Adventures in nature, music, and robots: July 12th-13th: backpacking Hogpen Gap to Blood Mountain and back

This was a neat 17 mile trip I just took with my youngest brother Dylan as a trial run before we spend a couple weeks on various sections of the John Muir Trail in early August. We drove up Saturday morning and we're hiking by 10am. Our pack were full, but not too heavy- mine was around 18 and Dylan's pack was around 22 or so. We were feelin' pretty bad after the initial steep 500 foot rise to Cowrock Mountain, but were relieved to find a much more gently rolling trail after that point. We crossed various rock outcrops, saddles, peaks and vistas and ended up at Neel's Gap by 2pm where we dined on hotdogs and combo's (much better than the Clif Bars we had packed).

We then decided to drop our packs and make the jaunt across the Gap and up to Blood Mountain. The weather was still great- hot, but mostly clear with blue skies and puffy white cumulous clouds (a nice break from a week of storms).

Upon arrival back to Neel's Gap we picked up the packs and headed back North on the AT. Our planned campsite was quickly overtaken by a dozen loud boy scouts, so we had to move on. All in all we ended up doing about 12.5 miles that day before crashing near Swaim Gap. We rose early the next morning and were on the trail by 7:30am, back at the car by 9:40 and back to Atlanta in time for brunch.

Pix:

I caught site of this interestingly phallus shaped fungus while taking a breather on that 500 foot hill up to cowrock. It's a "netted stinkhorn fungus"

a breather on Cowrock

fresh, ripe blueberries on the trail!

An assortment of wildflowers:

Tall Bellflower

Turk's Cap Lily

Leather Vase Vine (in the Clematis genus)

Wild Columbine- simply gorgeous

Shrubby St. John's Wort (on the sunny rock outcrop areas)

This is the only place on the entire Appalachian Trail where the trail itself passes through a building- Mountain Crossing's @ Walasi-Yi, Neel's Gap (about 15 miles south of Blairsville, GA): www.mountaincrossings.com

Apparently Walasi Yi literally means "Place of the Great Frog," and was the name of a small Cherokee village on the slopes of Blood Mountain. The Cherokee may or may not have worshipped a great frog that resided on and protected Blood Mountain.