Day 116

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Obfuscator writes: We got up at around 7:30 AM, as it was getting light. One of the other campers in the area had pulled his gear down from the anti-bear rig and departed stupidly early, while you still needed a light to move safely. We, on the other hand, woke up to find basically all of our stuff covered in frost. This wasn't a huge shock or anything, but it was a lot of moisture. We slowly packed it all up, which took a while since I wanted to experiment with a different packing strategy in my new bag, and we had lots of frost to brush off stuff. Still, we were underway by 9:00. The way back across the streams was even more treacherous in the morning, since a lot of ice had formed in the night, but we made it across without any significant incidents.

The way back was easier. This was partly because we took our time, and partly because the light was just better. We stopped for a lot more pictures, but still made good enough time. We also took a short detour which gave us a more unobstructed view of a pretty little falls. Of course, clamoring down from the fall, I managed to slip and land fairly hard on my elbow, but again, no serious damage.

We got back to the car, and drove back to the visitor's center. We wanted to see a bit more of the park, but knew we couldn't spare another day, and besides, all our gear was wet, and we didn't really want to be cold and wet that night, so we asked about day hikes that would be good. We discovered that it had in fact got down into the teens during the night, so we knew that the cold wasn't just our imaginations. A ranger recommended a hike to Alum Bluffs, which I had actually read a bit about in our National Geographic guide to the National Parks. It sounded pretty cool, so we drove about nine miles and started our day hike.

Again, most of this trail paralleled a river, which was stunning pretty much the whole time. There were also some very interesting ice formations that we kept seeing. The ice crystals in these formations looked fibrous or sinewy, and grew upwards and outwards, and was often curved. We have some theories about how this happens, but if anyone knows exactly how, we're curious as to the . . . you know . . . correct answer.

This hike turned up at some point, and started climbing toward the bluffs. That's where everything got more interesting, as you were trying to move upwards on icy stone steps. These were a bit treacherous, but workable, largely due to the steel cable handrails the Park Service has installed at important places. After a lot of climbing/hiking like this, we got up to the foot of the bluffs, a wall of sheer rock that was quite imposing. Our plan called for us to continue past this area, and up around to the top of the bluffs eventually. That's when the first enormous slab of ice and snow came crashing down from the top of the bluffs to within 20 feet of us.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, and that we had seen great enough things already today, we turned around hastily. That's why I've got basically no pictures of this area. We knew we had made the correct choice when on our way back out from under the bluffs, another slab fell even closer to us, showering us with little ice and snow chunks. Of course, the treacherous icy path we had climbed up was even more interesting going down, so I consider myself rather lucky to have made it back in one piece.

We drove around a bit more of the park before we turned back to the shockingly touristy area outside the park to find a motel. Dollywood is right there, along with more tourist traps than you can shake a stick at. Luckily for us, in the off-season, you can find motels in towns like this for cheap, so we got a pretty nice one for a song, and dried out our gear and uploaded things all night.

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