The night wasn’t windy, it was still a bit chilly but not the worst we’d been through so far. Leaving camp the trail started climbing almost right away up Blood Mountain. This had been hyped up as one of the hardest days but the climb really wasn’t bad at all, it wasn’t any harder than anything we’d already done in different segments.
We climbed most of Blood Mountain with Snap-Pea for company. She had thru-hiked the AT a couple decades ago and is doing the section from Springer to Fontana this year. She gave me my first trail name as we climbed, “Ulysses”. Kacy has had the callsign “Siren” for a few years now, given to her by the Air Force pilots she worked with. It seemed appropriate to be known as Ulysses following Siren around for the foreseeable future and being on a personal Odyssey between the AT and living in the van afterwards.
The views from the top of Blood Mountain were awesome. It’s not the highest point in Georgia, but it’s only 325 ft short of that title. We paused for a snack and some photos, left another note for Lux and Kate in the logbook that we would be waiting for them at Neels Gap and started our way down the mountain.
As mild as the climb up Blood Mountain had been, the descent was terrible. It was incredibly rocky, involving a lot of scrambling and careful foot placement on steep rock slopes. Still dosing Vitamin I (ibuprofen) Kacy was managing but the downhill was particularly tough on her knee.
In the end, it was a short day even with the slow decent since we only had 5 miles to travel. Finally, we came down off the mountain into Neels Gap, which was particularly exciting because here we knew we’d find Mountain Crossings, the first resupply shop along the trail.
The first order of business was to get a frozen pizza cooked up for lunch, one of the many great services Mountain Crossings offers. Kacy and I devoured it and it was the best frozen pizza I’ve ever had. Once we’d eaten, we planned out the next few days of the trail and went in to re-supply the food we’d need. The father and son we’d been leap-frogging were getting off the trail here and had out their leftover food. We got 4 of their mountain house freeze dried meals, dramatically reducing the amount of food we had to buy. I picked up the much needed pair of hiking pants to keep me warm and Kacy bought a real knee brace and new insoles for her shoes that will hopefully address the blister problem. We also called the Blood Mountain Cabins and they were able to confirm that Lux had indeed made a reservation, now all we had to do was wait for Lux and Kate to get off the mountain.
They showed up after not too much longer with another hiker, Lydia. They got their share of pizza and necessary supplies and all five of us wandered down the hill to settle in to the cabin. First we piled all of our laundry together and hauled it up to the office where they washed and dried it for us. Next we raided the office food supply and bought more frozen pizza, ramen, and ravioli to cook up in the cabin for dinner. After that it was just relaxing as we all took turns showering (which felt amazing after 4 nights on the trail).
We started a fire and about the time it was really roaring away we realized that even though the flue was open and smoke was coming out the chimney smoke was also filling the whole cabin. We opened both doors and multiple windows to air out the place until the fire burned itself out, not ideal but honestly still really nice compared to another 30 deg night in the tent. After picking up our laundry from the office Lux was stalked back to our cabin by another new friend, Cabin Cat.
The cabin cat hung around for a while playing with socks, shoe strings, and generally being entertaining and friendly. It wasn’t long before a second cat jumped in through one of the open windows and hung out for a while as well. After we’d sorted the laundry, finished airing out the place, let cabin cats back outside and turned the heat up, we all settled in for a nice warm night.
Day 5 Mileage: 5.0 mi [Jarrard Gap -> Neels Gap]
Total Mileage: 39.6 mi