Day 3 [Georgia] Mile 17.2 - Mile 27.8: Gooch Gap - Woods Hole Shelter
Date: February 15, 2025 (Saturday)
Total Distance: 10.6 miles
We were planning to start hiking on Friday, a day when kids were on a school break. However given its sub-zero temperature, we decided to postpone to the day after, although it suppose to rain most part of the day. We never imagined the weather that night could turn so fierce. We were lucky that we survived it, but it taught us a great lesson to be weather-aware, prepare, and respect the power of mother nature.
Mile 17.2 Gooch Gap
We drive 2 hours north from home in the morning, and parked at Unicoi Gap, our planned destination at the end of 2-day section hike. Our shuttle drive picked us up and dropped us off at the Gooch Gap, where we left off from last October. The site cross the unpaved Forest Service road 42.
We were lucky to ran into our first trail magic - Leapfrog Cafe run by Fresh Ground (trail name). He is such a wonderful person! The name of the cafe comes from the fact that he changes his locations along the trail from Georgia up to Pennsylvania, like a leaping frog. Here we had a plate of warm breakfast with blueberry pancake, scrambled eggs, bacon, as well as a cup of hot coca, and finished it by the warm fire bit under the tent. It boosted our morale in big time to deal with this cold rainy day.
After hiking about 1.2 miles north bound on the trail, we realized that we left our trekking poles at the cafe. Fresh Ground already sent someone to drive them to the Woody Gap waiting for us there. Sorry we forgot the name of the lady who drove back and forth. He called that person to bring them back to the cafe. We picked up trekking poles and started all over again. We felt like we met angles from haven. We were deeply touched by the kindness of the AT community and have a deeper understanding of it now.
Mile 18.2 Liss Gap
The rain and mist didn’t make it easy for us to hike, but created a mysterious feeling of the woods, different from other clear days, albeit fascinating. I have not recorded the landmarks that we hit along the trail that day, so below photos are probably for Liss Gap, which is featured by large poplar trees.
Mile 19.0 Ramrock Mountain
On the large rock near mountain top, we did not have the view of the far mountain ranges due to the mist, but it was a beautiful scene in a different way.
Mile 20.5 Woody Gap
After crossing the Black Mountain, we cam to our second stop on AT that cross a paved state road - GA-60, after Neel Ga. It has a big parking lot, information board, pit toilets, trash bins, and picnic benches. There are several shuttle services running, and within short distance to hostels, lodgings, groceries, restaurants, etc.
We rested for snack, and moved on to the Big Cedar Mountain. Although it was only 2, 3PM in the afternoon, it got dark pretty soon.
Mile 21.7 Preaching Rock
A lot of climb on stone stairs in this section.
Mile 24.0 Lance Creek Campsite
Campsite built with wooden frame, and a creek in front.
Mile 27.7 Woods Hole Shelter
When it was near sunset time and got dark, we naively planned to march on to cross the Blood Mountain with our headlamp. But my knee got very painful. Our rain jackets did a good job of keeping the down jacket underneath dry in the rain, but they didn’t breath well so our layer next to skin were soaked by the end of the day. So we decided to stop and find a shelter, then cross the Blood Mountain the next day.
It was already dark by the time we were ready to find Woods Hole Shelter from the trail. The mist got thicker, and we could barely see a few inches ahead even with our headlamp on. It is an only 0.4 miles side trail to the shelter, but we felt it was forever. We stopped on the way at a creek to refill our water bottles. We saw the bear lock at the campsite first as it has the reflective stripe on it. The mist was so thick that it took us a while to finally find the shelter nearby. As we were the only one there, we built our tent in the shelter to dim the strong wind. We cooked and ate dinner quickly then called it a night. Andrew found mouse in the shelter but we didn’t give too much thoughts as we would slept in a closed tent.
Andrew had a good night of sleep but I was half awake almost the whole time, although I was exhausted. It was our first night of camping out since our Cub Scout camping in Red Top Mountain when Andrew was in 4th grade. I was imaging wild animal around us at the dark. On top of that, the rain was so loud in pounding on the roof for a very long time. The thunderstorm with lightning ran the first half of the night nonstop, followed by strong whooshing wind till the morning. The cell signal was barely there, so I was praying that nothing bad would happen to us. During the morning, some text messages finally went through and those were from our shuttle driver Ron. He sent us satellite image of a tornado passing through Ellijay, GA and the area around 2AM, and alerted us to wait in the shelter until the it blew by. It was horrifying to realize that if we insisted on hiked during the night on to the mountain, we could be dead by now either by getting lost on the trail, or hypothermia due to problem with camping without shelter in the horrible weather. We will forever thank the shelter and the people who built it for hikers. We also appreciated our house like never before, which makes the bad weather so irrelevant to our lives.
