The second section of the trail on the BMT is another fifty miles of mellow walking. Perhaps it was the new ultra-light backpacks we were hiking with. Shoutout MatSix Ultra-Light. Maybe it was because the BMT is much less vertical than the AT, but we could keep an average of around eighteen or twenty miles daily. With our forty-pound packs on the AT, hiking fifteen miles was a struggle.
Our experience of these fifty miles could have been titled ‘the weather strikes back. From the six-mile road walk out of Blue Ridge to the time we got off the trail again at Thunderrock, it was either storming or fixing to storm. Though when you are hiking the BMT in the summer, the rain is a welcome addition. In the rainforest, the word ‘dry’ is a relative term. You are either wet from sweat or wet from the rain, and there is plenty of time when the rain is the preferred option. Between the storms, a foggy mist would settle in over the ridgeline, and we would hike through the clouds. Also, the rain knocks the humidity out of the air, which helps it cool off.
This section of the trail starts with a six-mile road walk, but some exciting parts are walking near Cherry Log. The road splits, and the path continues between railroad and street for about a hundred yards before turning north and weaving into the small valley where a waterfall awaits you. It feels like you are back in the middle of the forest. In reality, you are just wandering around in random people’s backyards. This continues for about a mile, and you are back on the reasonably grueling roadwalk. I would recommend doing this roadwalk after the heat of the day breaks. That is if you are hiking in the summertime as we did.
Then the trail climbs and heads towards the Cohutta Wildlife Management Area. This dense forest is quite remote. The AT is so established that you are never too far from civilization. In the five days that it took us to walk this section, we didn’t see another person, and there was no sign of human life besides the small trail in front of us. On a ridgeline of the Cohutta Wildlife Management Area, we saw some poop that was unlike anything I had ever seen. It is impossible that it came out of a human butt. For a moment, I thought it might be some bear scat, but bear scat has a distinct look. It didn’t occur to me for a while after. Lizzy and I couldn’t stop talking about how big that pile of poop was. We were trying to figure out what laid it. It was a brown mound of poo as wide as the trail, and then a giant log must have been five inches wide on top of it. We decided it had to have been a Sasquatch to lie about such a thing. Little did we know then that multiple Bigfoot sightings and rumors of the creature were floating around the Blue Ridge community. I wish I had taken a photo of it.
We made it to Thunder Rock Campground soon after. We have a buddy that lives in Blue Ridge and works as a river guide. We got to take a zero at his place, and then he took us rafting down the Ocoee. Which was a blast. I think hiking the BMT in the summer is the way to do it. There are so many swimming holes and rivers to float or raft.
From the other side,
Daniel and Lizzy
from the other side 