Wednesday, April 13th

Today we woke up earlier around 7:30 and we managed to pack and eat breakfast quicker without having to pack up the tent. We set out to start our longest planned hike at 12.3 miles from Blackwell Creek to Woods Hole at 9. As we hiked for about a half mile, we ran across a wide creek. By using the map we determined that this was in fact Blackwell Creek and we just so happened to camp at a creek that wasn't recorded on the map. This of course added another half mile to our already long day. After hiking up and down Gooch Mountain (on top of Gooch we interviewed a thru-hiker named Gregg) into Gooch Gap and hiking up Justus mountain and down into Justus Creek we noticed a trend in our hiking. We would hike up in elevation, like up a mountain, and then straight down the mountain into their valleys or "gaps". We would do this over and over again which seemed like a never ending process. We did that for 4 hours stopping to eat lunch on top of Big Cedar Mountain, one of the biggest mountains on our trip. We then continued the previous trend for 5 more miles and 4 more hours to Jarrard Gap. We chose to camp here tonight, 2 miles short of our goal because other hikers told us to camp between Blood Mountain and Neels Gap we would need bear-resistant canisters. We did not have these. Thus, we decided to camp at Jarrard Gap and add the extra 2 miles to tomorrow. We set up the tent as it was very windy. We then made a fire and cooked and ate our dinner. We are now going to bed and getting ready for a tough hike tomorrow since we have to hike up and down Blood Mountain, the tallest mountain on the trail in Georgia.