Fri, May 23 2008 - Smokey Mtns Peakbagging Expedition (View Original Event Details) Trip Leader(s): Lee Harris Participants: Lee Harris, Kelly Harris, Jason Kotz, Jon Miner, John McAndrews, Jorge E Pachon, Tony C

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Write Up:
Holy Sh*t ! The hardest, longest, roughest, most draining, most scratched and torn up trip I've ever been on. After an accident on 441 that backed up traffic in the Smokys Mtn Park we finally departed cosby around 10pm. With headlamps and full packs we charged up 2000' in elevation and then back down to camp, 5 miles. Day 2 A short hike along the river with a few crossings where Jmac and Tony decided they were too dry and thought it would be cooler to sit in the river. Straight up we hiked stoping for lunch at Gunter Falls. Up up and more up. Finally reaching our cross trail above 5,000'. Here the group split up. Jason, Jorge, Kelly and myself all headed south towards our first peak while the others headed north towards the shelter. The 4 of us Bagged Big Cataloochee (sp?) and then turned around and headed north. On our way to the shelter we also hit Luftee and Yonaguska/tri-croner. We arrived at the shelter at 8:30pm just in time to eat and sleep, 14.5 miles. Day 3 We got up a little earlier and got on trail by 9:30. Once again the 4 of us went off trail to tackle Marks Knob while the others went ahead to handle Guyoti and wait for us for lunch on top. After Marks we headed to Guyoti where the trail went the extreme long way to the top and was a horrible bushwack, the ones the day before weren't to easy either. We did not find the others at top so we headed back down for lunch and our next peak Old black. This was an easy summitt. Turning around once again we headed back south aalong the AT towards our final 2 for the day, chapman and seqouia. Chapman sucked and was horrible to get to the top, once on top we found the trail back down we missed. Seqouia was very close to the trail and easy as well. We arrived at the shelter about 8pm. UGH another long day, 16.5 miles Day 4 Up at 6am left the shelter by 8am. One peak left and then a long drive home. Today we finally got some views and hiked up some cool rock formations, Charlies Bunyon was one of them. We got back to the car, another 11 miles to add to the total of 47 miles.

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