Hello world! We are blogging from a beautiful spot on the side of Blood Mountain. The sun is about to set and we are in for a show for sure. We'd like to take this moment and catch the world up on what has been happening on our hike so far!
First of all, thank you so much to everyone who voted for us in the Appalachian Trials 2014 Badger Sponsorship! We took home 3rd place which means we will be recieveing some sweet free gear, including some dry dacks, Bedrock sandals, LARABARS, and some chocolate! We couldn't be happier with the results!
Secondly, a BIG thank you to Chase's parents, Debbie and Mason, for getting us to where we are today and making sure we were well fed and rested before setting out! You guys rock!
Thirdly, we will try to share some photos here, but a majority will be shared at our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/endlessfootpath
Let's get started!
Pain & Gain - Kelley
Our first day on the trail started out fantastically! We had a hearty breakfast at Amicalola Lodge, jogged up the stairs to Amicalola Falls, picked up our packs and hit the Approach Trail from the top of the falls. When we logged in at the visitor center, we were #50 and #51! It was kind of cool being the among the first 50 hikers to set out to Katahdin. It seems like such a far off goal (and it is) so I've been trying to focus on the short term. On the Approach we met our first fellow thru-hiker, Teddy Bear. He told us later on that he had flip-flopped a previous year, but this year he wanted the pure NOBO experience. He passed us pretty quickly and we've only seen him once since. We hiked through a lot of snow to get up to Springer, but it was really beautiful. When we did get up to the top, it was just before sunset so we hurriedly signed the register and hiked down to the shelter. We chose a campsite on thick snow near an evergreen tree. Neither of us had camped in snow before, so it was pretty exciting. Sheila seemed to really love the snow. We made sure to keep her feet warm with these little fleece booties from dogbooties.com. We will be ordering more as they proved to be the only kind of booties to stay on her feet! After we got camp set up, we popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate the beginning of an adventure. I figure everyday on the trail is a reason to celebrate!
The next day we got up and out of camp by about 9am. My feet were freezing and they didn't warm up until a couple of miles down the trail. We used our microspikes to get down Springer because all of the slush from yesterday was now ice. They worked great, but they made our feet tired. We met some more thru-hikers at Three Forks as we filtered water; Turtle, Figgy, and we saw Teddy Bear again, who gave us some beef jerky in exchange for water. We hiked all the way to Horse Gap and stayed with another couple. The gap was cold and windy, but we got through the night safe and warm. We realized that we didn't plan our meals very well in the last minute scramble, and we only brought dinner for 3 days when it looked like we were going to need 4 to get to Neels Gap. This lit a fire under me and encouraged me to push harder than was needed.
On Day 3 we hit Sassafras Mountain first thing. This is a beast of a mountain if you've ever looked at the elevation profile. Right after Sassafras is Justus Mountain, which is just as beastly. It was nice getting these two big elevation gain/loss peaks out of the way, and our hike for the rest of the day was relatively smooth. Because of the hard early morning, I was feeling pretty beat, so we made it a short day and stopped at Liss Gap early. Early camp was nice. There was plenty of time for all of the chores to get done before night fell and it started cooling off. It rained a little through the night, but with my face 6 inches from the tent ceiling, sleeping was hard. Not to mention this was our warmest night so far, and I was sweating half the night.
Day 4 started out really well. We got out of camp at 730 and hiked through some mist and fog to Woody Gap. There were real bathrooms! But sadly, no Fresh Gounds Leapfrog cafe, which we encountered back in November. We kept passing and being passed by Ibex and her group (another entrant to the Badger Sponsorship, Alexis Eliot) through out the day. On the way up Preaching Rock, I had this terrible pain in my upper thigh and had to slow way down. I remembered that I had the same pain yesterday coming down Justus Mountain, so I'm guessing I just pushed too hard that day. We decided to cut our day short of Blood Mountain so that I could rest my leg. This meant cold dinner and minimal breakfast tomorrow, but I know that I need to take it easy.
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Ok...I don't understand the whole select a profile thing. Wasn't sure what some of them were or how you did them. So put anonymous but I'm Karen. It is a marathon for sure. I remember when we had our son, born with Cerebral Palsy, and that's what one counselor told me about the 3rd year...a marathon not a sprint. Said I'd crash and burn if I kept trying to sprint. I would think that it definitely would apply to walking the AT...Hope you got some rest and that your leg was able to rest enough that it's not giving you too much pain and that the pain goes away.
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