Everybody Was AT Hiking: Hogpen Gap to Tray Gap, GA Sept. 5-6, 2020

It's been a while since we did two consecutive days of hiking, so we decided to give it a go this Labor Day weekend (when we had an extra "weekend day" to recover).  Did we backpack?  Heck, no.  I've said before that, given the chance to spend the night in a bed instead of on the ground, I'll opt for the bed every time, so that's what we did this weekend.  Pretty sure if I ever did an AT thru-hike, I would hold the world record for "most nights spent off-trail."  We stayed Friday and Saturday nights at the Brasstown Valley Resort & Spa in Young Harris, GA, which was pretty convenient to our trail locations and also comfortable!  We forgot to bring utensils for our sandwich-making endeavors, so I did end up making our trail food PBJs with a Gerber folding utility knife.  That made me feel a little more trail-worthy as we enjoyed our resort accommodations.  😆

We did two short contiguous sections of the trail this weekend, but we did them out of order.  Ben had the brilliant idea to do the northern section on Saturday and save the easier southern section for Sunday.  That way, we would be "fresh" for the harder section and could also better gauge whether we had enough left in the tank to actually do the second section on Sunday or whether we should just skip it and enjoy brunch at the resort.  

Our ending point for Saturday's hike was at Tray Gap, which is on a jacked-up gravel/washout road.  The Q has been on some pretty bad forest service roads before, but she had not yet seen the likes of Tray Mountain Road.  She was a trooper!  She may be a luxury SUV, but there's plenty of "utility" in that description.  There was a literal river crossing the road at one point, and several other "ponds" (potholes big enough to swim in), not to mention washed out sections of road, etc.  She crossed them all without so much as spinning a tire, and her ground clearance was high enough to handle anything the road threw at her.  I was pretty pleased.  But it did take us about an hour to drive about 15 miles of that road (up and back).  

River crossing the road.  I took this pic in Ben's truck on the way back down.

After dropping the Q at Tray Gap, we drove to the trailhead for the Jack's Knob Trail, which is a 2.4-mile access trail to the AT (if you hike it the other direction, it also goes to Brasstown Bald).  I'm not a big fan of hiking in on access trails, especially when they're 2.4 miles long, but that's just the way things worked out for this hike.  

We got on trail a little later than usual due to the lengthy drive up Tray Mountain, but it was still a relatively cool (low 60s), foggy morning as we started up Jack's Knob.

The Jack's Knob trail was not an easy 2.4 miles.  It had a couple of steep uphills and one pretty steep downhill on its way to the AT.  I didn't really know what to expect from that one because I don't have extensive trail profiles, etc., for it like I do for the AT.  I mean, I expected that it would go up (because that's always the way you go to access the AT), but I didn't expect to start the hike off with that strenuous of a climb.

I was actually relieved when we finally got to the AT because it leveled out for a bit, but then we came to this crazy rock field where the trail was all rocks for about a mile.

That's just some slow, hard walking to keep from turning your ankles, and I had a little bit of PTSD after last week's hike and was probably being overly cautious to avoid falling.  My left thumb is still feeling pretty terrible, so I knew I didn't want to fall and have to catch myself again with that hand.

After some small ups-and-downs on the AT, we had a big descent into Unicoi Gap, followed by a BIG climb up Rocky Mountain.  That climb was almost 1100 feet of elevation over the course of 1.4 miles, so it was pretty steep.  There were lots of stairs, which is Ben's least favorite thing to see on the trail.

At one point while climbing, Ben pointed to a hole in the ground and said, "Be careful: bees."  I would have run up the dang mountain at that point because I'm allergic to bee stings, but of course Ben was in my way and wasn't inclined to do much running.  As I was pretty much right on top of the bee hole, I felt a sting on my upper inner thigh, and I just about knocked Ben off the trail.  Stung THROUGH my pants, basically on my crotch.  Well, that's just great.  It burned like the pits of hell, and I felt like I was growing parts that belong only on men's crotches.  

I carry a "poison sucker" tool with me ever since Latisha got stung earlier in the summer, but I really was not keen about pulling my pants off on the side of the trail to suck the poison out of my thigh.  So I figured I'd tough it out for a while and see whether (1) I would sweat so much that it would just sweat the poison out; (2) the exertion of climbing the mountain would just pump the poison through my body faster, accelerating my imminent death; or (3) my excessive activity would help metabolize the poison faster to make it go away.  I'm no scientist (obviously - ha), but I thought that was a pretty awesome experiment.  I also reasoned that I probably got a lighter dose of the poison since I was stung through my pants instead of a full-contact stinger-to-skin situation, so I probably wouldn't die.  So we kept moving and I just tried to stay alert for any signs of light-headedness or trouble breathing (what constitutes normal trouble breathing when climbing 1000 feet per mile?).  I never felt anything other than a burning, swelling crotch (which Ben begged me to stop saying out loud since there were several people on the trail this weekend), so I assumed I was going to make it.

We finally found a stream for Tigger to cool off in, and if there hadn't been people sitting there having a lovely wine and cheese picnic (I'm feeling a little less bougie for staying at a resort at this point), I may have taken off my pants and sat in it as well.   

We kept climbing and eventually made it to the top of Rocky Mountain.  My AT guide promised views from the top, but they were all obscured by trees at the summit, so I was a little perturbed.  I had resigned myself to the lack of views when I saw this little blaze surrounded by this little fern thing.  I thought it was pretty, so I took a pic.

Then I stood up and headed on down the trail and immediately stopped in my tracks for THIS:

HEY-O!  There's the view!  Ben was so over the massive climb and was hurting, but he humored me with a selfie.

I was likewise tired, and still burning in the crotchal region, and really dreading the big downhill we had coming up (because yes, we had to go back down the other side of Rocky Mountain).  But these views refilled my tank and gave me a second wind.

See the mountain in the distance with the top that appears to be leaning a little to the right?  It looks like a Smurf hat.  I need to know what mountain that is.  Anyone know?

Smurf Hat Mountain from a different angle (left of center now)

When we got back to the bottom of Rocky Mountain, we were rewarded with...yet another 1.7-mile climb up the side of Tray Mountain to Tray Gap!  No more streams for Tig to play in, but he did find this stream coming out through a culvert under Indian Grave Gap Road and wondered where the water was coming from.

There was a partial view from just below Tray Gap.  I think you're actually looking at Tray Mountain, which you continue climbing if you go past Tray Gap for another mile or two.

I understand that the views from the top of Tray Mountain (which is about 400 feet higher than Rocky Mountain) are to die for, but we'll have to save those for another hike, as we finished about halfway up and headed back to the resort for the night.

The next morning, we got up and were actually feeling pretty good, so we decided to forge ahead with our planned hike for the day.  Both of the trailheads for Sunday's hike were on main roads, so it was a much shorter set-up.  We got on trail at Hogpen Gap at about 7:00.  There were beautiful views from a scenic pull-off about 70 yards down the road from the trailhead parking area (of course I walked down there for some pics).

It was a great morning for hiking.  Temps had dropped down into the upper 50s.  Clear skies, and a relatively easy trail.  A little over a mile in, we heard a noise off the side of the trail like an animal moving in the undergrowth.  We stopped; didn't hear anything else; so started moving again.  We then started hearing a loud panting-type noise.  Because I think bears are freakin' adorable (and, let's be honest, I also want to have as much info as possible if I ever have a close encounter with one on the trail), I've spent a decent amount of time watching bear videos.  I know that bears make this "huffing" sound when they're fearful, and if you're the source of their fear and you don't back the eff off, it could lead to aggressive behavior.  So I was thinking we need to get the heck away from this bear, but I couldn't actually see the bear.  Ben finally looked up and saw the bear in a tree that was pretty close to him.  Poor girl; we had probably rudely awakened her.  

Ben and Tig always hike in front of me because Tig likes to be out front, and all I could say was, "Back up back up back up back up."  [Side note: I kept thinking, "Back up back up 'cause it's on...," which got Regulate stuck in my head for the rest of the hike.]  The bear started climbing out of the tree, and Ben and Tig retreated behind me, about 100 yards from the tree.  Not that Ben wants to stick his wife out front in a bear confrontation, but Tigger definitely needed to be as far away from the bear as possible.  And there's no way in hell Tigger would stand with me while his beloved Ben goes to investigate a bear, so that makes me the bear investigator.  

We stood there a little bit and listened and didn't hear anything, so I moved in closer until I could actually see her.  She was still in the tree but had stopped on a branch about halfway down.  She wasn't huffing anymore, so I figured we had moved far enough away that she was no longer terrified of us.  I talked to her a little bit (as I'm prone to do with bears and other wildlife, apparently), and she eventually climbed on down and took off into the woods.  So we continued.

We had a bunch of little sawtooth ridge-running for the AT portion of our hike.  We speculated that part of the trail had been an old railroad bed because it was wider than normal, it wasn't super steep, and we saw a couple of rock walls like this (which I don't imagine anyone would build just for a walking trail, although I could be wrong):

Unfortunately, there weren't any streams for Tigger, so he found a mud puddle created from some recent rains and a weeping rock and decided to cool his belly there.  He was so gross.

There weren't really any views on the trail for Sunday's hike.  This was the best I got:

We eventually found ourselves back at Chattahoochee Gap and once again hiked the Jack's Knob trail back to the car.  The trail was a little easier on Ben going out, because it was more downhill than uphill, but of course that made it a little harder on me.  BUT, we made it.  Overall, this was a good weekend of hiking.  It was MUCH better than my hike last weekend, even with the bee sting and the bear huffing.  

I'm now hanging up my hiking boots for a few weeks and heading to South Carolina to spend a couple of weeks "working from home away from home."  I just need a little change of scenery for a bit, and a friend of mine actually has a house down there for a full month, so I generously (haha) offered to join her for a couple of weeks.  I'm really looking forward to that but will miss hiking (and, you know, my family) for the next few weekends.    

238.8 down; 1951.2 to go.