Mt. Leconte Hike!

On Saturday I went on a 10 mile roundtrip hike to the top of Mount Leconte in Smoky Mountain National Park. Mount Leconte is one of the most scenic sights in all of Smoky Mountain National Park and tops out around 6500 feet. My nephew Anthony from Mississippi went with me. We had a blast.

Click on the pictures to get the larger images.

We got started early in the morning, so there were hardly any people on the trail. One old dude was coming down as we were hiking up. Props to him for getting out there and doing it! We could tell other people were ahead of us. We could see where they had been using trekking poles all along the trail to help with the snowy and icy conditions. Our philosophy regarding poles is that they are for wimps! Poles??? We don't need no stinking poles?!?!?!?

The only "wild life" on the trail (besides Anthony and I) were a few varmits and this poor lamb that had been skewered on a pike. Obviously it was a victim of some bizarre Eastern Tennessee animal sacrifice ritual. Ever seen Deliverance??? There's scary stuff in Tennessee!!!



It was a clear brisk day in the Smokies for a hike and there was lots of snow and ice on the trail. The conditions made for some pretty slow going at times. Here's a stair case covered in ice. Did I say we didn't believe in trekking poles??? Perhaps we should reconsider that!

A few times the snowy forest reminded me of the episode of Band of Brothers titled "Bastogne". I expected the Germans to start shelling Anthony and I any moment. Fortunately, that didn't happen.



I don't have pictures of the trickiest part of the hike. It was too tricky to take pics. Imagine a shear cliff to your left, a narrow two foot trail below your feet, and a big rock face to your right. Oh yeah, the trail is layered in ice! The only thing keeping you from becomming bear food is a cable attached to the rock. We held on tight through those places! This pic is from the trail just before we got to Leconte Lodge.



The clear day made for some spectacular views of the surrounding country and mountains. One of these pics is of twin peaks known as "Dolly Parton Peaks". Seriously, it was on my map labelled with that name. See if you can guess which ones they are.

After three hours of hiking, we made it to the top! Wahoo! It was pretty cool. The lodge up there looked like a fun place to stay. We saw a family that had spent their Thanksgiving holiday on the top of Mount Leconte. The young kids were having fun sledding and snowball fighting. I was going to hi-jack a sled to do some shredding, but Anthony held me back. Good job keeping me out of trouble!

Leconte Lodge at the top of scenic Mt. Leconte

We also met up with the mysterious pole people at the top. The pole people ended up being four dudes who looked they had just stepped out of a North Face catalog. They were decked out in all the fancy hiking duds. They forked over serious coin for all their gear. Good for them! They also had cell phone service!

Despite all their fancy gear the Robo-hikers just couldn't keep up with the two of us on the way back down. We smoked them down-hill. Our technique of Fast & Furious beats out hi-tech anyday...And yes, our downhill was FAST and pretty insane. The cables were fun to hang onto as we slid down. I managed to completely biff at one point. Ouch! Anthony had slipped on the way up at the exact same spot. In my rush down I forgot about it. Doh!

We met tons of people hiking up as we were racing down. To them, I'm sure we looked like studs. I mean, we were ripping! It did get annoying answering their questions. "HOW MUCH FARTHER?" "WHERE ARE WE???" "WHEN WILL WE GET TO THE TOP???"

We wanted to say: "You won't! You are too out of shape!!! Ha! HA!" But we were nice and helped them out. We even rescued a lost cell phone.

All in all it was a great day! Many thanks to Anthony for pulling me out of the ravines and fighting off the bears with the wild skunks. You da' man!!!!