BMT 94 to BMT 127, Early Exit

I exited the trail early. After two days of hiking from Ducktown, with the weather closing in, I decided to drop off the trail. There were two main reasons:

Weather

The next couple of days were supposed to be pretty bad – they are expecting 2.5 of rain the day I left and there are tornadoes and flooding just west of here.

Conditioning

I realized that I was probably not going to finish the trail in time to make my return flight. I was simply not in good enough shape to do what is probably the hardest part of the trail (miles 130-200) in a reasonable time. I hurt my knee training for the LST in January and have still not fully recovered.

My last day on the trail was one of the hardest days of hiking I’ve ever had. It took me eight hours+ to hike 12 miles. The trail was very rough with lots of rock scrambles and steep climbs. It completely wiped me out. To finish this trail I either have to be in much better shape or have a much easier plan, or both.