100 Miles (almost) in the Smokies
Great Smoky Mountains Natonal Park
3-9 June 2010
| Day Four - 6 June 2010 | ||||||||||||||||
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And Mt Collins is closed! Good thing I stopped when I did. | |||||||||||||||
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| Boars are non-native to the Smokies and are wreaking havoc on the ecosystem...they root around looking for grubs, tearing up the vegetation. Some of the vegetation is unique to the Smokies, so it needs to be protected, and many animals depend on the vegetation that's being destroyed. So the land managers have set up protected areas to keep the boars out. This is the entrance to a huge fenced off area. Humans just walk up and down to get over the fence, but boars won't walk up the grate so they're kept out of the fenced area. I should have taken a picture of the sign b/c I don't remember what this area was protecting...I think it was a species of Poplar. | ||||||||||||||||
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 It was raining when I got hungry, so I considered setting up my tarp...but thick brush and steep terrain limited my options. Then I saw this HUGE rootball with just enough angle to keep the rain off. I ate under here...all dirt under there but not sticky mud so I was pretty comfortable and I stayed dry. (Well, not really dry, but no more wet than I already was!) |
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| First real wildlife I saw other than some ground squirrels. This guy was about 6" long...he looked kinda orange but I think he's a Black Chinned Red Salamander. | ||||||||||||||||
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Clingman's Dome tower. The AT was pretty easy today...even the big climb up to Clingman's Dome. Walking the ridgeline is pretty easy compared to all the ridges I hiked over trying to connect all the waterfalls. | |||||||||||||||
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Looking down at the little plaza at the beginning of the walk up to the tower. | |||||||||||||||
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| The sign shows how I'm standing right on the TN/NC border, and the white line traces the border so you can see the peaks that make up the border. Except that the picture on the right shows what I can really see...which isn't much more than the little plaza at the bottom of the ramp.
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This was pretty interesting...these were black and white plants growing together. I think the black is some sort of fungus but it looked like a black flower growing right next to the white ones. | |||||||||||||||
| Forney Creek Trail is one of the most beautiful trails I've ever hiked! Incredible, pretty easy hiking down (southbound), and follows water for most of it so I didn't have to carry much. Here's one of the stream crossings |  |
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| I saw two critters today! It was dusk, not much light filtering thru the trees, and since I haven't seen any real wildlife on this trip I was thinking about all the things I'd like to see. I'd love to see a mountain lion, and I was thinking about a story that Tha Wookie told during his West Coast Trail presentation that I watched at the beginning of my Foothills Trail hike, where he saw a mountain lion at full spring across the hills. Just then, about 50 yds down thetrail, a furry critter came up the hill onto the trail from my left, turned away from me and hopped, cat-like, down the trail away from me. He stayed on the trail for about 30 ft, then cut off to the right, up the ridgeline. It was funny...since I had been thinking about mountain lions, my heart kinda jumped in my throat b/c I thought these may be cubs...and I looked around for the mother! This could be bad! But I realized that wasn't likely, and then I thought it was a bobcat, but this critter had a big fluffy tail sticking straight up in the air. A couple seconds later, another one came up from the same place, crossed the trail, and chased the first one up the ridge to my right. All I heard entire time was one stick crack after the second one had crossed the trail. Awesome! It was so fast that I couldn't do more than just stand there, but my camera wouldn't have taken a good picture in such low light anyway. My best guess is that these were gray foxes.
I bent my pole today! Everything was wet b/c of the rain, and I caught my fall (one slip of many) with the pole...and it bent a little. Still useable, and I can even still collapse the pole; it's just not quite straight anymore. Wait till I tell Jennifer...these poles were actually her Mother's Day gift a few years ago! Several stream crossings near the south end of the trail...this is the only real diffult part about this trail. I wanted to keep hiking into the night a bit and make it to site 74 or at least 71, but some of the crossings were a little too hairy to do alone at night. A little more than knee deep and the bottom is covered in rocks, so it's a little tough to get solid footing in that current. Since I didn't want to do this at night, I stopped taking off my shoes and just walked on thru. I ended up camping at site 70, at the intersection of Forney Creek Trail and Jonas Creek Trail. It started raining again just as I was setting up, but the stars were already out by the time I went to the bear cables. Pretty warm and humid at bedtime. |
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