March 28

The Pain

We left the cabin and started back on the trail at Neel Gap.  Unique to this spot, the trail actually passes through the building of Mountain Crossings by way of a breezeway between the store and the hostel.  I entered a new wilderness area called Raven Cliffs.  Early into the hike we passed a couple of hikers we had met before, coming toward us going the 'wrong' way.  Apparently they had camped on top of the mountain somewhere for the night and had their food bags, which were hung 25ft off the ground from a tree branch, stolen by crafty bears in the night.  So all the food that they had bought at the store the night before was gone, and they had to by new food bags and spend a lot more money, at a premium cost, at the store at Neel Gap.  The bears in Georgia have learned how to snap the ropes allowing the food bags to drop to the ground.  Hiking  today I crossed many ups and downs.  The view from Cowrock Mountain was exceptional.  Then down I went into Tesnatee Gap.  What I'm finding is that the word 'Gap' is actually a four letter word, haha.  Because when ever you see "Gap", that just means you have to come down from some mountain, and go straight up another mountain.  It's a good place to take a breather before climbing.  Also, don't eat lunch in a gap, or you'll feel like a rock is in your stomach on the way up the immediate climb.  Going up Wildcat Mountain was really tough.  I kept going past Whitley Gap shelter since it was a crazy 1.2 miles off the trail.  I heard that when the shelter was built, the trail was supposed to have been rerouted to pass close to the shelter, but I guess that hasn't happened yet.  We entered another wilderness area called Mark Trial Wilderness.  It's pretty cool so far in Georgia, how one wilderness area backs up right to another, and another.  At the end of the day I rolled in to Low Gap shelter after about a 12 mile day.  The shelter was full, and there were dozens of tents, due to the bottleneck of hikers that was created at Neel Gap earlier.  I set up my tent and did my evening chores.  Doing my routine foot inspections I noticed several blisters cropping up.  One in particular on my right pinky toe was really bad.  It was like a blister on top of a blister, with a hardened callous cap.  I lit the end of a safety pin to sterilize it, pierced the blister in a couple places, let the fluid drain, then applied neosporin, a bandaid, and duct taped the whole toe to keep the bandaid in place.  Today it was decided that the guide book lies, haha.  Even thought the ups and downs according to the elevation profile didn't look that bad at first glance, the trail beat us up pretty bad today.  I need to take it slow and see how my feet feels.  KB is talking about taking a zero day in the woods at the shelter tomorrow.  A few of us got a nice fire going and sat around for about an hour after dark talking.  We heard of a total of 4 hikers that lost their food to bears the night before, just in the mountains that we had traversed today.  I went to bed without wearing my earplugs.  My food was secure on the bear cables at the shelter area, but I figured if one of those crafty bears strolled into camp in the night, I would rather be able to hear it and wake up and try to scare it away.  Haha!

Flowers starting to bloom at Low Gap shelter.