Blood Mountain

There was a lot of rain on the way up to Vogel State Park today, so that by the time I finished the ride up on the motorcycle I was completely soaked.  The soaking meant that everything I was wearing took on extra weight.  My motorcycle jacket in particular seemed to have turned to iron.  Still, it was worth it.

The trail rises 2,400 feet over the course of about five miles.  The reward is this:

Clouds rising, seen from atop Blood Mountain.

A cairn along the trail.

The stone shelter, built by the CCC in the 1930s.  Today two hikers from Maine were resting before the final assault, and had built a fire within it.  The fire was most welcome.

Clouds mounting against the ridge.

11 comments:

Texan99 said...

Beautiful! We've had heavy fog this week, and a bit over an inch of extremely welcome rain.

PALADIN said...

I want to go there and explore it with my Hanoverian / Quarter cross gelding i just started.
Those hills would do him some good, as he tried to buck my ass off yeaterday.

Lucky for me, it was a half hearted attempt.

Beautiful pictures, never have seen a lot of the peach state.
drove through a few times, but thats about it.

PALADIN said...

This has nothing to do with this post, but whats your opinion on this video ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-6O-gApVrU

A Maronite friend of mine from Lebanon said the music is Hezbollah , and he thinks it's part of a False video to give Assad the excuse he needs.

Grim said...

I would be shocked to learn that you could mass produce a nerve agent out of the very ordinary food-production and industrial chemicals shown. Hell, both of those chemicals are edible -- you can put potassium chloride in water softener, and sodium nitrite is often put into food to kill botulism.

Now, I'm not a chemist, and one can sometimes get strange results in combining things. But those bunnies die from a nerve agent. None of the nerve agents I know of even have potassium or sodium in them. Maybe they know something I don't, of course -- if Doc Russia were still around he could give us a better read on it.

Whoever made the video did have access to at least a small amount of nerve agent, so regime loyalists are the most likely explanation. If the Sunni radicals fighting in the 'Free Syrian' forces had them, they'd have used them against us in Iraq -- many of them are the same guys.

E Hines said...

They don't produce a nerve agent, per se, but they produce potassium cyanide and some impurities.

Eric Hines

PALADIN said...

@Grim I believe it is an Assad /Hezbollah vid as well.
Things could get interesting real soon.
My Maronite friend says the music is no doubt Hezbollah's Jihad Stars .
I asked him how he knew, and he said the voices have that Lebanese tone to them.
Other than the accent, he says the song could be from any dirtball org.
There is nothing in the song that refers specifically to Hezbollah.
Cyanide would cause basically the same reaction, from what i know about it, but these bunnies died awful quick which is telltale nerve agent.

E Hines said...

The video also had potassium chloride in it. Ammonium nitrate, too. There's a possibility of free chlorine gas in the reactions, too.

Does the brown bottle contain phosphorus? Fluorine? Do the black bottles hold a F compound? If so, all those reagents, and the CH2COCH2(? 3?), all can be used, with the missing F or P, and better chemistry than I have just now, to make CH3POF2, a precursor which, along with another precursor (easily obtained) and an amine to neutralize some stray impurities, make sarin.

The rabbits' reaction in the end game--the convulsing--is consistent with sarin's blocking of neuronal acetylcholinesterase.

Which Assad has been reported as having already mixed up and loaded into weapons.

Eric Hines

raven said...

Funny how it can be a blast to ride in stormy weather- very elemental and exciting! Must not rain very much there if you are not bothered with rain gear.
For the early AM shakes, try this interview on Syrian bio agents circa 2007.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/Jerry_Gordon/Syria%27s_Bio-Warfare_Threat%3A_an_interview_with_Dr._Jill_Dekker/

Grim said...

Well, that's the real trick. The regime has it. The food additives... can they be made to make it? Maybe, possibly, with enough other stuff they don't clearly show they have, and according to processes that are more complex than boiling stuff.

Failing endorsement by a chemist we have reason to trust, I'd read this as pure propaganda from the regime and supporters -- including Hezbollah. But what concerns me most isn't whether the Syrian regime is putting it out; it's whether our government endorses it a la Benghazi.

Grim said...

Raven:

I don't have any rain gear. Georgia is green, and there are days when it rains, mostly in the winter time. But there are plenty of days when it doesn't, or only for a little while in the afternoon. We don't have an ocean feeding our main Westerly winds here. :)

Kim said...

Wonderful pictures of gorgeous scenery. I remember standing on Long's Peak, my eyelashes nearly frozen shut, in ecstasy gazing at the view.