Spring Break Recap - Post 1 of 4

After passing on Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods," to Brian earlier last fall, he got excited about doing something for Spring Break on the Appalachian Trail.  But, break came up so suddenly this year that trip planning didn't get done too far in advance.  The week before I finally called the ranger station in Smoky Mountain National Park and got us reservations for a backcountry permit, and found what I thought would be a nice little route in the northeast corner of the park.  


We drove down Monday to Tennessee and had a chance to walk around Gatlinburg, a family-oriented, tourist trap with at least three 'old-time photography' studios per block.  Brian made this observation and although neither of us could explain from where the phenomenon stems, I did reveal that I, myself, was subjected as a participant in one of these studios in 1988 along with my older sister and two cousins. (Please see figure one below.  I'm on your far left.) Figure 1.

Figure 1.

We managed to contain our enthusiasm and opted not to go home with our own old time photo, but instead had a decent meal and headed to bed at the Elkmont campground in the National Park.  So let me preface the next part of our trip by saying that I did in fact read and acknowledge the March 8th warning of a current 40+ inches of snow at higher elevations, and I assumed that since the helpful ranger pointed out a route for us, I was not expecting it to be too affected by snow.

  


Oops! You can probably sense my exasperation in the above picture.  We were energetic and excited on Tuesday morning when we put the final things in our packs and headed up to the Chestnut Branch trailhead.   We didn't hit snow until we were about half way up Mount Cammerer, and all of the sudden, there was a lot.  The excitement somewhat dissipated along the way with my boots sinking 15 to 20 inches down while trying to navigate several down trees since we were so early on the trail, it hadn't been cleared.  It was a long day but we finally made it up 4500 feet in 8.2 miles to the Cosby Knob shelter.  This hike gave us a chance to hike over 6 miles on the AT which we thought was kind of neat to say we had done. At Cosby Knob shelter we met 10 AT thru hikers, which I'll come back to later, spent a chilly night with den mice, and woke up the following morning excited about going to lower elevation.