Day: 017
Date: Thursday, 11 May 2023
Start: Tricorner Knob Shelter (AT Mile 223.4)
Finish: Painter Branch Creek (AT Mile 243.7)
Daily Kilometres: 35.8
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 412.4
Weather: Mild and sunny in the morning, overcast and humid in the afternoon with some thunder.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Trail mix
Dinner: Rehydrated meals
Aches: Dave - exhausted with a few niggles; Julie - nothing to report.
Highlight: Completing our transition of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park which is a milestone on our way to Maine. The trail through provided some awesome views and beautiful, if tough, walking and we were fortunate not to get much of the rain for which it is well-known.
Lowlight: Quite a few annoying bugs and flies today who seemed to target eyes, nostrils and ears.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We woke at 6:00am and packed up while chatting to the two guys who had set up their tents very close to ours. They were just hiking through the Smoky’s and were finding it tough. Very friendly nice guys, but we stayed away from discussing politics and didn’t comment when told that they were also hunters, one of them with 19 bears to his credit!
We started hiking soon after 7:00am on a nice mild morning and began our descent, punctuated with a few climbs, out of the Smoky’s. There were occasional views and some more razorback ridge trail as we passed through the predominantly conifer forest. We saw a few other thruhikers during the morning and learned from one old-timer, “Grits”, who was moving a lot faster than Dave, that he had hiked the whole trail in 1991, five years after Dave and a long time ago.
After a few hours of hiking and descending the conifers were left behind and we were back to the luminescently green deciduous forest with more wildflowers and more birds. It also became warmer and more humid.
Around 3:30pm we reached Davenport Gap and exited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and, after another couple of miles, passed under Interstate Highway 40, along which we drove for many miles on our way to Georgia from Los Angeles to begin our hike. It was busy and we could hear the traffic noise for an hour’s hiking either side of the highway.
As we approached the highway and emerged onto a minor road along which we had to walk, an ATV blowing an incredible amount of blue smoke with three guys aboard, who possibly were returning from sampling their latest batch of moonshine at their still in the mountains, came round the corner and stopped next to us. They kept offering to give us a ride, especially Julie (guffaw! guffaw!), but eventually lost interest and roared off, thankfully.
From the highway, for our last five miles of the day, we ascended steeply and Dave was soon struggling in the humidity. Our target for the day was the first water source once we got back into the forest and that turned out to be a long uphill slog at the end of a long day. Dave persevered and Julie waited patiently ever so often for him to catch up.
Finally we reached the Painter Branch Creek at around 6:30pm and then messed around for a while trying to work out where the best place was to camp, not what you need when tired. Eventually, we settled on a spot and were soon into our setup routine and in the tent for the night by about 8:30pm.
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