- [Announcer] Funding for "View Finders" was provided by- - [Woman] Let's imagine what outside can be.

- [Man] Outside is important.

- It's musical.

(laughing) - [Man] Together we can create an outside with space for everyone.

(tranquil music) - [Announcer] Funding for "View Finders" is provided by Troncalli Subaru, located on Highway 9 in Cumming.

Visit Troncalli Subaru or find out more online at troncallisubaru.com.

(inspiring music) (wordless vocalizing) - [Announcer] At Terrapin Beer Company, we make beer for life's adventures.

Be they far from home, or right in your own backyard.

Terrapin, good everywhere, best outside (inspirational music) (wordless vocalizing) - 4,458 feet in elevation.

- The highest point on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia.

- Part of the oldest mountain chain in the world.

- This is Blood Mountain.

- I'm Chris.

- I'm Jason.

- [Both] And we're the View Finders.

(upbeat bluegrass music) (relaxed country music) ♪ Mountain high ♪ ♪ Head to the sky ♪ ♪ Mountain high ♪ ♪ Leave it all behind ♪ - All right, here we are.

We are about to hike up Blood Mountain, and I don't know if we're ready for this.

I have not hiked in a little while.

How long has it been for you Jason?

- [Jason] It's been a while.

- No less than about 150 pounds on our back.

All right, that's a slight exaggeration, but what did you say, like 50?

- Yeah, I weighed my pack and I was at about 52.

- Yeah, so this is far more than most people would be carrying to the top of an mountain, especially when they haven't hiked much lately.

So this is gonna be the slowest ascent to Blood perhaps in the history of the mountain.

- We are at the Byron Herbert Reece Trailhead, kind of flirted with the Slaughter Creek Trail.

It's a little longer, but this one's a little steeper, but we just figured we'd just bite the bullet- - [Chris] Yeah.

- And trek up and- - Get it over with.

- Get it over with.

- I think this is gonna be a slow go, but we have hours and hours and hours before the sunset, so we're not gonna feel rushed.

We're gonna take our time.

We're gonna appreciate the trail.

And we're looking forward to the views that we have ahead of us, as well as the camping tonight.

I think it's gonna feel great.

(inspirational music) ♪ Do what you need to get your mind right ♪ ♪ High class walls ♪ ♪ Do what you need to get your mind right ♪ ♪ High class walls ♪ ♪ High class walls ♪ - [Jason] Before we made our ascent to the top of Blood Mountain, we followed one of the springs down to the iconic Helton Creek Falls to explore and capture some images.

- Al right, so we're here at Helton Creek Falls.

We're not too far from Blood Mountain.

I don't know about you, Jason, I love waterfalls.

And actually I do know, he loves waterfalls, too, and we're kind of in his backyard.

I'm jealous that he lives so close to here, but there's something about clear water tumbling over rocks, over the top of a steep drop that is just music to my ears, and it's wonderful to take pictures of, and Jason why do you love this waterfall so much?

- I think it's just, it's so picturesque.

You know you get to a lot of waterfalls and there's a lot of debris or it's so tight you don't get it clear shot at the fall, but it's so open here in this with an open canopy.

The the spring head where this comes from is on the north side of Blood Mountain.

And it kind of comes in, a couple other little tributaries run into it by the time it gets to the fall.

But it starts just as a little bubble out of the ground on Blood Mountain.

And when it gets here, it's this beautiful waterfall.

- [Chris] So it's a little chilly this morning.

- [Jason] Yes.

- I'm wearing sandals.

- I got boots.

- He's got boots.

He's gonna be the more comfortable out of the two of us, no doubt.

I think what we're gonna do is just kind of head down and walk around.

Both of us have photographed this a bunch of times.

So we know the types of compositions that are here, but both of us have a similar mindset with our photography, in that if we go to a place again, we try to shoot it differently.

And I know every time we come back here, we're looking for something a little different that we had not photographed on previous visits.

So we got it to ourselves.

We're gonna see what we can find before the crowds start to arrive here in a little bit.

(tranquil music) (camera shuttering) (camera shuttering) It's pretty up here though.

Some beautiful light.

- Yeah, the light is nice.

I'm really looking forward to hearing what Joe says about blood in the- - Yeah.

- The different folklore tales.

- Yeah, it'll be interesting to learn about the place.

That's one of my favorite things about all the exploring is just learning the history of it, you know?

- Today we have Joe Collins, historian and award-winning author with us.

He has grown up just at the foot of Blood Mountain on Wolf Creek.

So Joe, what do you have to tell us about the magical Blood Mountain?

- I appreciate y'all inviting me over to speak about something that is so close to my soul really.

When you talk about Blood Mountain, you're talking about a very spiritual place, especially when you consider the Native Americans.

The name Blood Mountain came from the legend of the Cherokee and the Creek having a massive engagement up on Blood Mountain, which decided the turning point for the Creek Nation.

When the Cherokee came here, they recognized how wonderful the area is, and how wonderful that Blood Mountain area is, and they wanted to call it home.

The problem with that was the Creek were already here.

They were already claiming the area as their nation.

And so the Cherokee were pursuing conflict if you will, by wanting to claim this area for their home, and conflict did come.

That's how the name came to be.

The legend holds that there was so much bloodshed that the blood ran down the mountain and filled the streams with blood.

♪ You understand but I'm wide awake ♪ ♪ Heavy thoughts evaporate ♪ ♪ Static's clearing, room for breathing ♪ ♪ The words beneath the surface ♪ - All right, so we've made it off of the parking lot trail and it's been pretty steep and I'm good.

You ready?

Like, we'll just, I'm done.

We can go back.

- Yeah.

- And then we can Photoshop the rest.

- You know it's amazing what can be done with computers nowadays.

It has been pretty steep.

I have not hiked much in a while and, I feel like I've really gotten the Blood Mountain experience.

And the other thing is my watch keeps asking me if I'm done with my workout, and I feel very insulted, honestly.

- Yes, I left my watch at home so it wouldn't mag me all the way.

- Smart, but we made it to the trail, right?

- Yeah.

- So where are we going now, Jason?

- So we're just going north.

- Okay.

- Actually we are gonna go south on the AT- - All right, so we're lost.

- Yes.

(Chris laughing) (upbeat music) (beat boxing) - [Jason] Since we were gonna be hiking a segment of the Appalachian Trail, we wanted to learn a little more about it.

So on a cool and rainy day, a few members of the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club met us to share some information about this special location.

- I'm Eddi Minche, and I'm a proud member of the George Appalachian Trail Club.

I've been honored to be a member for 31 years.

Our primary reason for existence is to maintain the Georgia Appalachian Trail.

The trail itself is part of a very long trail that goes from Georgia to Maine, or Maine to Georgia.

We don't call them ends or beginnings.

They're a terminus, because you can start in either direction.

Blood Mountain is the highest point on the Georgia Appalachian Trail.

Not the highest mountain in Georgia, but if you're traveling on the AT in Georgia, it's the highest point that you'll go over.

Hiking the trail, it's an elevation of 1800 feet.

So it's not an easy trail to go up.

And speaking of going up the trail, it's a trail that has been worked on tirelessly by the club, putting in lots of rock steps, lots of ways to make that elevation gain a little bit simpler for the hiker, and to keep the trail sustainable.

And one of the difficulties in keeping that trail sustainable is as we like to say as a cliche, keeping water off the trail and hikers on the trail.

When people hike the trail, they wanna get up there quickly because it's a wonderful place to visit.

But if they get up there too quickly by taking shortcuts then it causes us great difficulty as trail maintainers, because those shortcuts really encourage erosion, make the trail wider, makes our job very hard.

(tranquil music) (water babbling) (birds twittering) (water rushing) - I'm John Turner, I'm a member of the George Appalachian Trail Club.

I'm a member of the board, and I maintain a section of the trail here in Georgia.

Every year, thousands of hikers from all across the country and even from foreign countries come to Georgia to hike the Appalachian Trail.

They start often in February, early March.

We have numbers of hikers who come to Georgia, start at Amicolola or Springer Mountain to hike the Appalachian Trail all the way to Maine.

What they always know about Georgia is Blood Mountain.

That's the first and highest mountain that they're gonna really be challenged to hike, and so it's very iconic.

That shelter there at the summit of Blood Mountain represents a big achievement for a lot of the the through hikers who come to Georgia to hike the trail.

What they don't know often, is that that shelter is on the National Register of Historic Places and it's been there for a number of years.

So they're actually coming to a very historic spot on the Appalachian Trail, one of the most famous shelters on the entire 2,193 miles of the trail.

That shelter was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the 1930s.

We're really not sure what year the construction of the shelter began.

It was either 1934 or maybe a little bit afterwards.

It has undergone some renovation since then.

The George Appalachian Trail Club has replaced the roof on that shelter.

Once Blood Mountain was part of the Blood Mountain Wilderness, we could no longer use mechanical tools up there.

And so to bring all the materials up to Blood Mountain Shelter, we had to bring mules.

So mules brought the materials for the roof and hauled the old materials back down.

I think they took 36 trips with mules.

(tranquil music) - Oh, this is my sunset shot.

If the sky cooperates, I think it could be pretty good.

So I've got this kind of pink mountain laurel on the right hand side of my shot.

And so I'm gonna photograph this path, and it kind of curves around it towards the distant layers of mountains and also towards where the sun is setting.

And so I think all of that could come together pretty well, I just need the sky to cooperate.

I need that not to block, so that some sunlight comes through, and lights the underside of those clouds up.

And right now I'd say it's probably 50/50 chance that's gonna happen, but that's part of landscape photography.

You don't know what the sun's gonna do.

You can just hope for what it's gonna do.

But I think even if it doesn't really light, even if we just get some pastel colors, it's still gonna turn out pretty well, just 'cause these are these flowers are pretty colorful, and I mean you can't beat photographing the mountains, so now it's just a waiting game.

- I think this is my committed shot for sunset.

I got a mostly bloomed mountain laurel here.

The sun is setting to my right.

So I'm kind of shaded here, which I'm fine with, and these treetops are gonna catch some color if the horizon opens up.

And these ridges that are in front of me are all gonna have nice sidelight on 'em.

And if these clouds catch, I'm thinking it could be very pretty.

We're just gonna hope that horizon clears, and we get some nice light through here, and this could turn out to be pretty nice.

(inspirational music) (wordless vocalizing) (camera shuttering) (camera shuttering) - Wow, that was a sunset.

- Yeah, like I said a little while ago, I think that was the perfect Blue Ridge Mountain sunset.

We had the really bright orange, the mountains got real rich blue, and that was really spectacular.

I mean, it's just like you're captivated by it.

- What about your picture?

You think it came out?

- Yeah, I think it really turned out.

I had some light against that mountain laurel.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- And then the trees in front kind of lit up like I was hoping they would.

Then of course the mountain, the ridges facing the sunset caught really nice light.

So I'm excited to get that in the computer.

- Yeah, yeah.

(inspirational music) - The morning's real difficult 'cause everything's dark and you're trying to search around and everything's hard to see.

So I'm just trying to kind of plan ahead so I'm not stumbling so bad.

The sun is gonna come up over here.

And there's a little chute right behind us, that the sun will have to come up a little bit, it'll probably be maybe 30 minutes or so after the sunrise.

But if it comes up and hits this laurel, and we're actually on Blood, which is gonna shadow all those mountains, 'cause it's just bigger, but all the light is gonna start hitting the tops of those.

So this actually could be pretty good if it pans out of course.

(inspirational music) (camera shuttering) (camera shuttering) Man that was pretty successful trip I think last night.

- Yeah, you know the sunrise was really good.

We're did you go off to this morning?

Like I didn't even see you after- - Actually I went to the main overlook.

The one image I kind of talked about last night, I kind of went and checked it out and everything lined up and- - [Chris] Oh, so you got it?

- Yeah, the light kind of caught the laurels and- - [Chris] Right.

- [Jason] But it's just, everything happened so fast- - [Chris] Yeah, you don't have much time with sunrise.

- [Jason] So I was just scrambling around everywhere.

Where'd you go?

- [Chris] I went back to where we were shooting the Milky Way/asteroid, even though the Milky Way didn't quite pan out for us, but it was pretty, you know, I got some of the flowers and the sky was opening up.

So I think I'll be happy with it.

But just looking back, we had a lot of great photography in a short period of time, and yeah, it a steep hike, but it's well worth it.

I mean just for the views and the compositions and the nice crisp air up there.

I mean, it just felt great.

- [Jason] Man, the sunset was- - [Chris] Yeah.

- [Jason] Stole the show, I think.

- [Chris] It was unreal.

Well all right, man.

Well, we're finishing up here.

You ready to head on to our next destination?

- I'm looking forward to it, man.

I can't wait.

- All right, let's do it.

♪ Hues on fire in the clouds ♪ ♪ Perfectly exposed ♪ ♪ A song first played and then composed ♪ ♪ Day is dying, night will come ♪ ♪ Still we look for sight ♪ ♪ So we wander chasing light ♪ ♪ Could we capture nature's wonder ♪ ♪ Find our way to getting lost ♪ ♪ Freeze a frame to save forever ♪ ♪ Adventure worth the cost ♪ ♪ Oh we wander chasing light ♪ ♪ Still we wander chasing light ♪ ♪ So we wander chasing light ♪ - [Announcer] Funding for "View Finders" was provided by- - [Woman] Let's imagine what outside can be.

- [Man] Outside is important.

- It's musical.

(laughing) - [Man] Together we can create an outside with space for everyone.

(tranquil music) - [Announcer] Funding for "View Finders" is provided by Troncalli Subaru, located on Highway 9 in Cumming.

Visit Troncalli Subaru or find out more online at troncallisubaru.com.

(inspiring music) (wordless vocalizing) - [Announcer] At Terrapin Beer Company, we make beer for life's adventures.

Be they far from home, or right in your own backyard.

Terrapin, good everywhere, best outside