Writing this the day after! Day 4 was epic. The climb into the blood mountain wilderness had the most epic view. I got up early and it was still pitch black with a beautiful view of the stars, so i waited til first light and hit the trail. The sun was just rising over the most epic view point and just wow. I love it here.

Then was the actual Blood Mountain which looked like a vicious climb on Guthook but wasn’t tooooo bad. Beautiful payoff. I was up there talking to someone in my group when a young man said ‘are you Appalachian emerald?? I follow you on Instagram!’ And it literally made my day. And now I have a new friend and feel a little famous 😂 love it. Such an amazing community out here.

Then we got to Neel’s gap, where the famous shoe tree is where hikers hang their shoes if they quit their hike here, the first four days aren’t easy and it weeds out those who expected something else, are injured, or just decided for whatever reason not to go on. One man in our group is in this camp, I believe. I don’t think he’ll be joining us for the rest of the journey. So now it has gone from 9 to 7. The women now outnumber the men. I have found two members of the group who want to finish around the same time as me so I will push my completion date about a week to have a couple familiar faces around, unless we split for various reasons like pace. Still so stoked to be here, so stoked that I got 9 hours of sleep in a real bed, and that I’m out here doing this.

Song of choice for today - bow and arrow by rueben and the dark