Everybody Was AT Hiking: Woody Gap to Byron Reece Trail, GA (8/15/20)

We headed back down to northeast Georgia this weekend to hit another little section of the AT.  It's a pretty long drive down there if you want to be on the trail by 8 like we usually do, so we decided to get a cabin down there and drove down Friday night.  The cabin was in Sautee Nacoochee, GA, and I really don't know how they pronounce the first word (whether it's the French pronunciation or whether it sounds more like "Saudi"), but either way, it's funny.  

It rained pretty much the whole way on our drive down, and it poured rain all night at the cabin.  On one hand, that was really great because the cabin had a metal roof and I freakin' love a good rain on a metal roof.  On the other hand, it was a little discouraging because I woke up at 4:30 AM to a torrential downpour and began wondering if I was going to have the motivation to get up and hike.  I don't mind hiking in the rain.  I've got appropriate rain gear, and if I'm out hiking and it rains, so be it.  However, I seriously wondered whether I'd really want to get out of a dry car and start a hike in such heavy rain.  Luckily, I didn't have to find out.  The radar showed that the rain was supposed to move out around 8:00 and wasn't supposed to come back until about noon.  I began to wonder as it rained throughout our drive to drop off a car at our ending point and was still sprinkling as we were driving from there to our starting point, but it stopped just before we got to our starting point, and the sun actually came out for a little bit, giving us this awesome view from Woody Gap:

This is the view from the parking lot.  You don't even have to hike to get this view!

Within a couple of miles, we came to the top of Big Cedar Mountain for even better views.  The day was looking up.

Sadly, however, cloud cover would move back in.  And when I say "cloud cover," I mean covering the entire mountaintop, so we walked in a foggy haze for most of the day.  

                        

Because of all the rain overnight and for part of the morning, trail conditions were wet and muddy.  

All of the water sources were flowing well, and there were even some extra "water sources" (a/k/a rain puddles) all along the trail.  Tigger decided these were the best hiking conditions EVER.

The rain puddles were really muddy, which Tigger loved.  He was black with mud all over his legs and belly most of the day.

Luckily, when we were coming down the Byron Reece Trail back to our car, we found a couple of nice flowing streams to wash him off.

The weather conditions contributed to the difficulty of the hike, which I would call moderately difficult.  The climb up to Blood Mountain initially wasn't too bad.  There were some sawtooth areas where we were going up and down for a bit, and there were a few steep areas, but they were pretty short.  The last mile of the climb, though, was kind of a killer.  Lots of stairstep areas instead of a sloping incline, and the top of the mountain got really rocky, so there was some rock scrambling involved. 

I need to give a shout-out to the trail builders and maintainers on this section, though, because they have done some amazing, backbreaking work to create the stairsteps and make the trek safer, if not easier.

This was one of the steeper areas in the sawtooth section of the climb, with log stairsteps.

The trail maintainers were also kind enough to turn this fallen log into a little seat, which Tigger took advantage of.

Higher up, during the last mile of the climb, the stairstep work with these stones is pretty impressive.

When we got to the top, we found the Blood Mountain Shelter, which was built in 1937 by the Civilian Conservation Corps.  It was a pretty cool shelter.   

We planned on eating lunch in the shelter to get out of the rain a bit, but there were some other people in there, so we sat just outside and grabbed a quick bite before moving on down the mountain.  We figured they wouldn't appreciate Tigger coming in and growling at them.  😏  Also, I got a cell signal at the top and checked the radar, and it showed a storm moving in, so we wanted to get moving again pretty quickly to try to avoid getting struck by lightning at the top of a mountain. This was our amazing view from our lunch spot just outside the shelter:

 

The actual summit of Blood Mountain is just past the shelter, and it's basically a big slab of rock.  

I bet there are some amazing views up here on a clear day.  As it was, we could just barely make out some mountains in the distance.

As I would soon find, pretty much the whole north side of the top of the mountain was a big slab of rock.  As you might guess, descending a big slab of wet rock with shoes that are slick with mud is not exactly a safe or fun task, but we all managed to make it down injury-free.

The blaze indicates that, yes, this big slab of rock is your trail.

More solid work by the trail builders/maintainers here.

I put on my rain gear after lunch because (1) it was already raining lightly; (2) the radar showed that we were about to get a big red blob of rain; and (3) I didn't want to have to stop, take my pack off, and put on rain gear in the middle of said red blob once it started.  Of course, due to my efforts in encasing myself in non-breathable material, ensuring that I completed the rest of the hike in a portable sauna, the storm never actually hit us.  We heard thunder, but it must've gotten stuck on the other side of the mountain, because we never got the heavy rains that I expected.  To everyone else hiking near us, you're welcome.  I took one for the team.

Besides a slick trail, all the rain over the weekend weakened dead wood in the forests and caused some tree issues on the hike.  At one point, we heard a loud crash behind us, and I can only assume a tree or large limb had fallen (we didn't see it).  Not too far up the trail from there, we heard a crack just ahead of us and both stopped in our tracks as a limb fell right in front of Ben and Tigger.  THEN, as we were driving home, we got stuck in a line of traffic stopped because a tree had fallen all the way across the road on Hwy. 68 south of Tellico Plains.  I feel like there's a message in all of this; I'm just not sure yet what it is.  😆

In any event, we had a good hike and made it home safely.  I may have to go back and try this one again on a sunny day so I can check out those views from the top, but for now, I'll check this section off my list and move on!

220.1 down; 1969.9 to go