We left the gym on Mon­day, April 5, with 22 TAASC folks in the bus and drove to Watauga Lake in Tennessee.

Around 2 p.m. we began hik­ing in really hot weather up a steep hill to gain a ridge­line that was 16 miles long! For the next two days we plod­ded along in the heat ‘til we reached the mon­u­ment and gravesite for Uncle Nick Grind­staff who died in 1924 and accord­ing to the marker, “lived alone, suf­fered alone, and died alone.”

On Thurs­day the weather changed to a cold, windy, hard-​​at-​​times rain. Over 14 years of AT trips in April the weather con­tin­ues to always throw us a chal­lenge. In 2000, we had to abort five miles into the trip due to a freak snow­storm that dumped four inches. The cold, chal­leng­ing weather on Thurs­day really drove the point home of the impor­tance that ALL TAASC mem­bers must do at least one trip per month for the expe­ri­ence and train­ing to deal with seri­ous sit­u­a­tions such as the weather we had this year. Peo­ple were get­ting cold, wet and tired after nine miles of hik­ing that day (and a total of 31 miles over four days), so we grabbed the first camp­site we could find and got every­one in the tents and into warm, dry sleep­ing bags.

The next morn­ing, Fri­day, was our last day and every­one was eager to reach Dam­as­cus, VA our final des­ti­na­tion. We chugged along the remain­ing five miles that morn­ing and ran smack into Mike and Karen Ayotte at the edge of town. Karen had baked fresh cook­ies for all and you’ve never seen cook­ies con­sumed so fast. We hiked on into town with visions of pizza and “real food” on our minds.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all the kids who com­pleted the 40 mile trip and espe­cially four amaz­ing Younger mem­bers who did a truly awe­some job of han­dling this tough chal­lenge in good style: Zach Ayotte, Con­nor Brazin­ski, Luke Carlisle and Spencer Mem­mel. Thanks to Molly Franklin for plan­ning the trip and being the over­all leader and to all the other kids who served as daily leaders.