Neel Gap to Dick’s Creek Gap

Laura and myself on Blood Mt.

Day Six: After a nice stay at the hiker hostel, we procrastinated getting ready to go hike. It was raining pretty hard and it was so cold out! By the time we got ready, the rain had stopped and we started our hike out dry. This did not last long though and we endured our first day full of rain. It was so chilly that we only stopped once to shovel food and water before continuing on! I felt pretty sick to my stomach most of the day too. It turns out that eating all that food at the hostel worked against me! This was our first long hiking day and I was happy to get to the shelter and set up our tent.

Day Seven: Waking up and having to put on wet and cold clothes was a great challenge. What a long day! We did 15.4 miles today, the first half being relatively flat and the second half having big elevation gains and losses. We saw a dead baby bear in the trail, which was very sad! We suspect a male killed it in order to mate with the female. We didn’t stick around to find out if she was still in the area! Hiking up Tray Mt. was difficult, but it paid off with great views. As we were getting ready for the night, I noticed I could start to see my own breath! We think it dipped below freezing over night. I’m happy that my gear was still able to keep me warm!

View from Tray Mt.

Day Eight: Getting out of bed was difficult as it was still very cold up on Tray Mt. I was also feeling sore from adding big miles over the last few days. We had another 11 plus mile day to get through today. As we hiked, we noticed that our pace had slowed way down and that we were very achy. We decided to take our zero day early to let our body recover. We made it to Dick’s Creek Gap and grabbed a shuttle into Hiawassee, a cute trail town in Georgia. As we left our motel for dinner, we ran into some of our hiker friends whom we thought we wouldn’t see again, since we were moving along faster. It was nice to chill in town and have a beer with them! They will be missed in the days to come.