On April 1 we drove up Bell Gap Rd as far as we could and parked our car. Then we walked down to the road to wait for an Uber that never showed up. After some jogging and hiking we got a ride from a nice local named Sherry, who drove us most of the way to Blye Gap Rd. We did our 3 mile climb up to the Appalachian Trail, where we saw maybe 15 people in .2 miles. These would be the last people we saw.
The eight mile bushwhack section was incredible, mostly up and down along the narrow ridge, through brush and rhododendron, with great views on each side. There are a few probably class 3 sections, and a lot of slow brushy areas. When we made it to Eagle we decided to go straight down the steep west side of the peak, as Holly Saxby had suggested. We filtered our first water since being on the valley floor about a mile from the trailhead.
This was day three of our 120 mile Georgia 4000 footers attempt, so we weren’t really trying to set any speed records on this ridge. But when we finished we spent a half hour or so making random Strava segments in both directions and couldn’t find anything faster. It certainly wouldn’t surprise us if someone has done this faster pre-Strava, but what herd paths there are were likely less worn back then so who knows. In any case this is a spectacular route and deserves to be on the site, and this can give someone a time to shoot for. Note: There is roughly an 8 minute discrepancy between our route time and our activity time. We recorded some before and after the start and finish trailheads, but the gpx has been cropped to the correct distance/time.