NightWhisperer
03-20-2016, 17:15
I'm new to WhiteBlaze but not new to hiking. My name is NightWhisperer and I attempted to thru in 2014 and I'm back out here again in 2016 giving it another go. Two nights ago my hiking partner and I stayed at Bly Gap just north of the Georgia border with rain and potential snow in the forecast. We woke up yesterday, packed up and started hiking. We meet back up at Muskrat Creek and made a game plan. Looking at his small map of the trail it showed the Chunky Gal Trail leading from the AT out to route 64 and it appeared to be less of a distance than what we had just hiked (~3 miles). So knowing that USFS road 71 at Deep Gap was closed and would be at least a 3.75 mile walk to the road we decided to take the side trail, what's a couple miles going to hurt? So we took off with Franklin, pizza, and cold beer in our sights. I took minimal water since the map showed the trail running along the base of a mountain and being so short. We started hiking and thought it was kind of weird that it went uphill a little bit but felt good when it started going downhill, steeply. Not long after that it started going right up the ridge of another mountain. Surely the road would be right at the bottom of this mountain. Nope. This trail followed the ridge of these mountains a few miles until we finally saw the road. I had enough service to pull up a thread from this website claiming the trail to be only 5.1 miles. It also said the trail met the road at Glade Gap so I pulled that up on my GPS showing it still a ways away. Long story short this is not a good bailout trail if you want to avoid the mountains and get into town. There is not a lot of good/accurate information about this trail online and I only saw one water source and that was at the beginning of the trail. If you are going make sure to brace yourself for huge elevation changes and no opportunities to fill your water. I think personally you'd be better off taking the AT down to Deep gap and walking down the dirt road to 64 closer to town. I regret doing it but am glad I can let other people know about it.
-See you down the trail
NDubbs
-See you down the trail
NDubbs