Date: 2013-03-29
From: Lance Creek Campsite

To: Neel Gap, Mountain Crossings
Miles today: 7.4
Weather: broken clouds

I didn't wake up till 6:00, to the sound of adjacent tenters moving out. Once again, it took almost 1.5 hours to get ready, mostly still in the dark -- I've got to get more efficient!I still got out on the Trail earlier than most of those at Lance Creek, tho some caught up fairly soon. The order of the day was getting over Blood Mountain, the highest, so far. Going up NOBO (heading North on AT) is pretty gradual, but coming down the North side is much more difficult: steep & rocky, a foretaste of the White Mountains. I thought my knee would feel better after a night's sleep, so I was disappointed to find it very stiff when I woke up. It loosened up after a while, gradual uphill hiking wasn't too hard on it. For a while, I kept up a pretty good pace, walking between a physical therapist from Calgary and a sports physiologist from Denver. In hiking, I often stop momentarily about every 20 feet of elevation gain, to catch my breath. Walking with them for a mile or two, I was able to dispense with that and do a considerable amount of talking besides. I guess it's easier to feel I need to stop when I'm alone. At one point, I began to feel I was getting close to the top, so I pulled out my map. Often that tells me how far I have to go -- this time, it told me I was quite close.One thing the physiologists were discussing was how hard walking every day is on the body. They were both into endurance sports, but stressed the need to take a day without exercise every 3 or 4 days, even in intense training. I had thought the Biblical idea of Sabbath wasn't so bad, and resolved to try to take a day off every week, to go to church if possible, so the discussion with them made it easier to take a extra day this weekend.Just stopping a bit at the top made my knee stiffen up again, which makes it more difficult to go down over rocks. Some places have nice steps that diligent trail maintainers have built, but other parts are just scrambling over rocks, which of course have patches of mud between them. There were a lot of people at the summit (day-hikers and week-end hikers, as well as thru-hikers) and most of the way down. Today had started out warmer than yesterday, with the sun shining the first hour or two, but it got cooler & cloudier as I went up, so I didn't feel like staying long. At the bottom, there was a side trail to a parking lot, so I had the Trail to myself for the last mile to Neel Gap.In 2010, when I came thru Bly Gap at the N.C./Ga. border, I met some trail maintainers who had just repainted a blaze on the famous crooked tree along the Trail. They told me they were from a N.C. trail club and that they do a much better job on the Trail than the Georgia club. I didn't see evidence of that right away -- generally they both do a very good job -- but I would note that there are some places that could use more blazes: that last mile down to Neel Gap I only saw ONE in either direction; similarly, the other day in the area around Three Forks. In both places, there may not be any real alternative, but if you don't know how far back you saw the last blaze, that's not reassuring. After all, there are numerous places along the Trail where the AT gets on road or established trail and then off again in 50-100 feet. If you miss that marker, you can go a long way in vain. It's nice to feel that if you ARE on the Trail you WILL see blazes!Neel Gap was a mad-house, as always. I fixed myself some lunch while deciding what to do next. I'd been planning to get off the trail for a day for Easter. Now I decided to stop a day earlier to rest my knee. I signed up to stay in the bunkhouse at Mountain Crossings, with the the promise that a church group was bringing supper for hikers. In reading a Trail Journal last year, I had discovered someone who couldn't find a Good Friday service in Hiawassee, so I did some research before-hand, and discovered a Lutheran church (St Andrews in Andrews, N.C.) that even promised an Easter Vigil service. That's an ancient liturgy that celebrates God's saving acts thru-out history and dramatically moves from that to the joy of Jesus' resurrection. Originally an all-night thing, it's now a few hours on the night before Easter. It looked like Andrews is an awkward series of hitch-hikes from Hiawassee, but if I could hitch from Hiawassee to Franklin last time, I could do this. Now it turned out that Neel Gap is on the same highway [U.S. 19] as Andrews -- that made it look much easier.