Monday, 9 November 2009

Hiking summary

Filed under: Hiking,North Carolina,Tennessee — Tags: , , , — George Privon @ 12:04

I have been getting out and doing a fair amount of hiking lately. In the middle of October, David and I went out for a quick night backpacking in St. Mary’s Wilderness. The quick in and out trip was a fun time. The predicted snow didn’t materialize in any strong fashion, which was probably best. Although, we were both looking forward to seeing some sign of winter. I uploaded a few pictures from that backpack:

St. Mary’s Wilderness on flickr

Later that weekend, Ryan, Tang and I hiked the Rivanna Trail around Charlottesville. This ~20 mile trail encircles the city and spends an impressive amount of time in forested areas. The trail is also fairly flat, so other than sore feet, the hike wasn’t overly challenging. We managed to hike the whole thing in just over 8 hours (plus a short stop at David’s for apple pie! :) ).

Rivanna Trail on flickr

The most recent backpacking trip was a little over a week ago. Several of us headed down to Tennessee to do some backpacking in the Smoky Mountains. We started out with a Friday hike along the AT, from Newfound Gap to Clingman’s Dome.

Friday Hikers On the AT

It was a fun 8 miles, with some solid elevation gain! After reaching Clingman’s Dome, we shouldered our backpacking gear and headed down the trail. The weather was misty, but not quite raining (yet). After dropping down another 2000+ ft, we camped near the creek.

Aleya Ryan

It began raining in the middle of the night and kept up all day Saturday. We hiked back up the trail we came, aiming to meet up with the Ridge trail and continue along the loop. However we ended up with soaked gear and clothes, so we abandoned the hike. Despite the rain, everyone had a good time. We’ll be back again I’m sure…

The rest of the pictures from the Smokies are online here: Smoky Mountains National Park on flickr

Thursday, 17 September 2009

Labor Day 2009 (finally)

Filed under: Climbing,Hiking,North Carolina — Tags: , , , — George Privon @ 11:00

Finally getting around to writing up my Labor Day adventures from this year (since I just got the pictures uploaded). Spent it down in NC with Mike, Katie, Peter and Aleya. Had a great time hiking, boating and climbing.

Aleya and I arrived late Friday night, after a 6 hour drive. We set a departure the next morning and went to bed. As was to be expected, the departure time came and went… We woke up, finished breakfast and left, 1.5 hours behind schedule. Oh well. With slight uncertainty about our destination we set off towards Linville Gorge, aiming to climb routes in the Amphitheater. After some mild confusion and a half hour detour down a gravel road, we found the correct gravel road which took us to the Table Rock parking area. We tossed our packs on and headed down the trail.

Katie and Mike

Following some incorrect information from a hiker about the direction of the trail, we found ourselves bushwacking through thorn bushes around short cliffs at the top of the gorge. Eventually deciding that was wrong, we re-joined the trail. After a few minutes on there, it became clear that was, in fact, the correct way to go.

Scrambling Up Scrambling Result

We suffered yet more trail confusion trying to find the correct unmarked trail and decided to call it a good hiking day and head back to the lake.

We Brought Him Back Safe Can you find Aleya?

We then spent an hour or two tubing, wakeboarding and swimming. The night was capped off with some grilling and fireworks!

On Sunday we went to Rumbling Bald to give climbing another try. These cliffs can be seen from the lake, so we actually found them this time! We spent the day (until the mid-afternoon) doing several climbs on the “Cereal Buttress”: Granola, Whiskey for Breakfast, and Bee Tree. Very fun climbs.

Katie Thin Harness

I didn’t have Labor Day off so after the climbing Aleya and I drove back up to Charlottesville. Was quite a fun trip, will definitely have to do some more climbing in NC.

The rest of the pictures are available here: North Carolina on flickr.

Wednesday, 5 August 2009

Hiking in the Smokies

Filed under: Hiking,North Carolina,Tennessee — Tags: , , , — George Privon @ 23:26

About a week and a half ago, a couple friends and I ventured down to Tennessee to do a bit of hiking. We skipped town on Thursday night, driving down to Kingsport, TN. We rose the next morning and joined the “Friday Hikers” for a 7 mile hike up Grandfather Mountain. My grandfather organizes the hikes and it’s always fun to hike with him and his hiking buddies. As usual, we were the youngest by a fair bit. It is very inspiring to hike with folks in as great shape as they are! I can only hope to be active at that age.

After a few hour drive to Grandfather Mountain State Park (with a stop in Boone, NC to get the free permit), we hit the park. We hiked up “Profile Trail”, so named because of the good view of the Grandfather profile after which the mountain has its name. It was quite a fun hike.

Grandfather Profile

After returning to the parking lot, the three of us split off from the Friday Hikers and continued on to Smoky Mountain National Park. On our way we drove through the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina. It is the first time I can remember being on a reservation. It was an interesting experience. Sadly, it appeared fairly economically depressed save the expanding casino.

We arrived in the park just as the sun began setting. After deciding not to camp near the entrance ($20 to do so!), we drove to the trailhead at Clingman's Dome and were treated to a beautiful sunset.

Sunset in Smoky Mountain National Park

Despite the lack of light, we hoisted our packs on our backs and walked off into woods. Things progressed smoothly for the first mile and a half. Unfortunately disaster struck there! One of my companions sprained his ankle. We managed to make it the other mile and a half to camp, calling it a night just before midnight.

When we woke the next morning, his ankle was still hurting and it was obvious we shouldn’t continue the backpacking trip. So, we backtracked the 3 miles to the car. The parking lot near Clingman’s dome was quite different during the day. Filled with cars and people. We rounded out the trip with a nice drive back to Charlottesville.

Click here for all the pictures from the trip: Hiking in the Smokies on flickr

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