ok. this hike was fantastic. hard. long. a little dangerous. but so fantastic.
i met up with my hiking group friends for a ten-ish hour adventure on majestic grandfather mountain, namely a 12.25 mile and almost 4000′ elevation gain hike, chock full of all the best amenities
first of all. there was an old plane wreckage. i mean. that’s pretty fun, right?
we hiked up to calloway peak, the highest point on grandfather, where the foggy cloud cover was still a little uncooperative. but, as we made our way over to mccrae peak, things started to clear up and we had some pretty fantastic views. (you know. except for that big stupid hotel on the top of sugar mountain).
we scrambled up and over huge boulders, and ducked and squeezed through pockets and caves made by other huge boulders. and then there was “the chute”, a steep, rocky, narrow slit between two rock walls. we carefully navigated down, suppressing thoughts of the return trip.
while there was only one “chute”, there were ladders aplenty. like. so many. (i did the super ladder-y part of this hike with the girls a few years back, so no suprises here). also. so many people on this beautiful saturday.
we took several snack breaks on our journey. and settled in for lunch at the famous swinging bridge. we also stopped to use real flushing toilets at the visitor center. a great perk.
so. after getting seriously slowed down by the number of people on all of the ladders, we made an executive decision to take a less fun route back. and we were sort of in a rush to get back to the cars in a reasonable timeframe. it’s all sort of a blur.
but. here are some other pics from the day.
the swinging bridge sign. haha. (the only shot i have of the bridge from the day). a view from inside indian house cave. and what can only be described as a stern warning not to enter this area damaged by hurricane helene last fall.
flowers and mushrooms.
did i mention it was muddy?
so. towards the end of the hike, with maybe a mile or so left, we had to make an executive decision: take the same slightly easier trail back to the car OR take the much more rocky and decidedly NOT FUN trail to the cragway for possibly great but also possibly cloud obscured views. we took the cragway trail and we were rewarded for this gamble with some pretty fantastic vistas. oh. and maybe i rolled my ankle.
it was quite a day. i really thought i would be more sore the next day, but i was in pretty good shape, save for my swollen cankle. i can’t wait to go do this one again.