Ahh, snow hiking I love it so. But snow can cause a change in plans and that is what it did with our scheduled Appalachian Trail (AT) Section Hike...Spivey Gap to Chestoa.
I have wanted to do this AT Section for some time, so when I saw it on the Mid-Appalachian Hiking Club schedule I jumped at the chance. This was supposed to be a key swap hike with the Johnson City Hiking Club (JCHC). They would come up AT Southbound from Chesota while we would come down from Spivey Gap North on the trail.
I knew Friday night this hike could be in jeopardy because of the forecast of snow. I thought it might get canceled outright, but I decided to risk it and go up early Saturday morning to Johnson City. I mean if it was a wash I could just do Pinnacle Mountain Fire Tower.
So, when I got to the meeting spot in Johnson City the decision was made to not risk going up to Spivey Gap. The reason the gap sits at about 3,200 feet. Anyway, it was decided to hike up out of Chestoa and go as far as we wanted. I won't go into details about this hike as I did that on my first hike here. The last time I did part of this hike was with Bax in October of 2017.
The main thing to know about this hike it was another AT Snow Adventure. It was appropriate since this was the last day of Winter. Let's be honest it hasn't been a lot of Winter, so to close out with a Leap Year snow was cool.
The snow was a beautiful backdrop today. I did end up going further than on my previous two hikes here. I went beyond Temple Hills Gap, which is about two miles more here than I had done before. What is funny about this hike for me it was a solo-group hike.
One last thing I went over to Uncle Johnny's after the hike and talked to a guy about a shuttle. He said he had to pull some people out at Street Gap. He almost had to call Search and Rescue, until the finally showed up. They said there were deep drifts and high winds on Big Bald, it is a good thing one of the parts wore Cowboy boots. Now that is a snow adventure...
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