Smokies yielded great views, great company, one very cold night on Appalachian Trail
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| Mt friend Aaron peers over the edge at Charly's bunion. About 4.5 miles north of Newfound Gap Parking area. |
This trip was initially supposed to be a "fun in the sun" backpacking trip along the Tennessee-North Carolina border on the Appalachian Trail, but winter was still alive in the Smokies. Down in the valley, near the town of Gatlinburg, TN it was 60 and sunny when we arrived after driving through a snow storm in West Virginia. But as we drove to the top of the mountain the temperature dropped 20 degrees and the wind picked up. We had a bit of a late start and did not get on the trail until around 4 p.m. but only had 3.7 miles to hike until we reached the Icewater shelter.
The town of Gatlinburg, TN. Just miles down the road from Pigeon Forge, the hometown of Dolly Parton. More or less because of her the entire region has became one big tourist attraction highlighted by Dollywood, an amusement park centered around the famous singer/songwriter. It reminded us all of Myrtle Beach and a six lane highway was lined with everything including pancake places, $5 and under shops, go-kart racing, mini putt putt, a replica titanic, a Hatfield and McCoy dinner show, a moonshine factory and an endless amount of hotels and other various restaurants (three T.G.I Fridays!). Needless to say it blew all of our minds as we thought we were "getting away from it all" and in fact we had stepped right into "it all." On the last night out we grabbed a hotel for $40! We couldn't get over the price. We then learned that in peak season (starts at end of March) the same room would have costed us $200. Again, mind blown.
The view from our parking area (Newfoundgap) and just a note: stop at the ranger station before parking here overnight and give them your game plan. We did not do this (as we learned after the fact that we should have) and thankfully did not get into any trouble along the way (most likely due to the off season), but it is a wise thing to do.
Parking area
The AT Trail follows the ridge that distinguishes Tennessee from North Carolina. As you can see there we were just over 5000' in elevation. It was pretty cool to look left and see Tennessee and right to see North Carolina, both states looking surprisingly different. TN was flat and filled with lakes. NC was mountainous and could not see much past the nearest ridge.
Aaron celebrating a long hill climb.
Austin (left) and I in a shot with NC as the backdrop.
Icewater shelter. We spend the night here Monday and it dropped down to what everyone believed to be single digits. It was cold. Luckily we came prepared with winter gear or else we could have realistically been in trouble. There were 16 of us total who spent the night in there. Groups from Michigan, Georgetown, Florida and Tennessee were all in attendance.
This was the view from the Icewater shelter.
At the two shelters we stayed at there were bear bags like this off to the side. To anyone who has ever hung a bear bag the old school way with a rock and rope understands how nice these little flagpole type mechanisms saved hassle.
One of the highlights of this trip was Charly's bunion (last 5 and next 4 photographs). The three of us pose for a picture as the guys from Florida were also here taking lunch. We had a perfect visibility day and sunshine was abundant.
This was one of my favorite pictures from the trip. It shows good perspective as to how high we were compared to Austin's inspirational glare there. Tennessee played the perfect backdrop too. I would like to add though that on the way back from the pose, Austin lost his footing for a split second and luckily caught himself in the nick of time. The rock cliffs pretty well here and looks like excellent mountain climbing to the more experienced.
View from trail towards North Carolina.
View from trail towards Tennessee.
As you can see from the last two pictures there was still a decent covering of snow on the ground. We hit a high temperature of around 50 degrees Tuesday, and while hiking we working up sweats and we layered down to t-shirts at one point. Our footwear was a little less than desired though probably. I was the only one with boots as Austin was wearing an old pair of football cleats and Aaron had on just an old pair of tennis shoes. Both options did work out pretty well for them actually as Austin had superb traction and Aaron's dried more quickly than mine did.
Self-portrait here as we took a break at an overlook of North Carolina.
Gives you an idea of how the trail looks. There were white trailblazers guiding the way, but the path was so well traveled that there were hardly necessary. Very undulating though as there were many long climbs as well as interesting down climbs as about a mile of the trail went up a creek that was frozen over. With packs on this made for some decently difficult hiking, but that was all part of the fun!
Here is a view of the inside of the shelters. These were much bigger than any other shelter I had been in on the Laurel Highlands trail. As you can see here there are two levels to sleep on and a fireplace in the corner. Both shelters we stayed at were identical and had tarps covering the opening that led out to the porch and cooking areas. Both camps we stayed in also had letrines (toilets) which was an accommodation even though they were more or less just holes in the ground. There was also water sources at both shelters. Some water we found along the trail were natural springs and some ran down a creek a whiles before becoming accessible. It's a good idea to purify the water in any case, but the spring water we didn't.
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We took a group shot here before we hiked out Wednesday morning. We had come just over 7 miles from Icewater shelter to Pecks Corner shelter (as seen in the background). The girls from Georgia (three total) had a crazy story too. They came in from a side trail that lead to a parking area and told us that they had to cross a creek at one point without boots on. As you can see in the picture we were pretty bundled up, it was cold! Then they tell us they spent the night in a tent along the trail because they got too late of a start. We stayed in a shelter with 16 people and we were freezing, I couldn't imagine how the girls felt. They knew what they were doing though and were well prepared. Us and the two guys from Florida were all hiking back to the parking area (little over 10 miles). Then there was a group from Michigan that came in at 9:30 at night and scared the hell out of us all because were in sleeping bags at that point dozing. They were heading further north, opposite of us.
Go Penn State!
The hike out was a pretty windy and overcast one and the temperatures were definitely lower. We did it pretty quick though I must say and we were back at our car and checked into a hotel drinking a few cold ones at the hotel in the 65 degree sunny weather a few hours before dark.
The ride home was much more pleasant and West Virginia was snow less this time we went through it on our way to Greensburg, Pa. We had a lot of fun on the way home though stopping at a Bojangles and Chik-Fil-A (mostly because Aaron had free chicken sandwich coupons) and compared the two (Bojangles definitely had much more kick). We got a little side tracked looking for a Chik-Fil-A near Morgantown though as Austin's GPS led us to a mall. So we figured we had come too far and went into the Morgantown mall for free dinner. Then we had to take a slightly longer detour turning an 8.5 hour drive into well over 9 hours, but it was well worth it.
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