N. Georgia, anyone?

Weather forecast for the area is sunny, 61F high. Lokks like a good day to shoot.

As usual,I have waited until Saturday morning to read my mail and the forum.Enjoy guys,weather should be good. Ron

We had 6 people on the trip. Scott Hamming, Mark Craig and I represented the Apug contingent and we had Catherine Costolo and Josh Earhart as well as my wife Dale from the Southeastern Photo Society making up the rest. We were all shooting LF except Scott (MF rangefinder)and Josh was shooting both LF and MF. The weather was perfect. The only unplanned problem was the gravel road up the mountain. It had suffered from the heavy rains recently and was very rough in places. I got 5 8x10 shots and later shot several HIE infrared shots off the brow of the mountain where the hanglider launch was at. We ran into Allen Padgett there, the previous ranger for that area, now retired, and longtime caver and co-auther of the latest bible on vertical rope technique, "On Rope". He was accompanied by his wife and two other friends. We had a good chat and learned quite a bit about some history of the mountain.

I should have been the 4th APUGer on the trip. However, I drove about 1/2 mile up the aforementioned road and turned back. Made the best of it, however, and drove over to Cloudland Canyon, a spectacular spot in an area full of spectacular spots.

Gary, I work with a guy named Ed Nicholas. He's head of the local cave rescue squad, and a Fellow of the NSS. He'll be excited to hear that you ran into Allen Padgett; they're old friends, and we sell "On Rope" in our shop.

Sorry to hear you weren't able to get to the top. I can certainly understand why. I took roughly 4 rolls, and will get them developed over the course of the next week, hopefully. My how the time flew... We'll certainly be doing this again, perhaps 6 weeks or so? Should be consistenlt good weather by then. We couldn't have asked for better on Sat., though.

Yeah, Scott, I'd love to give it another try. I had mentioned to Gary about the Sipsey Wilderness over here. It would be a longer drive for you Atlanta folks, maybe 4+ hours. But I think you'd be amazed by what you saw there. It's a very magical place, and mid-March would be a great time to go. I'm going backpacking there in a couple of weeks. It's such a great place that my friends and I have always been a little hesitant to brag about it.

I'm going to put a post up on the SE regional forum and try to pull something together.