Blood Mountain Cove adventure!

Join me on an overnight backpacking trip that is a mix of familiar trails, lesser used trails, and trailess areas. It will have mountain views, rushing streams, waterfalls, rock scrambling, and cross country hiking. It has been done by the club in the past, but not in quite a few years. We will start at a small parking area near Waters' Creek Falls. From there we will hike up around Crow Mountain past the Crow Mountain Falls waterfalls. We will get our feet wet here while we check out the view from the bottom and top of the falls. Then we hike up Blood Mountain Creek past Chestnut Flats to Blood Mountain Cove. We will continue up the creek to Blood Mountain Creek Falls, crossing the creek several times (wet feet likely). We likely will stop for lunch at these falls.

After enjoying the falls and lunch we will go off-trail and uphill to the Freeman Trail, which we will take East to Flaltrock Gap, where we will turn left onto the AT. We will follow the AT to Blood Mountain summit and continue on the AT past the Freeman Trail and Woods Hole Shelter, where we will spend the night. The next morning we will continue down the AT through Bird Gap, and at Turkey Stamp we will turn left off the AT and go off trail to make our way back to our cars. We will stop a few times to enjoy waterfalls. While we will be off trail at times on this hike, no bushes will be whacked! We will respect the land and do our best to leave it as we found it. 

This hike involves around 4,000 feet of climbing and 15 miles carrying packs. We will be climbing over boulders and up steep inclines. We will be crossing streams multiple times, very likely getting wet multiple times. Due to the difficult nature of this hike, I have designed this page to put everyone on the waitlist. If you do not have any recent D5 hikes you will remain there. I will select people to move from the waitlist who have experience on long and strenuous hikes, and who can deal with difficult situations that can arise on an exploratory trip. If you only have non-AOC comparable events, you can email me a link to an recording showing your ability (AllTrails, strava, etc.) and I will consider it. I will not expand the group over 8, and may keep it at 4 or 5 to lessen impact on the pristine area we will traverse. 

This is an exploratory hike. I have not done half the trails, and do not have a recording to verify the distance or elevation gain. I cannot guarantee the finish time noted above, although I expect we will finish early. Don't sign up if you need to be somewhere after, though!

Because the parking at the trailhead is limited, and because I have never been to this trailhead, it is preferable to either carpool or to meet us at the Ingles in Cleveland. But there is parking at the trailhead, so if you need to go there directly you can use the GPS coordinates on the map shown when you click the map icon above. In Apple Maps, "Dicks Creek Falls" also goes to the trailhead, but in Google Maps "Waters Creek Falls" takes you the same place. It may be necessary to drive through a creek to get to the parking area, so higher clearance vehicles would be wise. 

We will meet at Ingles in Cleveland around 8:10 for a bathroom break and to consolidate into fewer cars. It's a good place to purchase lunch, too. We will leave at 8:30.