gooch mountain shelter to neels gap

pretty crazy day today. it rained most of the night, and finally stopped about an hour before i got up. breakfast in the shelter and on trail pretty quickly. breakfast is tearing the top off two oatmeal packets and pouring water in and eating out of the packet. quick and no clean up. coffee is moe of a pain. i’m not sure i’ll keep up with it once i finish it.

the trail was wet and muddy. nico and i hiked together and in almost no time came to a dirt road crossing . . . with a tent, and smoke. trail magic! eggs and sausage by alda, the appalachian long distance association. we ate, thanked everyone, and were on our way. we also picked up a third hiker for our troop, toby, a young guy from new hampshire doing a gap year.

we continued on and soon hit another gap . . . with more trail magic! this one had hot dogs (which i recently discovered at a baby shower in the fall are amazing, who knew.) as well as a ton of other treats. i’m getting pretty good at grabbing mostly good stuff like apples and bananas and then some chips and oreos on the way out. the three of us sat on lawn chairs and ate, and presently two hikers who we had seen at a couple shelters, sky and dan arrived.

dan is a thru-hiker from south africa, but has dual citizenship and works in D.C. sky is a grad student and also lives in D.C., but they didn’t know each other until stover creek shelter a couple days ago. she’s just doing a sextion hike to neel’s gap. i had kind of been on the fence about pushing past my 2020 mileage to neel’s, but she wanted companions and convinced the three of us to go to neel’s.

we hiked on, pulling a pretty big day (i’m focusing a lot less on mileage this year on purpose). we summited blood mountain and toby, nico, and i wiggled our way through a small cave.

finally got to neel’s just after 5. and guess what, there was a mobile massage station trail magic. wut even?

it was for a massage school. the guy who got me asked me what was hurting and then massaged and taught me what i can do to help it. my pains are the same s always - the muscle behind my two calf muscles, and my i.t. band. so now i have some tricks for when they’re messed up.

mountain crossings, the outfitter on the trail was still open, despite all accounts saying it would be closed by 5. i did a quick resupply. our troop decided to stay right near neel’s gap and hiked about 200 feet to a campground just above mountain crossings. i headed back just after dark to get some water and found the hiker boot tree was lit by a lamp that made it look pretty eerie in the breeze.

we pitched, had dinner and then untrue to thru-hiker norms, stayed up past dark chatting by headlamp.

we headed to bed, and almost immediately the wind kicked up and the temperature dropped to near freezing. they increased to almost gale force winds which continued through the entire night. the wind was so strong my tent stakes came out twice and pretty much all night i was afraid the tent would give up and tear. somehow despite all this, i managed a decent amount of sleep.

a few more images from the day: