My brother John called me last night. "Want to ride tomorrow?" Yeah, I did, but we couldn't think of where we wanted to go, and actually, I was a little biked-out from last week's commuting. I had an idea though. My bro and his son met me near my house and we headed up to Blood Mountain.
After a quick stop at Mountain Crossings..
We parked at Byron Reece and climbed the Freeman Trail.
A few months back my bro and I did a couple of days on the AT and saw some pretty cool rock formations. We passed close to there again today.
The Freeman Trail is rocky. Not like the AT on Blood Mountain, but still.
Nice views.
At Bird Gap we stopped for a while. These weird things were growing everywhere. I used to know the name of them but I can't remember now.
From there we headed west to Jarrard Gap, down Jarrard Gap Road and back up Jarrard Gap Trail. A few weeks back I tried to hike Jarrard Gap Trail with my kids, but ended up on the Road instead. This time we did it right.
The Jarrard Gap Trail is pretty steep.
We backtracked over Gaddis Mountain and Turkey Stamp back to Bird Gap and took another break. The frere changed socks.
Austin tore into some Sour Skittles.
At the intersection with the Slaughter Creek Trail we drank from the cool, refreshing waters of a natural spring and some folks took our picture. I'm in the middle, not smiling much for some reason.
Around this point, I was getting pretty impressed with Austin's stamina. He was easily keeping pace with me and John. We climbed up over Blood Mountain. Austin showed me some caves that he'd found the last time he was up there.
The views were pretty nice. I banged my head hard into a tree climbing up onto a big rock. Woohoo!
I think the tallest peak there is Brasstown Bald.
I needed to get back to the car for 6 so I could get back home for 8. We had about an hour to get down, so we didn't hang around for long. Descending Blood Mountain is no easy thing. It's super steep and rocky and just slams your knees all the way down. Austin made it look easy.
We made it down quick. John and Austin were dreaming of some particular type of ice cream that they'd seen at Mountain Crossings the last time they came up here a few months back. We stopped by but apparently they ran out or something. What a drag.
We did get lucky at Moe's, or at least I did. I asked for a Joey with just rice and extra meat and the chick gave me like a pound of steak. Score.
I made it back for 8 but it turned out that the thing I needed to do was really on Sunday. Heh.
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