April 17th, 2016

We woke up this morning around 7:30 am and decided to make a fire in order to heat water for oatmeal. The reason we used a fire instead of the burner is because before resupplying at Neels Gap, we burned through both of our propane canisters. We were told that one of them would last our entire 11 day trip but we burned through both our primary and backup canisters in 4 days. We decided that we should conserve the propane that we bought at Neels Gap and spent extra time this morning building a fire to heat our breakfast. We packed up and walked about 2 miles to Unicoi Gap where there was a road and restrooms. We made it to Unicoi without a single rest, which gave us a lot of time to hike up and down 2 huge mountains later on. Rocky Mountain and Tray Mountain are both over 4000 feet in elevation and to get from one to the other you have to go straight down 800 feet from Rocky and then 1000 feet back up to the summit of Tray. We decided to have 2 half lunches on top of each mountain where we enjoyed the views of the Chattahoochee National Forrest. The discouraging part about hiking a trail as mountainous as the AT is that you spend about an hour dragging your way up a huge mountain, wanting to stop every inch of the way, only to quickly go down the other side in about 15 minutes and then have to do the exact same thing again at the next mountain. After summiting Tray Mountain today both Ford and I were exhausted. We made our final decent down into Steel Trap Gap where we had planned on camping. However we were out of water and so we hike to hike another 1/2 a mile down a water trail to refill our bottles and water bag. Neither Ford nor I wanted to hike anymore after reaching water and so we decided to set up our Enos by the little creek where we got water even though there was no campsite there. We interviewed a few people who came down to get water and then started getting ready for bed. We tied up our hammocks between two trees next to the water and have decided to go bed early. Tomorrow we have to hike farther than originally planned because we have eaten to much of our food and will need to resupply at the hostel at Dicks Creek, which is 9 miles away.

View from on top of Tray Mountain. 

Sign of the Chattahoochee National Forest.