I’m back from my short backpacking trip! The night before I embarked fresh snow fell on the Smokies. It took me around 2 hours and 10 minutes to walk 6 miles to my lair for the night. By the way, I soloed this trip as no one was available to join me. On the way to the campsite there was an older couple and their daughter or granddaughter, the older lady chatted up a conversation with me. We talked for nearly a mile until we arrived at Mouse Creek Fall. She was a sweet lady who told stories of her youthful hiking trips and asked me to share some stories too. It was cool hearing some of her stories as I was hiking along with nothing but sound of rushing water and that voice in my head. I left her at Mouse Creek Fall and proceed to fast paced myself to my liar.
Upon arriving to the lair, I quickly changed into warmer clothes after I pitched my tent. I find it funny how I was alone at the campsite and I waited until I put my rain fly on the tent before changing; in my defense there were probably a perverted bear lurking somewhere. After I changed clothes I was feeling hungry, so I made Easy Mac. Then after eating I proceed to go on a serious firewood hunt. It was a chore trying find woods that buried in the snow… I found enough wood to keep a fire going for two hours. I then went on photo ops out of boredom, and ended up mostly looking at the mountains instead of actually taking photos. Around 5pm a 3-person hiking party showed up and proceed to set camp on opposite side from me. We acknowledged each other and proceed go about our own business. The next day I asked one of the man if he take my picture and he obliged. I proceed to head straight for the car instead of climbing Mt. Sterling. (More on this decision in a later post.) Here are the photos taking with my smartphone:
Thanks for reading! I’ll be making some more posts in the near future about what I learned from this trip as well as things I did to stay warm and dry.
P.S. The last picture is Mouse Creek Fall, horrible I know, the sun was directly into my len. I have a better picture somewhere on my computer.
mtmusings 