Date: 2017-04-02
From: Black gap shelter

To: Gooch Gap
Miles today: 18.6
Weather: clear sky

We slept in this morning until about 8am (sunrise was 630), which meant that we got a wonderful 11 hours of sleep to make up for the day before. We had already filtered water the night before, so we ate a quick breakfast, packed up, and hit the trail ahead of most of the 20-30 other hikers at the shelter. The climb to Springer Mt passed quickly, and we soon came to the clearing at the top. The start of the AT is marked by 2 placks, one denoting a hiker and the other showing a map of the east coast with the trail marked. The clearing also contains the first white blaze which mark the way all the way to Maine.We traded taking pictures with the placks with a couple of other hikers, before I said goodbye to Ashley and headed north at 910am. The trail passed Springer Mt shelter, which was still FULL of hikers preparing for their day, before winding down to a parking lot where everyone who doesn't hike the approach trail parks. At the parking lot, only 0.9mi into the journey I got my first TRAIL MAGIC!!! from a guy who had the back of his car STUFFED with everything a hiker could need (and might've forgotten) ... Bugspray, fuel cannisters, water, coffee, snacks, and more. Having all the gear I needed, I took only an oatmeal creme cookie and a juicebox, which were all the more delicious because I didn't have to carry them. The snack itself wasn't as big a deal as the fact that someone had woken up early (probably earlier than most of the hikers), driven to the top of a mountain, and was giving all this stuff to struggling hikers they didn't know and won't see again. Pretty cool person.After leaving the bustling parking lot I decended into some rhotodendron thickets which provided some much appreciated relief from the morning sun which would bake us for most of the day, the barren trees above not providing much protection. I passed a guy with a skateboard tied to his pack (that's a trail name waiting to happen, if it hasn't already), before meeting a guy and a girl, Hulk and GPS (I'll let you guess which was which (HINT: you probably got it wrong)), who I chatted with while hiking for a couple hours. The trail was still fairly busy and we passed a group of girls on a trip to earn their PE credit for the semester at UGA, a couple of families, as well as several other Thrus. Eventually they stopped to fix Hulk's shoe and I continued on ahead and shortly ran into ANOTHER TRAIL MAGIC!! A couple of trucks had setup tables, chairs, and more food than an army could eat at a forest road crossing. Spoon and Lookout, two Thrus I had briefly met at camp the night before, were taking a break to enjoy the treats. I had some strawberries, peanut butter crackers, a bag of chips, and a Snickers and rested a while before grabbing a bag of jellybeans, an apple, and filling my water bottles for later. After thanking the trail angels I heading out with Spoon and Lookout.We chatted as we hiked for a couple miles before reaching Hawk Mt shelter, my intended destination for the day, a little before noon. While we had all intended to sleep there, we decided that we didn't feel like sitting around all afternoon and that the next shelter (6mi away) was a good target. After tanking up (the next 4mi would be dry) we started down the trail before meeting a ridgerunner, one of the 3 rangers stationed along the first ~30mi of the trail to make sure no inexperienced hikers did anything too stupid. We chatted with him and learned that the rain that we had heard was going to hit Monday afternoon was now forcasted into severe thunderstorms, potentially including hail, and that 60 people had passed him thus far that day and were heading for the same shelter we were. We thanked him for the info and headed out, having decided that we wanted to push to Neels Gap (which has a hostel, cabins, resupply, and pizza/beer) before the storm hit Monday afternoon so that we can sleep inside that night. That goal, combined with the lack of space at the next shelter, the bear canister requirement at the shelter after, the fact that the whole trail knows there's weather coming and is also heading to Neels (which can accommodate a limited number of hikers), and the fact that Blood Mt, a 4400ft peak, is between us and Neels and probably isn't safe to traverse in a storm, meant that we had to reach Gooch Gap tonight so that we could do the 11.5mi to Blood Mt before the weather turns and the 14mi to Neels Gap before the spots sell out.Lookout and I cruised for the rest of the afternoon, getting a bit more TRAIL MAGIC in the form of a potable water tank that someone had placed in Sasafras gap that we topped off our water from. We stopped in briefly at the shelter (which had all 22 tent sites around it already full) to talk to the ridgerunner there and fill up on water for the night. There we met a guy from South Africa who had gotten off a plane 2 days ago, gone to REI in Altanta, bought all his gear, and started the trail, which will be pretty impressive if he makes it.We finished our 19mi day at ~6pm, cooked dinner, hung our food, and headed to bed. We'll be up early tomorrow to start our miles. At Neels I'll be picking up a hat to protect against the sun/rain, a pen, a refill on sunscreen (the bottle I brought was almost empty), and topping off my food to get me to the Top of Georgia hostel (which provides shuttles into Hiawasse, which is probably going to be the next resupply).