It's quite confronting to get off a plane from the Midwest and suddenly find yourself in the South. It's even more confronting to arrive at your bed and breakfast accommodation in rural Tennessee to discover that the owner and his wife spent the 1980s living and lecturing in Perth. It's a really small world. This is the other side of the coin - it seems as though everyone we meet falls into one of two categories. Either they've never met an Australian, or they've visited or lived in Perth. On our third day of the trip we were at RadioShack buying a SIM card for our phone, and we answered the clerk's ubiquitous question with "Perth, Western Australia". Straight away, the guy behind us pipes up "oh yeah, Fremantle, Little Creatures." Turns out he spent some time working at a brick factory in Malaga.
The Smokies are our second National Park of the trip, and these mountains are very different to Glacier. For a start it's about 30 degrees and 80% humidity here. Perfect hiking weather. That was sarcasm, yeah? We threw ourselves straight back into left-foot-right-foot with perhaps a little more gusto than was wise.
After a sickly-sweet southern breakfast of orange marmalade french toast (carb-loading), we set off to summit Mount Le Conte via the Alum Cave Trail. It's an 18 kilometer round trip that gains nearly a kilometer in elevation, and it has a difficulty rating of 'strenuous'. As proof of this, I have a photo of me in which I'm the same colour as my shirt. And I was only halfway up. Needless to say,
that photo won't be getting published.
 |
| Coral... |
Sadly the trail wasn't as serene as we would have liked, as there were a few youth groups marching up carrying people on stretchers, presumably as a team building exercise. Although their relentless chanting and boundless enthusiasm was aggravating, I'll admit it was a pretty mammoth effort. I could barely carry myself up to the top. It took us two hours and forty-five minutes to reach the 2010 meter summit, against a guide time of three to four hours. We were stoked with that result. Our legs were not. But, as expected, the views were in line with the sense of achievement and in
hindsight it was so worth it, although there were points along the way
where I wondered.
At the top of the mountain is Le Conte Lodge, which was established in 1925. You can stay in one of the cabins up there, but you need to make reservations well in advance. We made do with a couple of rocking chairs on the deck and a pack lunch. It was blissful. Significantly colder at such altitude, it was also easy to imagine how quickly sweat-drenched hikers can succumb to hypothermia.
 |
| Top of the World at Le Conte Lodge |
The descent took less than two hours but wasn't actually much easier than going up. Lots of hikers have walking poles, of which I'm often quite envious, but we're usually 20-30 years younger than those hikers, so a cup of toughen-up is what Danny suggested for me instead.
I know we seem to be spending a lot of time out in the woods, and we are, but I want to reassure you that we're never too far from 'civilisation'. Just in case you don't believe me, here's proof in the form of a drive-through discount cigarettes and beer store.
 |
| Our Hire Car |
Coolest thing we've seen so far?
No comments:
Post a Comment