Day 4 - 4/7/09 (Tuesday)
last night was beyond bizarre…and for more than one reason:
- “snowfall = 1-2 inches”
- “weird dreams = 2”
- in both i was back in school. one i won’t get into but the other was no fun. i dreamt that i had forgotten about one of the classes i was registered for, for the entire semester and was now faced with having to take an exam having never once been to the class…ick.
- “impromptu foot operations = 1”
- (one of the weirdest things i have ever experienced:) i woke cold, in a tent covered in snow. it was an erie world in which i found myself, but more to do with the fact that i have had little sleep yet than the snow cover. ”my day one blister had not drained well.” (it had formed and popped all on day one of the official trail, day two of the hiking. the popping though had only occurred between my big and second toes and the space between was now becoming raw itself. the blister ran between the ball of my foot and the big toe, right where you would want to be pushing off from.) ”i heard recently that if the skin doesn’t get to dry out at some point during the day that’s not good” so i, with a very foggy mind, dug out my knife to “cut the flap open to get air to it”. after a very clumsy procedure i had opened up a flap over the red raw and very tender new skin below “…we’ll see how that goes.”
that i didn’t actually do any real damage to myself is a miracle.
- “BE, J2 left early. the girls and i woke late and got going slow in the snow. after hearing that bears have been taking bags on blood mountain we decided on neels gap. hiking blood mountain in the snow was fun…the snow and tall mountain (tallest on the AT in GA) felt ‘epic’…i’m reminded of a photo of a shelter on some (snow covered) peak and our stone house (the shelter on top of blood) was a nice top out. things like this make me want to mountaineer and i sort of pretended that i was training for a big climb. i almost forgot the feet.” i am “taking the day off tomorrow because i started to fast. i need to rest the blistered feet, and learn to east in.”
- “took first photos:
- - group: BE, J2, Gret, Me
- - maya
- - gret
- - J2, GW, 93, BE”
- after hiking out from blood mountain, we all ended up at goose creek for the evening as the hostel at neels was full. i will try to stay there tomorrow night. in the meantime we did dinner at an all you can eat (ayce) buffet in town, made phone calls, and in general paid the guy here way too much money for everything.
you’ll hear more about GW (good will) and 93 tomorrow.
