Smoky Mountain Family Backpacking

Brian was wanting to get in on all of the backpacking action, so he planned a trip to the Smoky Mountains for the family during the kid's fall break.  The kids were not excited about the idea of hiking 20 miles over fall break, so we made a deal with them.  If they hiked for 3 days, we would let them do lots of fun things in Pigeon Forge the entire day on Saturday after we finished our hike.  It ended up being a real win/win, and again, I am super impressed with how much these kids can do!  When I was their age, I thought I was hot stuff if I ran a mile.  They are rocking at a whole other level.  

To help ensure we had 2 happy kids, we gave them very light packs.  They carried their own water, and the food.  Brian and I each split up the rest - 4 sleeping pads, 4 sleeping bags, a 4 man tent, and all the other odds and ends.  I was hoping my pack would be lighter than my 50 mile hike...but it wasn't.  Oh well.  I managed just fine.  

We started out on a gorgeous fall day.  The view from Clingmans Dome was stunning!  

To be honest - I let Brian plan the entire trip and wasn't exactly sure where we were going.  Come to find out, we were going down, down, down.  4000 feet down, to be exact, over 8 miles.  I think going down is much harder than going up, actually.  It's harder on the legs, but it was a beautiful day on a nice trail.  

We came to this pretty stream crossing and took our first break.  We ended up crossing about 8 streams and they got progressively harder to cross.  Thank goodness the water wasn't much higher or we would have really been up a creek quite literally.  Luckily, we crossed without falling in.  A few feet got wet, but that's it.  

Grant earned his name Stream Hopper on this trip for his mad skills crossing all of those streams.  Unfortunately, Haley earned the name Bee Keeper.  She was the leader on a certain stretch of trail and as she was going down to a stream bank to cross, she came upon a huge underground hive and got stung twice on the leg by yellow jackets.  Brian got the full wrath of the yellow jackets defending the hive and got at least 5-8 stings on the back of his leg.  After watching in horror, Grant and I took a different path and made it out without any stings.  After cooling the stings in the cold creek, they hobbled along to the campsite.  Luckily, they weren't highly allergic and were just super itchy.  

Campsite #70 was a beautiful spot.  There was another solo lady, a solo guy, and then a group of 4 in the campsite that night near us.  

 Brian's wet shoes got dry by the fire.  A little too dry.  In fact, he melted his shoes by the fire.  Haha.  Time for new shoes!  At least they held together well enough to hike out. 

We woke up early the next morning and were out hiking again by 8 am.  This time, we were going up, up, up.  We hiked 3000 miles up for 9 miles.  

It really was a nice day and we enjoyed getting to know the older solo guy from Chicago that we hiked up to the AT with.  He had some crazy stories.  This was his third year attempting to do a 50 mile loop.  The first year he fell down the mountain and had to be rescued.  He broke many things and spent a week in the hospital and/or a hotel recuperating enough to drive home.  Last year, he got rained out and his water pump broke so he left the trail early.  This year he was at it again and hopefully he completed his journey successfully!

Once we got to the AT we had heard from hikers going the other way that there wasn't any water at the shelter we were planning to stay at that night, but that the shelter further up the trail (in the wrong direction by half a mile) did have water.  Water is super important, especially when you need it to cook your backpacker meals, so Brian was a champ and loaded up all the camel-backs and water bottles into a small bag and hiked up the trail to fill us all up.  It took him an extra mile round trip, but we were so, so grateful because this part of the AT was dry as a bone.  No water to be found anywhere.  

The kids and I played war as we waited for Brian to get back with water before finishing the hike.  Grant practiced making his ugly faces.

A few miles later, with our packs full of water, we all made it to Double Springs Shelter quite early in the day - around 2 pm.  In theory, we could have just hiked the last 3 miles out to our car, but our legs were worn out from climbing 3000 feet over 9 miles so we decided to just chill.  In reality, we had no where else to stay other than here.  Seriously every single hotel in the entire region was full of leaf watchers or people trying to escape the hurricane.  And in the Smokies you can't just camp anywhere.  You have to reserve your site and have papers, and this was our reserved spot, so we settled in for the night.

We knew at least 6 others had reservations that night, so we claimed our spots and enjoyed just hanging out together and talking to all the random hikers that passed through.  That is my favorite part of the AT - there is always someone hiking parts of it that has fun stories to tell.  

By dinner time, the rains had started and didn't stop.  It was a cold, rainy, windy evening.  The rain brought people off the trail and there ended up being 16 of us there that night.  3 slept in tents, but the rest of us squished into the bunks.  Everyone was super nice and it was fun to get to know the different groups that were out, how far they were going, where they were from etc.  Luckily, Brian had gathered wood before it rained and so we kept a nice fire going all through the rain to keep us warm until bedtime.

It rained really hard all night and we were so grateful to not be in a wet tent.  Big tree branches fell on the shelter above me, but that was fine since they just rolled down the roof.  A few people snored, but mostly we all just tossed and turned and then finally day broke and we started packing up to head out.  

The weather was awful.  There were violent winds, rain, tons of fog, and a cold chill in the air, but we felt good about headed out into the mess to tough it out and hike out quickly to the car and move onto other things.  It was a 3 mile uphill on a mountain ridge (1000 feet climb over 3 miles), but we made the best of it and got the heck outta there.  I'm sure there would have been some of the most amazing views ever if the weather was nice, but all we saw was rain and fog whipping over the mountain top right over us.  Just when you thought you were getting close, another hill was waiting around the corner.  Poor Haley had a tough time on this stretch with wet feet and a blister (and yellow jacket stings), but all 4 of us were all smiles once we got back to the parking lot we started in, completing an epic 20 mile loop.  

The wind and rain was fierce so we quickly hopped in the car to warm up and celebrated in the car.  The crazy thing is there were at least 3 other groups gearing up their packs in that awful weather to head out of their own backpacking trip.  I'm so, so glad we ended our trip with that mess, rather than starting.  I'm not sure we could have convinced ourselves to leave the car in that weather had it been the other way around.

As promised, we headed down the mountain for a day of fun, kid style.  We ate outrageously large lunches at the Mill restaurant, then rode the mountain coaster, and then let the kids ride unlimited go karts at the Nascar Speedway.  They loved it.  We bought too many chocolates at the Russel Stover outlet.  We bought random things at random outlets, and then headed down the highway to our hotel.  A shower, swimming, and a bed was the perfect ending to a great fall break.  

Fun Fact:  I've been keeping track of all the random hikes we've done for Grant's cub scouts and since May, he (and Haley) have hiked a total of 64 miles and have camped 7 nights!  I couldn't believe it.  That includes our trip to New England, random day hikes, and two 20 mile backpacking trips.  They may or may not have been excited to head out on some of those hikes, but once you total them all up like that you can't help but feel proud!