We took a very quick backpacking trip (in fact, we entered the forest at noon on Day 1 and were back at the car noon on Day 2) along Standing Indian Loop near Franklin, NC. (We intended to do the entire loop, but bad weather was expected on the day we would be hiking out, so we changed our plans at the last minute.)
Day 1
After getting our gear together and applying sunscreen, we hit the trail (Notice the down puffy jacket - more on that later.)
We walked along the Long Branch Trail for 1.9 miles, 674 ft elevation gain.......
We arrived at the intersection of the Appalachian Trail (AT) about 75 minutes later. We continued on our journey, passing a lot of northbound AT thru-hikers (we were going southbound), enjoying the scenery along the way.
The AT is known as the Green Tunnel, and you can see why - imagine when the foliage is fully leafed - the tree canopy is quite thick. Some more pics......
By 3pm, we arrived at our destination - The Fire Tower - 5.1 miles, 1683ft elevation change.
What is that in the circle?
It's Brad! 😁
The view from the Fire Tower.....
We set-up camp for the night and puttered around looking for a water source (there was none) and had some dinner.
Pretty soon, it was getting cold. VERY cold. Windy, VERY windy. So we pretty much put on everything we had (wool socks, base layer, pants, two shirts each, that puffy from earlier, Brad wore his fleece, stocking hats, gloves) and got into our sleeping bag liners that were in our sleeping bags and cinched those bags as tight as they would go. And we were still cold!
So the good thing about not having a lot of water to drink from a lack of water source, is that neither of us had to go to the bathroom during the very cold and windy night.
Day 2
It was still VERY windy and cold when we woke the next morning, but we did get to enjoy a beautiful sunrise at around 7am. Notice the clouds below where we camped.....
We had a quick cup of coffee/tea, but passed on a hot breakfast since we did not want to hang in the bitter cold for longer than we had to. It still took us nearly two hours to pack our gear and get ready to hike out. Here is a picture of the sunrise about 8am - it was so windy that we could see the could passing by.
Our hike out also took three hours, and we stopped at the Shelter for a minute to see what it looked like. There are about 260 shelters along the AT that are destinations for backpackers - it's a nice way to get to meet other people and enjoy some trail camaraderie.
So a quick trip - our first backpacking in the east coast. However, if it is this cold next time we plan to go backpacking, we are getting a hotel room instead! 😆
