Ben agreed to join me this weekend for a Georgia AT hike! I knew the hike would be a long day for us, so I booked a cabin in Blairsville for Friday and Saturday nights so we could get on trail early in the morning and not have to drive three hours home after our hike. It was a super cute little cabin in the Paradise Hills Resort/Winery/Spa (not as fancy as it sounds, but we weren't really looking for fancy). The cabin's one flaw was that apparently someone paid absolutely zero attention to whether the floors were level when they built it, because the floors were like walking across the deck of a boat pitching around on ocean waves. They literally gave me motion sickness, I guess because my brain couldn't comprehend why one foot would be stepping a couple of inches below where it was expecting based on where the other foot was located.
I woke up in the middle of the night Friday night and had a crazy case of vertigo. I assume it's because a winter storm was moving into the area (they were supposed to get heavy snow Saturday night) and my sinuses just went nuts. But I got out of bed to try to take Tigger outside and, due to a combination of my vertigo and the slanting floor, promptly fell into the wall. It was the craziest thing ever. But we really did like the cabin and would stay there again; I'll just wear a motion sickness patch next time. 😁
Anyway, I was so dizzy overnight Friday that I really wondered whether I'd be able to hike Saturday. If you're having trouble standing up straight and are stumbling around like a drunk, a ridgetop isn't exactly where you want to be. I took a couple of Benadryl allergy/sinus pills in the middle of the night and felt a little better when I woke up. I took another one right before we left the cabin; then I then promptly fell asleep while Ben drove to the trailhead and slept until our shuttle driver picked us up. I felt okay at that point.
We got to shuttle with Ron Brown again, which is always fantastic. He is super reliable, super prepared, full of local info, and just an overall really nice guy. He picked us up at Dick's Creek Gap and drove us to Tray Gap. We were excited not to have to drive Tray Gap Road twice this weekend, because it's a doozy.
We knew there were two steep, but short, climbs on this hike. The first was right out of the gate, from Tray Gap to the top of Tray Mountain. It was only about 8/10 mile, and we made it without incident, although we did run across some icy spots as we neared the top.
I had heard great things about the views from the top of Tray Mountain, and they did not disappoint. We even got some great views coming up the side of the mountain:
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| STILL not to the top, although this might be the best view we saw all day. Mountains as far as the eye can see. Absolutely amazing. |
When we did get to the top, I was super pleased to see "Smurf Hat Mountain" (reference this post)!
I had actually asked Ron on our way up Tray Gap Road what the real name of Smurf Hat Mountain was (because if anyone would know, he would know), and he told me it's Yonah Mountain (I'm totally still calling it Smurf Hat Mountain; I just needed to know the real name). The reason it looks a little leany at the top is because it has a rock face on one side:
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| Photo credit: The Google |
Ron said the Army Rangers use the rock face for training, which is pretty cool. I also learned in my Google searching that there's a lovely winery at the base of the mountain, and I'm definitely going to have to go back and check it out. There's also a pretty cool-looking hiking trail on Yonah Mountain itself, which sounds like a pretty good weekend to me!
Anyway, back to Tray Mountain and its amazing views:
The amazing views really continued throughout our hike. They were mostly wintertime views, but there were very few times during the hike that we were without a view similar to these, sometimes off both sides of a ridge:
We kept kicking along, moving towards our next big climb of the hike, which was up Kelly Knob. The climb was supposed to start right at mile 7 of our hike and climb steeply for a mile. I dreaded it because I knew Ben was dreading it. He hadn't been hiking with me since early December, so his legs definitely weren't in the shape mine are in after hiking just about every weekend since then. Not that he gets no activity; he spends just about all his spare time cutting down trees, or splitting wood, or other farm-man-type stuff, but climbing up the side of a mountain uses muscles that I really haven't found a good way to exercise without, you know, climbing up the side of a mountain. I really try to hike every weekend because (1) I enjoy it; and (2) even one week off can make a huge difference in how good (or bad) I feel the next time out, which affects how much I enjoy it. I actually thought about taking last weekend off but then thought this weekend's climbs would be murder if I did, so imagine poor Ben being off for about 8 weeks. Ugh. But he's a trooper and the world's best husband, so he said he was up for it (I DO run the routes by him for comments, vetoes, whatever; I don't just spring this stuff on him), but I know he was not looking forward to that second climb.
Anyway, this is us just before dropping down to Addis Gap, which was the beginning of our climb. That's Kelly Knob ahead of us, and we would lose a couple hundred feet of elevation before we started climbing it.
This is the start of the climb out of Addis Gap. Not a lot of switchbacks on this one. It's only a mile, but you gain elevation pretty quickly over the course of that mile (I didn't dare tell Ben, "You can do anything for a mile" 😬 ).
I should also mention that Ben is not a fan of hiking in really cold weather. And it was really cold. Thursday, the weather forecast showed that it would be in the high 20s when we started our hike but that it would quickly warm up to about 50. By Saturday, the high was downgraded to about 43, but it was supposed to be sunny, and that's pretty perfect hiking weather when you've got some physical exertion to keep you warm. Unfortunately, though, it was only sunny for about the first hour of our hike (when it was still in the 20s), and I don't think it got out of the 30s the rest of the day. The wind also kicked up as the winter storm continued to blow in. Snow was forecast to start around 4:00. Ben is usually pretty warm-natured and will be wearing jeans and a t-shirt when I'm wrapped up in a parka, but he wore a sweatshirt, toboggan, and gloves for this entire hike, which I've never seen before. Neither of us was freezing by any means (I was actually really comfortable except that my hands got pretty cold a couple of times), but he would've been freezing without his toboggan and gloves, and he hates wearing those.
Anyway, we didn't spend much time at the top of Kelly Knob admiring the views because the wind was whipping pretty good and we were ready to head for a little shelter so we could stop for lunch, but there were some decent views from up there (and on our way back down).
There was also more ice, which Tigger handles well due to his God-given microspikes. 😏
Then we found a place to stop for a bite to eat and Tigger gave Ben a pep talk.
And THEN...it started sleeting. And then snowing. We were running a little behind schedule, and the snow was running a little ahead of schedule, so we got caught up in it a little bit. It was pretty cool because we watched it move in. It looked like a big cloud of fog rolling toward us, but then we realized it was a cloud of snow.
I thought the snow was awesome and was very excited about it, but I tried to hide my excitement because I knew it was adding to Ben's misery. I kept lagging behind taking pictures, like this one of a huge mud/rock slide area:
And some of the aftermath of the mudslide, along with the snow cloud:
Anyway, we made it back to our car and back to the cabin. We then ran out for an early dinner so we could beat all the snow that was forecast for later in the night. There aren't a ton of restaurants in this area, and the ones that are there are locally-owned non-chains, which is awesome but also kind of a toss-up as to what you're going to get. We hit the jackpot at Sicily's, which is an Italian joint that turned out to be really good. I had stromboli that was out of this world. Ben had baked spaghetti with meatballs that also looked really good. We'll go back next time we're in town.
As it turns out, we didn't get all that much snow. Maybe an inch or two. It was pretty but thankfully didn't impede our ability to get home this morning. This was the view from the cabin's screened-in porch, which unfortunately we didn't get to enjoy much because it was 20 DEGREES.
And here are a couple of views coming through the Unicoi Mountains on the way back home. It was really beautiful, and the roads were clear! The best kind of snow!
So, to recap, I REALLY enjoyed this hike. There were amazing views throughout, and the light snow at the end added a little bit of magic. If you asked Ben, though, you would 100% think we hiked two separate hikes. He hated pretty much the whole thing, and I feel terrible about that. He did enjoy the cabin and the rest of our weekend, but he really hated the hike. BUT, this morning he was already talking about our next hike, so it's amazing what a little Italian food and some rest will do. 👊343.8 down; 1846.2 to go.
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