Dara and I returned to the Cades Cove area for another loop hike this weekend. Dara's quite the good hiking partner and generally has an "up for whatever" attitude. She has said that she prefers to keep our hikes to 10 miles or shorter, but last week she agreed to 11.5 miles because there was little elevation change, and this week she agreed to what I represented as 11.5 miles with more elevation change but was actually 11.9 miles (oops), so I appreciate her willingness to push her comfort zone with me.
This week we started in the back of the Cades Cove picnic area on the Anthony Creek Trail. It was a 3.5-mile climb that was relatively strenuous in places, which was good because the temperatures were in the high 20s when we started out, and they weren't forecasted to get much higher as the day progressed, so we could use some climbing to knock the chill off. I learned last year that you can get a pretty accurate prediction of the temperature by how the rhododendron leaves look. The colder it gets, the droopier they get. Well, they were probably as droopy as I've ever seen them when we started our hike, so it was COLD!
The climb definitely kept us warm, even though it was broken up pretty frequently by my need to stop and take pictures because Anthony Creek is a really beautiful trail. In the lower elevations, it runs along (shockingly enough) Anthony Creek, so there are some really pretty water views.
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| I took this pic while squatting precariously on a footlog, and it didn't turn out nearly as well as I would've liked. But I also didn't end up getting up close and personal with freezing cold water, so I'm good with it. |
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| Imagine this view with those droopy little rhodies in full bloom. Holy cow! |
We also saw a couple of really cool trees with roots that had fought hard to find their way to water and nutrients.
And we saw a ton of deer! Probably 8 or 9 total. And, I assume because we were close to Cades Cove and these deer are used to seeing people, they weren't really scared of us and just sauntered on by while we stood and watched them. All of these pics are zoomed and, let's say, "enhanced" by my artwork because, when I first looked at them, I couldn't remember what I was taking a picture of because the deer are so good at camouflaging.
As you can see from the deer pics, as we got into the higher elevations, we encountered a little bit of snow on the ground. We also came across several places where little frost flowers were springing up out of muddy banks for several feet, and there were plenty of icicles and other frozen "stuff" in the streams and little waterfalls along the trail.
But the best thing about the higher elevations were the views that we found near the top of the Anthony Creek Trail and as we came across the ridge on the Bote Mountain Trail.
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| This one looks down into Cades Cove. |
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| Snowy ridge |
Most of the views were wintertime views, but occasionally we'd come across a wide open view that literally stopped me in my tracks and sometimes took my breath for a second. We stood and stared at this one for a few minutes.
As I expected, the picture doesn't nearly do it justice, but it's just amazing how something can be this beautiful, even in the middle of winter when everything looks so dead.
Anyway, after all these great views, we had about a 4-mile descent on the Bote Mountain Trail, followed by a reprise (in the opposite direction) of our hike last week on the Finley Cane Trail. At the bottom of Finley Cane, we connected to the Crib Gap Trail, which took us back over to Anthony Creek and to our car. I knew from looking at the trail profile that there was a short (it had to be short, the whole trail was only 1.6 miles) climb followed by a short downhill. It really wasn't that big of a climb, but at the end of our hike, it felt a lot worse than it actually was. It went up and over a little ridge alongside Laurel Creek Road, and I don't know about Dara, but I felt like a real pansy because it kicked my butt at that point in the hike.
All's well that ends well, though. We finally made it back to the car and came home, where I got ready for the Friends of the Smokies Evergreen Ball, which is their main fundraising event that was unfortunately virtual this year. I'm on the Silent Auction Committee for the Ball, so in a typical year I would spend the morning helping set up the Silent Auction items and then have hair and makeup appointments and attend a really fun formal event that evening. This year, I hiked and got really gross and sweaty for most of the day, ate a ridiculously high-calorie dinner, and cozied up in jeans with some wine and cookies to watch the live-stream and, most importantly, bid in the auction. I'm happy to report that I was successful in drinking the wine and in winning the things I wanted to win in the auction, possibly because I was feeling a little more generous after spending the first part of the day actually in the Smokies seeing all the stuff that the Park does with the funds raised by Friends. So it was a win-win for everyone (except whomever I outbid at the last second on my new Appalachian Trail sign - sorry not sorry, suckahs!).
Unduplicated Smokies miles: 157.6
Total Smokies miles: 192.5
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