- Date:
2022-08-25 - 2022-08-26
This trip was between appointments for rental properties to purchase and a Saturday concert in Alpharetta featuring The Black Keys and Band of Horses.
This is the second time in recent memory that I have hiked this path - the last time being in September 2021. This time I only took Mabel since Millie is getting too old for walking longer distances.
It was raining when I started hiking at 9:00am on Thursday, August 25, 2022.
A river that we crossed a couple of miles after the beginning of the hike.
Same location as the last photo.
Waterfall from the wooden structure in the last photo.
It's a long "3.7" miles. Only 10.5 more miles to go for the day.
A sliver of sunshine that I felt worthy of a picture after all of the rain.
Lunch at Windy Gap
One of the several forest service road crossings.
A view of the top of the rock in the previous photo. Only five miles to Rabun Bald.
Throughout this trip I could hear Bulldog 93.3 using the iPod Nano. Super-cool and very motivating for me.
A beautiful view close to where I was listening to the radio in the previous photo.
Selfie.
Mabel
Filled up my water at this location - once on Thursday, and once on the Friday return trip. These were my only stops for water. On the return trip I listened to Bulldog 93.3 while I was pumping water. Very cool indeed.
Only 0.9 more miles. The last 5 miles are strenuous.
Finally at Rabun Bald. Before going to the lookout tower I took a photo of the sign headed back toward Warwoman Dell.
I arrived at Rabun Bald at 5:30pm, so I had plenty of time to setting up camp, eating, and ham radio - my leisure in the woods.
It was cloudy, so there was no view.
Cooking dinner.
My dogs are always allowed in my tent.
I brought two portable ham radios - the 2m-only Kenwood (TH-K2), and the 2m/70cm/6m Icom (IC-T90) - as well as three (ample) batteries for each, and the roll-up J-Pole antenna that David gave me. I set up the J-Pole and enjoyed the quality of the Kenwood monoband portable rig. I could hear so much cool stuff up there, and I was able to speak with all of my contacts using simplex (point-to-point communication) on the 2m band.
I set up my tent atop the observation tower and I ran the coax leading to the J-Pole into my tent. Doing this was a cleaver suggestion from David (N4TS).
I spoke in a group with my David and Ashton (KJ4AMA) before turning if for the evening.
On Friday morning the view from the observation tower was remarkable.
My tent Friday morning just before disassembling it.
David's idea. Absolutely photo-worthy. Ham radio from the comfort of the tent.
Because there was a downpour around 1am the camping gear was wet. I tried to let it dry out as much as possible. I left the observation tower at around 10:45am. I took some time to enjoy the beautiful morning.
Passing Windy Gap again (2:45pm Friday)
Mabel was a great companion during this hike.
I was planning to spend my second night close to this waterfall after I jumped in to rinse off. This location was only a few miles from the car.
I rinsed off, but immediately after a heavy rain started. Not wanting to have two consecutive nights of rain, I decided to pack it out on Friday evening.
Maybe in the near future I can spend a night here.
Mabel decided to avoid the rain as much as possible during the rain storm following my waterfall adventure. We hiked back to the car.
0 miles is the Car. 15 Miles is Rabun Bald.
