10%

Coosa Backcountry

beautifully unforgiving

By Elias Julian

October 10^th, 2016

13 miles of lush, unforgiving, beautiful, harsh trail

“It’s HOW long of a hike?”

“Oh, 13 miles isn’t *that* bad, we can totally day-hike it.”

That’s the exact conversation I had with my wife on our way to hike the Coosa (as we so lovingly call it now), and phew, did it turn out to be a tough one. It was beautifully unforgiving and we experienced just about every season in our 10 hours on the trail. It rained a little (a lot), had to throw on a fleece at one point because it got chilly near the summit, had to take off said fleece because the sweat-inducing sun came back out. But, man, was the light and general aura at the summit worth the hike.

The fauna was so dense that at times, despite being the middle of the day, it looked like the sun was setting and daylight was escaping us. Pretty trippy when you’re nearing complete exhaustion.

The closer we got to the summit we stumbled across a few campsites, and once the fog rolled in after the rain the environment got more and more surreal. A little creepy at times where the fog was most dense. Next time, we’ll probably make this a two-day hike and set up camp halfway through.