Blog Post March 19,
2013
While the world outside our home in Michigan is still
wrapped in winter’s icy grip of death, our first backpacking trip of the season
is drawing near! Ten days from tomorrow
we will depart in the early morning hours and begin the half-a-day drive to the
mountains of Tennessee. Our new tent
arrived in the mail today, and soon we’ll be planning and shopping for our
meals during the hike. I thought today would
be a good day to provide some of the details about our trip plan.
We’ll depart from the Big Creek Campground in the northeast
corner of the park. We were planning to
camp right at Big Creek Campground the night before our hike began, but the
combination of federal sequester cuts and a late spring has pushed back the
opening date for a number of front-country campgrounds, Big Creek
included. We did some online shopping
and found a cheap hotel in nearby Newport, TN, putting us only a thirty-minute
drive from the trailhead. The hotel will
have the added bonus of letting us watch our Michigan State Spartans play in
the sweet sixteen of the NCAA tournament if they make it that far.
Our first day of hiking we’ll follow the Big Creek for
several miles, before making the steep climb at Low Gap to joint the
Appalachian Trail, a climb of 3,000 feet over 8.4 miles. Since this will be our first day hiking with
packs on since last summer, and our packs will be at their heaviest with 7 days
worth of food, this promises to be a rugged day. We’ll at least have the comforts of a shelter
to look forward to that night, with reservations at Cosby Knob Shelter.
We’ll spend the next couple of days marching counter to the
AT thru-hikers making their way north.
At Peck’s Corner we’ll drop off of the crest of the Smokies and follow
the Hughes Ridge Trail down to Enloe Creek.
This day presents our only significant stream crossing of the trip. We’ll camp at Enloe Creek, and then make
another grueling climb up to Laurel Gap, where another shelter will await
us.
Our last full day of hiking will take us up the ridge of
Mount Sterling to the summit, where we’ll spend our last night hopefully
watching the sunset from the fire tower.
We’ll make a quick 4,000 foot decent down the Baxter Creek Trail the
last morning, returning to Big Creek. I’m
sure we’ll be ready for hot showers and cold beverages by then!
In all, our itinerary will take us from a starting elevation
of 1,700 feet to high points of 5,920 and 5,820 at separate points. We’ll follow several mountains streams,
hopefully catch a glimpse of some spring flowers and take in some stunning vistas
from the high country. Now it’s just
time to start crossing our fingers for some warmer temps and clear skies…never
a guarantee in the mountains in April.
