(4-3-23) Blood Mountain

The best trail breakfast is cereal in a bag! Portable, delectable, and if your clear Georgia creek water is fresh and cold, the powdered milk isn't so bad, either!

There are signs of the coming spring everywhere - the trees are budding. I'm thankful for the views being so open for now! Trail maintenance is nothing short of art - I really wonder how they move massive rocks into position to make perfect stairs and natural bridges.

We hiked Blood Mountain, one of the "first challenges" on the trail. Honestly, as I would find with *most* things on the trail, it was all hype. What didn't help, though, was the promise of bad weather for us as we came to the start of the Mountain. I worried about making sure that our whole crew got over the mountain despite our different paces. With some international hikers in the mix, we couldn't just text - it can never be that easy. We also hadn't shared our contact information around yet, even though it felt like we had known each other for weeks already (I think we were at 4 days).

This was the first window into a pretty important trail lesson for me --> if the people around you aren't in imminent danger, you really can't make their safety your priority. We all got here on our own; we all prepared, packed, boarded the plane and set out, hiked however many miles to this point on our own. I definitely struggled with that one, I wanted to pull everyone under my umbrella and make sure no one was left behind.

The shelter on top of Blood Mountain in Georgia is one of the older shelters on the trail. It's made of stone, enclosed with 4 walls, and has a fireplace. BUT... The back room has a window on each side; the windows and the door do not have proper closures. We were advised by a trail runner on our way up that it wouldn't be a good place to stay in rainy weather, and definitely not advised in a storm. The privy was quite nice, though ...

We stopped for lunch only briefly. Mat was feeling the cold and made hot food to warm his core. I huddled and paced - and visited the privy - and snacked a bit. A day hiker family with two very small kids was leaving the shelter as we came up. I wondered seriously about the choice to bring them up in the cold, but they seemed happy enough. We secured our gear and headed on. The rain caught us on the way down. It was our first actual "scrambly" section on the trail. If you've off-roaded much ever it was barely a thought, but it did require some slipping and sliding and careful trail nav as there were a few switchbacks that were prone to misdirection. The storm did not deliver much more punishment than the mountain did. It was cold and wet, but not a downpour or much of a thunder storm. On to NEEL's GAP!!!

Neel's Gap is, for many, the end of the road. Having tasted the first bit of the trail, as many as 20% of the people on the trail decide that a through hike wasn't actually in their future. A tree full of shoes in front of the store bears witness to a number of quitters. It is a bit misleading, however, as it also holds the shoes of people who change shoes at the gear store; I saw slug throw her shoes into the tree, but would see her all the way through Virginia, and I'm fairly certain she finished.

Neel's Gap stocks everything an aspiring hiker could possibly need - at a price.

Neel's Gap also has a bag scale . . . This was the first time I weighed my pack at its actual trail weight. I started the trail with Phil and Molly carrying a thoroughly respectable 35 pounds. It had felt great! So when we went back to the hotel, I packed far more fears and much more entertainment to set back out solo. I had added 10 POUNDS of luxury and tech to my gear. I weighed in with not much food and just a little water (meaning my actual hiking weight was probably 5 pounds heavier) at 45 POUNDS!!!

Mat convinced us that it was time to get a hotel for the night. Being inexperienced and over eager, none of us really had a plan; truthfully, Mat had the right idea about rest and recovery - and laundry. We took a "shuttle" or a "hitch" . . . depending on how you look at it from Neel's Gap into Blairsville, GA for the night to recharge and resupply. Our ride into town was thoroughly eventful. The first "gentleman" who offered a ride into town (for $10!) kept gesturing to his truck and saying we could all fit - he had had 8 hikers in his truck before. The rest of us could ride in the bed of the truck with the packs - etc. It was a bait and switch, however. HIS truck was a tiny 90's (or older) pickup behind the Tacoma we kept thinking he was pointing to. AND we got to ride with his yappy little chihuahua named Katy. (Kaity was thrilled). Furthermore, even with K in the middle seat, her knees were jammed into the dash. And to add a level of spice to the conversation - I was just keeping him talking without much mind to what he was saying - he veered off into his dissatisfaction with local politics, losing his house, and casual racism. It was a jarring window into the woes of America's left-behind. I was starting to consider exit strategies, when thankfully we pulled in at the hotel. I always kept my Garmin on for hitches, and quietly congratulated myself on remembering to snag it off my pack so I could send up the bat signal if anything truly went south. K chided me for not somehow letting her know that I had a plan . . .

It turned out that that the rest of our group didn't fare that much better.  They rode down with another driver - more obviously a bit unhinged - in an SUV. With the windows up, hikers get RANK, so Mat cracked a window open. Unfortunately the window was broken and wouldn't roll back up.  The driver stopped him putting it down, but then ranted about his own failure to stop them from putting it down - like yelling "stupid, stupid, stupid" and hitting his own head while driving. They made it in one piece and we vowed to pick better drivers for the rest of the trail (we were mostly successful . . .).

How often to go into town was a constant struggle, and will often make or break a group of hikers. For the time being, it seemed smart to take the rest as none of us were particularly speedy anyway.

Oh! And I got an update from Molly girl and Phil, settled back in in Delaware. Molly even got a bath to wash off the woods <3

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