and are now searching for our jeep. Do you know where Sandy Ford Road is?” So, breathed a sign of relief and gave them directions on the trail. Maybe reckless with their own adventure, these men weren’t dangerous. And the next morning, they showed up with big thanks for us and then went off to find their canoes.
Sunday morning was cool and clear. We all put on our warm hats and pullovers and I started a fire. As the sun rose through the trees, I exhaled and said a quiet “thank you” that this is the work I get to do.
For more photos, see our Facebook page.
YouthPride Summer Camping Trip
September 1st, 2010 Camping,YouthPride
YouthPride camping trips have always been some of my favorites because they have drawn interesting, upbeat participants, and my co-leader of these trips (Tana H.) is someone I enjoy spending time with. However, after Tana had a major surgery in the spring, I feared that I’d not be leading any more YouthPride trips. Without a partner within YouthPride, it’s hard to pull off something as “off-the-beaten-path” as a camping trip.
Miraculously (and really, not surprisingly, knowing Tana), there she was, just a couple months after surgery, ready to go to the woods! And though only one previous participant was able to come, the trip filled up several days ahead of time. We left the YouthPride building on Saturday morning with excitement and only a little anticipation of the gray skies above us.
As we drove north, the skies darkened and we saw the tell-tale sign of rain – oncoming cars with headlights on in the daytime. Finally, just north of Gainesville, the clouds opened up and the rain came down in torrents. Hoping the weather would move on in the next hour, we continued driving. But unfortunately, it was still pouring when we arrived in Clayton.
Our spirits were still high and the temperature still warm, so we hunkered down under a pavilion in the Warwoman Dell recreation area. I’ve always loved the name “Warwoman.” On one trip we led with Counterpane School, two students even made up a song about a warwoman. Anyway, I don’t know the true story about why the area is called Warwoman (there is a road, a creek, and a dell), but from what I’ve read, the original Warwoman was either Nancy Ward (a Cherokee Beloved Woman) or Nancy Hart (an Anglo leader of a Patriot band in Revolutionary War times). Both of these women’s stories are well worth reading!
Notice that this blog entry has been more about getting to the woods than being in them? Well, it continues…
We finally left Warwoman Dell around 3:00 pm after telling stories, laughing, and lying on picnic tables for a couple hours. It was still raining, but we were tired of waiting around, so we drove to Sandy Ford Road. The road is called that because there is a ford across Dicks Creek that we usually drive through before reaching the parking area. When we arrived at the ford, the creek was swollen from all the rain and there was a black Dodge Avenger stuck in the ford. We pulled in and parked and watched as a local gentleman with a truck helped pull the muscle car out of the water.
Still raining, our group decided to take a day hike to the waterfall and then decide (based on the rain) whether or not to go home or set up camp. Once we entered the woods and I relinquished my anxiety about the weather, the skies cleared. Happily, we pitched camp and even started a fire with the soggy wood.
Though we had a nice nice eating, talking, and roasting marshmallows around the fire that evening, everyone was tired and excited about swimming in the Chattooga River the next morning.
And that’s precisely what we did! Not everyone was a confident enough swimmer to make it to South Carolina, but we all spent time lounging along the riverbank, soaking in the suns’ rays that were so absent the day before, and marveling in the beauty that surrounded us.
This camping trip showed us how nature can seamlessly unveil a beautiful day after a dreary one. Though our trip was a success in terms of enjoyment and adventure, it also taught the lesson that after the strongest storm comes the most beautiful sunset.
Photos
View photos from our adventures on Facebook
