3/14/17

Day 4 was pretty brutal. Throughout the night Max and I were hit with 20+ mile per hour winds and a good bit of snow fall. Making it to the morning was all I could think about. The crazy thing about it was that we had set up our tents so that we wouldn't be effected by the wind, unfortunately during the night the wind patterns changed.

When I woke up at 6 am my boots were frosted over and had ice on the inside. What a way to start the day right? During the night the wind had blown some of the snow up into my boots which were placed in the vestibule (compartment of the tent that is made to house your gear from weather.) I through them on anyways and started to pack up.

After texting Max around 7 or so we went up to get our bear bag from up the trail. This is a bag with all of our food in it, that we hang in the tree away from our camp to keep the bears from rummaging through camp. We found that the knot Max tied was completely frozen, this in my opinion was like a foreshadowing of our day...

We started our hike this morning from Garrard Gap over to Neels Gap which is around a 5 mile trip. There was only one thing between us and our destination. Blood mountain, with an elevation of over 4000 feet, intense snowfall, and blistering winds it was definitely the hardest challenge we had yet to face.

We prayed over what was ahead of us today and took off. Two miles up a steep incline to the top, we charged. Once we reached the top we were able to stop at a cool all rock shelter. Here we tried to rehydrate and rest a bit before we started back. During our break we also was able to meet some people spring breaking. They came down from Virginia to avoid the bad weather, they soon realized that they avoided nothing.

As we started down Blood Mountain heading into Neels Gap we found that the Trail was poorly marked for conditions in which we were facing. None the less after a few tries Max lead Jacob (a guy we met the night before) and I down the mountainside.

I couldn't have been happier to reach Neels Gap. After enduring the wicked winter spell that came through we were able to get warm at the Mountain Crossing store.

We decided like most others hiking on the trail, to take a couple of days off before continuing to hike. We will be back on the trail Thursday! Thanks for everyone's support and prayers!


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Location:Neels Gap