We aint in Kansas anymore

Well I'm back from my leg of the trail. I'll try to give an impression of the way I saw it. We started fresh as daisies from FS42 and hikes to springer summit on day one. we were high in spirits and touched the start stone all full of anticipation of the trail ahead. that days hiking went about as expected, nice woods, some ups and downs and we came to our first camp at Hawk Mtn. feeling like we had a pretty good grip on what we were in for. While we camped we met other hikers and had a drippy if uneventful nite. Day 2 was our first wake up call that the AT is not a simple stroll through the woods. It is an exploration of your attitude and at time your physical strength and endurance. that day we summited 4 (we later found out minor) peaks. Our goal was Gooch shelter, but we pretty much collapsed at the first campsite we encountered only 6 miles up the trail. Some food experiments I tried failed disastrously in my opinion and we all pretty much vowed we wern't going to get caught eating crappy food anymore. Day 3 pretty much took up where day 2 left off. We all climed sassafras mtn and pretty much thought we were going to die before we got up there. The summit did reward us with a magnificent view however and we got to watch some large birds that may have been eagles or very large hawks. We came down from big sassy and camped at another site feeling tired but not broken. By the time day 4 rolled around we were starting to get a clue about how hard things were going to be from looking at our maps and we knew Blood Mtn. was going to be rough. We headed up Blood and huffed and puffed the whole way. Blood was marginally less steep than Sassafras, but it was a much longer climb. I thought i was never going to see the top. Finally after walking through the dripping rain (we were in the clouds) I rounded a corner and got to see one of the main sights on this part of the trail. The Blood mtn. shelter. I cant imagine anyone in their right minds staying there but it is anincredibly impressive sight considering it is built atop a 4400 ft. mountain. If Sassafras mtn. made us pay to climb it Blood mtn. made us pay for the descent. It was incredibly theacherous and steep. We all got down in one piece, a miracle in its own right. This was our planned out of the woods day. We were all greatly anticipating emerging into civilization again at neels gap and nursing our sore legs and joints. As we neard Neels gap I finally caught a glimpse of road below me and knew we were getting close. The smell of hamburgers was drifting through the woods. MMMMMM I couldnt wait to chomp down on one of those rascals. Sadly as i numbly walked across the road to mountain crossings I was told that the church group that was feeding the hikers had run out of burgers, ARGHHHHH! The hostel was full so we got a shuttle from Matt down to Blairsville and stayed in a Best Western. We took 2 zero days to heal and eat and rest. On day 2 we stayed overnite in the Mountain Crossings hostel and tried to prepare ourselves for the next days hike. Here is where the biggest trouble of the whole hike came in. We got up early at the hostel and ate breakfast (pancakes and coffee cooked by the legendary Pirate, a perrenial hiker). We knew we would be in our rain suits the whole time and it was coldish (around 45 to 50 deg.), but we put on our best "no pain, no rain, no Maine" faces and trooped off into the morning mist intent on achieving blue mtn shelter before camping. In less than 3 hours I was soaked to the bone (due to rainsuit failure) Journey and Jaffe were wet to. We had definately bitten off more than we could chew. In another miracle we were able to contact Matt from Mtn Crossings to rescue us from Hogpen Gap and we fell into Blood Mtn cabins for another 2 days of thawing out and nursing wounds. When the weather finally regained its sanity I had the sad task of seeing journey and jaffe off once again at Hogpen Gap and I headed home (an adventure all by itself). Godspeed Journey and Jaffe I'm right here manning your base, ready to give you all the support I can.