I'm just going to tell the story in it's entirety and post pics, lots of pics again, in the next couple posts. The entire story is just too good. This is about the worst situation I've gotten myself into in the woods.
We planned on spending 3 nights and 4 days in the Smokies. Hiking a loop from the Road to Nowhere tunnel, up Forney Creek, over to Hazel Creek, and back. First day went great, even got a little fishing in and caught about 5 decent rainbows in the little time I had.
The next days hike went well, but ended up being much further than I had anticipated. I guess that's part my error for not researching it, but I did find a glitch in the NG map and Avenza program that has the trail length off by several MILES. Not the end of the world but it made for a long day and I had to carry both our packs for the last couple miles to make camp by dark. 13.6 miles instead of my estimate of 10 ish. We got dinner made and camp half set up when it started raining.
And raining
And pouring
All night.
Got up and made Bfast before the rain started...again. Made the creek crossing for Cold Spring Trail. I made it less than 1/3 across and it was to the top of my thighs. Not taking that kind of chance. Set there for an hour and a half and it came up 6" instead of falling. I was already looking for the way out since we could not cross the creek to get back to the truck.
Ate lunch and headed for the mouth of Hazel Creek. Ran into a trail crew and discussed what my plans were with them. Which were to hike out to Fontana Dam in 2 days or get lucky and get a boat out. They offered to send a boat back for us if we needed to get out. We could have made the hike out tomorrow, but it would have been more miles than we had planned. Again. And it would have put us getting out late in the afternoon, with little food left, and likely no one around to really help.
We opted for the boat ride. $50 to get to Fontana Marina. But now we were on the wrong side of the park than my truck. I explained our situation to the captain on the way across and since he lives in Bryson City he offered to drive us back to the Ingles there from Fontana. He had to pay a couple guys to cover his work. Then his brother drove us from Ingles out to the truck. He asked for $100 and I gave him $150. Much cheaper than getting into something stupid at that creek crossing. And Lauren and I have a story the might get told a few times, here and by our captain. lol
We planned on spending 3 nights and 4 days in the Smokies. Hiking a loop from the Road to Nowhere tunnel, up Forney Creek, over to Hazel Creek, and back. First day went great, even got a little fishing in and caught about 5 decent rainbows in the little time I had.
The next days hike went well, but ended up being much further than I had anticipated. I guess that's part my error for not researching it, but I did find a glitch in the NG map and Avenza program that has the trail length off by several MILES. Not the end of the world but it made for a long day and I had to carry both our packs for the last couple miles to make camp by dark. 13.6 miles instead of my estimate of 10 ish. We got dinner made and camp half set up when it started raining.
And raining
And pouring
All night.
Got up and made Bfast before the rain started...again. Made the creek crossing for Cold Spring Trail. I made it less than 1/3 across and it was to the top of my thighs. Not taking that kind of chance. Set there for an hour and a half and it came up 6" instead of falling. I was already looking for the way out since we could not cross the creek to get back to the truck.
Ate lunch and headed for the mouth of Hazel Creek. Ran into a trail crew and discussed what my plans were with them. Which were to hike out to Fontana Dam in 2 days or get lucky and get a boat out. They offered to send a boat back for us if we needed to get out. We could have made the hike out tomorrow, but it would have been more miles than we had planned. Again. And it would have put us getting out late in the afternoon, with little food left, and likely no one around to really help.
We opted for the boat ride. $50 to get to Fontana Marina. But now we were on the wrong side of the park than my truck. I explained our situation to the captain on the way across and since he lives in Bryson City he offered to drive us back to the Ingles there from Fontana. He had to pay a couple guys to cover his work. Then his brother drove us from Ingles out to the truck. He asked for $100 and I gave him $150. Much cheaper than getting into something stupid at that creek crossing. And Lauren and I have a story the might get told a few times, here and by our captain. lol