Smoky Mountain 06: A Retrospective

The Smoky Mountains Expedition Party, better known as the A-Team. That's Mike "Howling Mad" Thomsen, Josh "Face" Schweiger, Jeff "B.A." Cowman, Boyd "Hannibal" Redinbaugh, and the 5th Season addition Christian "Dishpan" Thom.

Fontana Dam. Really cool little spot where we spent the first and last 2 nights of our excursion. . . before we were run off by the locals.

Here's everyone else setting up camp at Fontana Dam while I documented. Luckily, my journalistic credientials (hey, I work at a TV station!) prevented me from participating, as I needed to remain an unbiased observer. Way to set up our tent Josh!

The trees in the Smokies are dense, reminding us of our time spent in 'Nam, where we were accused of a crime we didn't commit. Seriously, though , this is what 99% of the backpacking portion of trip looked like. Except at night. When it was pitch black.

Our Smoky Mountain campsite mascot, a 2 point deer. I didn't really get any good photos, but he literally came within 2 feet of us, with an attitude that was all "Don't worry about it doooood."

When we finally got sick of tree cover, we constructed this tower with our bare hands. I think we may have gone a little overboard, but if you're gonna go, go big.


Here's a shot of what the Smokies look like from the steps of the fire tower. I wanted just a picture of the mountains, but the crossbeams asked if I could take their picture, too. They seemed like a nice bunch of guys, so I happily obliged.


After the crossbeams left, I was able to take this unobscured shot. Purple mountains' majesty indeed.

Here's dfferent perspective of our Fontana Dam starting point. The hike up wasn't bad, but swimming with our packs on was a little rough.


We liked the view from the tower so much, we went back at night. We went to check out the stars, but they decided not to show up. F'in stars.


Here's another place where we found a break in the canopy. It had the unusual name of Gregory's Bald. It was pretty nice up there, and much, much, much better than Gregory's Balls. Trust me, you don't want to see those pictures.


We were having a great time up on the bald, being thirsty and tired, until this really nice guy and his wife showed up on their horses. Yeah, then they had the gall to give extra bottles of cold water! And then they were all being super nice and talking to us and stuff. I tell ya, if you can't go to the top of a mountain to get away from nice people, I don't know where you can go. Geez!


After narrowly escaping the back country with our lives on Thursday, we opted to drive to the highest point in the park, Clingman's Dome. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I can't come up with it.


The other A-Team members scope out the situation from a scale replica of The Jetson's apartment. I have no idea why they would build that on top of Clingman's Dome, but whatever.


I thought that it would be cool to have a picture taken of the world's two deadliest assassins on top of Clingman's Dome. Turns out I was right.


There are 1.5 bears per every square mile in the Smokies. This sign clearly shows that you are not, under any circumstances, to feed .5 of a bear. Or a disembodied deer head for that matter.


Just a picture of me on the Appalachian Trail. It's nice to know that even though I may have smelled bad, I still looked good.