We had planned for at least a month to "opt outside" on Black Friday with another AT hike in Georgia, "on our way" down to Auburn for the Iron Bowl on Saturday. Sadly, Ben fell ill with some sort of stomach virus the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, so he wasn't up for hiking on Friday. He did, however, want to drive to Auburn and try to go to the game. Part of the plan for the game was to bring Tigger with us, stay in a hotel, and leave Tigger in his crate in the hotel room while we went to the game. In order for our wild child to spend much time alone in a hotel room without driving all the other guests crazy, it was necessary to wear him out beforehand. Our hike was part of that plan, so that's how Tigger and I (and our James rock) found ourselves hiking without Ben on Friday. Ben dropped us off at Cooper Gap a little before 11:00 Friday morning and picked us back up at Woody Gap a little while later.
This hike was relatively short by our standards since we knew we'd need to leave some time in the day to finish our drive to Auburn. It was about 8.4 AT miles and about 8.7 total miles (I took a little detour to the Gooch Mountain shelter privy because I am not a fan of peeing in the woods). We had planned to start the hike early in the morning by meeting our shuttle driver Ron at Woody Gap at 8AM and having him drive us to Cooper, but I canceled our appointment with Ron when Ben got sick, as there is no way Ben would feel like getting up at 4AM Friday to be at Woody Gap by 8. I was especially glad we scheduled a short hike when we didn't end up getting started until almost 11.
The elevation profile for this hike looked pretty moderate, with one short, steep climb at the start followed by little ups and downs across the ridge the rest of the way. That was somewhat accurate, I guess.
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| These little sections of gnarly trees made me feel like I was walking through some kind of fairy tale with trees that would reach out and grab you. |
There were a couple of good flowing creeks, which made Tigger very happy.
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| Tigger got so excited to see water that he basically dragged me down the steps here. |
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| It was not at all hot on this hike. The weather was pretty perfect, in the high 50s/low 60s, but Tig still needed to cool his jets. |
The last half of the hike was a little more strenuous than I expected, with some "up and downs" containing three short, but steep, climbs. Y'all know I love to climb, so it wasn't a big deal, but I feel like the elevation profile wasn't entirely accurate (I'm finding that to be the case most of the time). Anyway, Tig and I moved through them pretty quickly and even grabbed a couple of selfies along the way.
Tig did start lagging behind on the third climb as if to say, "Okay, lady, enough already." Short leg syndrome, I think. Anyway, as we walked along the ridge on the right side of a valley, there were some great views (which wouldn't have been great during the summer with leaves on the trees), but I had to turn and look behind me to see them. As we kept walking, though, the ridge circled around the end of the valley and I eventually found myself on the left side of the valley, where the views were finally in front of me. You can kind of see the progression in the pics that follow.
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| Looking back over my right shoulder |
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| The ridge to the right is the one I was walking on to get to this point. |
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| Turning up the left side! |
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| The end: view from Woody Gap |
All in all, it was a good hike. Short enough to easily be done in half a day, but strenuous enough that I felt like I deserved a burger and fries afterward (no dessert this time, but I more than made up for that on my Thanksgiving cheat day). It was a pretty hike even without the views in the second half, but the views were definitely a bonus. I'm glad I didn't do this one in the summer.
~ 134.4 down; ~2055.6 to go.
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