New-born deer photos

New-born deer photos

Saturday, May 30, 2009

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Check out the photos of the fawn that was in my sister-in-law’s backyard – in suburban Cincinnati!

She found it this past Thursday while babysitting her niece and nephew. Actually the two youngsters discovered it while playing in the backyard. She thinks momma deer hopped the fence sometime Wednesday or Thursday and gave birth, but then couldn’t get the fawn out of the yard. My sister-in-law (dutifully) opened the gate for momma that day and both momma and baby were gone the next morning.





Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com Detailed information on trails in the Smoky Mountains; includes trail descriptions, key features, pictures, video, maps, elevation profiles, news, and more.

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Grotto Falls and Brushy Mountain Hike Photos

Grotto Falls and Brushy Mountain Hike Photos

Friday, May 15, 2009

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This is the final in a series of three blog postings that highlight our recent hiking trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. The photographs below are from our hike to Grotto Falls and Brushy Mountain.

This day promised two major highlights for the price of one hike. The first highlight of the trail is the spectacular and unusual waterfalls located about 1.3 miles from the trailhead. What makes Grotto Falls unusual is that you can walk behind the falls. In fact, to continue beyond the falls, you have to take the trail that goes between the falls and the rock overhang. As you walk behind the falls you can hear and feel the thunderous power of the water plunging into the pool in front of you.

The final destination on this hike is Brushy Mountain. This is a relatively easy hike to a mountain summit offering spectacular views.

Grotto Falls coming into view

A closer look at Grotto Falls

The spur trail to the summit of Brushy Mountain passes through a tunnel of rhododendron.

View of Mt. LeConte near the summit of Brushy Mountain.

Painted Trillium was fairly abundant along the spur trail.

Looking at the eastern crest of the Smokies. The mountain at the far left is most likely Mt. Guyot, the second highest mountain in the park. The highest mountain towards the middle of the picture is most likely Mt. Sequoyah.

Looking towards the far eastern section of the Smokies. The tallest mountain towards the right is most likely Mt. Guyot.

Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com Detailed information on trails in the Smoky Mountains; includes trail descriptions, key features, pictures, video, maps, elevation profiles, news, hiking gear store, and more.

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Silers Bald Hike Photos

Silers Bald Hike Photos

Thursday, May 14, 2009

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This is the second in a series of three blog postings that highlight our recent hiking trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. The photographs below are from our hike to Silers Bald, which is located about 5 miles west of Clingmans Dome on the Appalachian Trail.

The forecast for this past Monday indicated that we would have some lingering rain and clouds early in the morning, but we could expect some clearing by mid-day. With that forecast, we agreed that we might have some questionable weather on the way out, but hoped that the clouds will have passed by the time we reached the bald.

Driving up Newfound Gap didn't look promising. Extremely thick fog made for a very slow drive. As you can see from the first couple of photos, the fog was fairly thick on the trail as well.

Interesting rock formations at the junction the Appalachian Trail and the spur trail from the Clingmans Dome parking lot.

You've probably heard of the movie "Gorillas in the Mist." How about "Squirrels in the Mist!"

Double Spring Gap shelter - roughly the half-way point to Silers Bald.

A little bit of clearing! That is a ridgeline coming off the northern side of Silers Bald. Unfortunately the clearing didn't last. Before we could reach the summit, Silers Bald was completely socked in again. As you might expect, we didn't see anything from the summit.

We passed several Appalachian Trail thru-hikers along the way. All of them complained that they hadn't seen anything for days. Several of the hikers were making their first trip to the Smokies (we meet hikers from CA, WA, MD, PA and MO), and were quite dissapointed that the only thing they had seen so far was fog.

On our return, roughly a mile from Clingmans Dome, the fog cleared out on the North Carolina side of the trail. For a brief window we had some dramatic views that made the whole hike worth it. Within ten minutes of shooting the pictures below, strong winds kicked-up from the north and blew fog back into the southern Smokies. Just like that we lost our views again. We saw fog the rest of the day until reaching the lower portions of Newfound Gap Road.

Tomorrow I'll be posting pictures from our hike to Grotto Falls and Brushy Mountain.

Jeff

HikingintheSmokys.com Detailed information on trails in the Smoky Mountains; includes trail descriptions, key features, pictures, video, maps, elevation profiles, news, and more.

Smoky Mountain Cabins Check out our new page for cabin and chalet listings in the Smokies!

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Sugarland Mountain Trail Photos

Sugarland Mountain Trail Photos

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

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We just returned from a long weekend roadtrip to the Smokies last night. I wanted to share a few photos from our hikes.

The photos below are from our first hike along the upper Sugarland Mountain Trail off of Clingmans Dome Road. I must admit, I was a little disappointed in this trail. I thought that we were going to have much better views than what we actually saw. He hiked to the point where the trail runs closest to Chimney Tops. I thought for sure that we would be able to look down upon Chimney Tops from this vantage point, but foliage blocked most of our views. There were, however, a few brief vantage points along the way.

Still, it was a very nice hike. Although we hiked the trail on a Sunday afternoon, we didn't see a single soul the entire time we were on the trail. We also saw quite a few wildflowers.

A large portion of the trail on this hike passes through lush spruce-fir forest.

One of the brief views along the way (Clingmans Dome we assume).

Trout-Lily

Sweet White Trillium. In addition to these two flowers, we saw a ton of Spring Beauty and several Wake Robin's.

More views

Tomorrow I'll be posting pictures from our hike to Siler's Bald on the Appalachian Trail.

Jeff

HikingintheSmokys.com Detailed information on trails in the Smoky Mountains; includes trail descriptions, key features, pictures, video, maps, elevation profiles, news, and more.

Smoky Mountain Day Hikers Store Quality gear and apparel from some of the best outdoor brands.

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Best SummitPost Photos

Best SummitPost Photos

Saturday, March 7, 2009

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Check out this collection of photos from SummitPost. If you've never been to the "SP" website, you're definitely missing out. In addition to finding important information and details on hikes or climbing mountains around the world, the website has some outstanding personal adventure stories and some excellent photographs, all user submitted.

Someone put together a "best of" collection of photos. On this collection of 17 photos you'll find several beautiful mountain panoramics and climbing photos. The most interesting photo, however, is the one of the disappearing rabbit. It may not be apparent as to what happened at first, but there's an explanaton at the bottom. Extremely cool shot.

Enjoy! Click here to see the pix.


Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com Detailed information on trails in the Smoky Mountains; includes trail descriptions, key features, pictures, video, maps, elevation profiles, news, and more.

Smoky Mountain Day Hikers Store Quality gear and apparel from some of the best outdoor brands.

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Smoky Mountains Trip Summary in Pictures

Smoky Mountains Trip Summary in Pictures

Thursday, May 15, 2008

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We just returned from a week-long trip in the Smoky Mountains. In the next few days you will see many changes to the site, including the addition of trail detail for 13 more trails. We'll also be adding video for a couple of trails as well. During our stay, we hiked several Smoky Mountains classics, as well as a couple of trails that may not be as well known to the casual hiker. During this trip I took nearly 400 pictures. I wanted to share a few to give you a taste of what's to come for the web site.

You can view many more photos, in addition to detailed trail information for more than 70 trails in Smoky Mountains National Park at HikingintheSmokys.com

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