The weather was a bit overcast and rainy, but we decided to hike the 5.3 mile John’s Rock loop in Pisgah National Forest. You climb about ~1200 feet over the course of the hike, but it is well worth it. At the top, you get a great view of Looking Glass.
Bella and I went for a hike along the East Palisades trail on the Chattahoochee River. The sun was just popping up from behind the mountain when we arrived.
These photos didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked. The lighting there was not the best…
Hiked from Neels Gap to Tesnatee Gap and back this weekend (~11 miles round trip). We camped at Laurel Top which did not disappoint. It was very windy and cold, but had an amazing view. If you ever get a chance to camp at Laurel Top, do it. Atlanta Trails has a good break down of the hike here.
Last weekend we hiked from Woody’s Gap to a little past Neel’s Gap passing over the top of Blood Mountain. Overall, the trip came out to about 13 miles or so. The leaves were still changing colors in some areas, but for the most part, seemed to have already fallen.
– My hiking buddies –
We camped just past Neel’s Gap (we left a car there with most of our stuff so we wouldn’t have to carry everything all day). I got to try out my new tent which was pretty awesome!
Saturday, I went on a hike with Happy Trails based in Georgia. We hiked up the Table Rock Trail to the top of Table Rock Mountain. The trail was pretty busy so on the way back down we went towards Pinnacle Mountain and took that trail back down. The total trip came out to about 10 miles I think.
Detailed map can be found here.
We drove to a few overlooks at the Grand Canyon in hopes of seeing more than the day before. There were still way too many clouds…
Since the Grand Canyon wasn’t very visible, we drove back to Zion and did two short hikes. These were very crowded with tourists.
After checking out the Narrows, we grabbed dinner outside the park, and then start the drive back to Vegas.
We drove to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon once finishing up hiking in Zion. The trees were in the middle of changing colors making the drive very pretty!
Once we got to the Grand Canyon we found out it was supposed to rain the next two days.
We went on a short 4 mile hike to an overlook, but once we got there we found it to be too foggy to see anything.
On the way back to the car, it poured! We were soaked! Luckily, we were able to get a campsite from a cancellation at the main campground as the Visitors Center and put our clothes in the dryer.
The Visitors Center was about a mile from our campsite so drove over there. They have a nice restaurant as we as coffee shop/bar overlooking the canyon. We then bought some Elk Chili and a bottle of red wine which we took back to the campsite.
We woke up early to a dark sky. It looked like it was going to pour at any moment. Instead of making coffee and breakfast, we decided to pack up and try to get a move on before the rain hit.
It drizzled for a few minutes, but no major rainstorms. None of us were really prepared for a down pour so we were quite relieved.
We were making really good progress until we got just above Angel’s Landing. Apparently this was the day they decided to remove all of the poop from the bathrooms at the top of Angel’s landing. The rangers strapped barrels of poop onto a helicopter and then toted it off. The parker rangers blocked the trail while this was done as they did not want anyone walking under the helicopters. This meant Avery and I had to wait for 1-2 hours.
Finally around noon we were allowed to continue down the trail. This part of the trail is heavily traveled by tourists and paved.
By the time Avery and I reached The Grotto (where we crossed the main canyon road), we were exhausted, and we had wasted a lot of time because of the trail closure. To make matters worse, the weather was starting to look pretty foul. We decided to cut our trip one day short and not hike the last 8 miles on the East Rim Trail. Instead, we took the shuttle into town and had a nice cold beer and real food. Later that afternoon, a few heavy rain storms passed through. While I am sad we didn’t hike the entire Trans-Zion, I believe we made the right choice to stop when we did. Our entire trip came out to around 38 miles!