You Have to Go High.

Here in Charlotte it just doesn't snow that often. Fewer and fewer snow days down here in the Piedmont as the effects of human-caused global warming become more pronounced each year.

Carole and I enjoy the snow. We're big kids at hear and we like to experience a good snowfall from time to time. We like to play in it like all of the other children. There are a couple of sleds in the barn out back.

But since there is almost never an opportunity in the Charlotte metro-area to experience a good snowfall, we find that we have to head to the high country to find it. Fortunately, we have the highest mountains in the eastern USA not too far away, and so it's often just a matter of driving for a couple of hours to find the frozen precipitation and where we can look at the beauty of it, breath cold arctic air, and slide around on it like the overgrown children that we are.

When the north winds blow we see the clear, blue skies.

Let's hike in the snow!

At Carvers Gap on the NC/TN line.

On the Appalachian Trail at the summit of Round Bald, 5,826 feet above sea level.

Linville Gorge

I think I may have shot more photos and video in and around Linville Gorge than anywhere else in the southeast. It is a unique place, easily the most rugged territory I have witnessed here on the eastern side of the continent, and that includes places such as the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Katahdin in Maine. It is a seriously huge chunk of wild and jumbled mountain scenery.

Since I have been experimenting with my basic video software I decided to create a longer piece on one of the more unique day hikes I have ever taken. This was into Linville Gorge on February 7, 2010. The North Carolina mountains had just had a snow storm which was followed by a brief icing event and subsequent sub-freezing temperatures which locked in all of that icy beauty for a day. This is what we encountered when we parked my truck and hiked up Shortoff Mountain in the southern end of the Linville Gorge Wilderness.

I could describe the hike, but I'll let the photos and video do the talking.

High on Shortoff Mountain with the bulk of the Linville Gorge Wilderness behind me.

Video montage of a truly special day hike.

Snow on LeConte

Back in 2005 I did a really neat hike in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was a day hike that started near Gatlinburg and took us to the summit of Mount LeConte (one of the east's highest summits). When we started the hike the temperatures in Gatlinburg were in the high 50s. Slightly overcast. But by the time we reached the top of the mountain (almost a vertical mile higher from where we began the hike) we had walked into dead winter. A seventeen-inch snowfall had covered the mountain in purest white and it was very darned cold.

It remains the only time I have hiked to the top of that mountain in the snow. I had tried once before some years earlier when a late Spring storm of freakish proportions had dropped three feet of snow on the trails. On that trip we gave out of steam from having to slog through the drifts and ended up camping on a ridge in the forest. We never made the mountaintop on that trip.

This is still one of the prettiest winter hikes I have ever done, in March of 2005.

I'd heard of these formations but had never seen them. In fact, this remains the only time I have seen these snowy pinwheels. Snow falls off of tree branches and begins rolling down steep slopes, becoming little wheels of snow. We saw one that was about two feet across.

The trail leading up. One other hiker had blazed the trail for us.

There are not many things prettier than spruce trees heavily laden with newly fallen snow.

Sam Baucom took this shot of me at Myrtle Point, near the summit.

The view that day from Myrtle Point.

I got Sam to take this one of me as we left the top of the mountain to head back down.

This is from a hike when I was barely 21 years old. We were trying to reach the summit but drifts that were just too deep exhausted us and we had to make camp on a ridge as the sun was setting.

This was what it was like at the base of the mountain. No snow, at all. Mount LeConte here is the only peak in the eastern USA that is one mile tall. That is, from the base of the peak to the top of the peak it is over one mile of altitude gain. The bottom is at around 1200 feet, and the summit almost 6600 feet.

My Favorite Video

Ever since I got my first digital camera in 2004 I've been making short videos of the places I visit. I don't use the video option a lot, because I feel that the moment has to be just right. Mainly I'm just happy taking photos.

But one winter day I was hiking in the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area with some companions. There had been recent cold and snowy weather and we wanted to experience some of it up on the rim of the gorge. Down in the valleys there was still snow on the ground, but it was melting. As we climbed up into the higher country, around 3,000 feet or so, it was still below freezing and the winter precipitation that had fallen the previous days had not melted. So we were greeted with classic winter scenery the higher we hiked.

I made the horrible mistake of wearing my summer hiking boots. They would have kept my feet warm under normal circumstances, but I'd hiked through rivulets of melting snow to get to the high country (down lower where the snow was melting). Thus, my feet got soaked, and then frozen up where the temperatures were still below freezing. I have not repeated this mistake and never will.

One thing that had happened right at the end of the storm was that the snow had turned briefly to freezing rain and sleet. This meant that on the mountaintops we were hiking atop seven or eight inches of snow shielded by about an inch of frozen sleet. The trees were coated in this stuff, too. It was indeed beautiful to look at and fun to walk on, especially as I had come equipped with my Yaktrax to keep me from slipping.

Then, along a high ridge, the temperature and the sun suddenly combined to begin breaking up the ice. For several magic minutes the forest was full of the symphony of shattering ice. I've never heard or seen anything like it and I often wonder about the confluence of events and perfect timing that put me in that spot at that particular moment. It was especially nice as I had separated myself from my babbling companions so that the only thing speaking in this video is Mother Nature.

Crank the sound up if you want to hear it the way I experienced it.

Altitude

Here in the South the mountains are as high as they get in the eastern half of the nation. None of our peaks is high enough to have a snowline (where snow never melts) or even a treeline (where arctic tundra prevails). But we do have mountains that are tall enough to exhibit a great degree of environmental changes between the base and summit. Nowhere is this more on display than in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and no mountain shows this better than Mount LeConte.

LeConte looms above the city of Gatlinburg. It dominates the skyline in a way no other summit can in the eastern USA. For it is the only place here that rises so abruptly above its base to such heights. A person can begin hiking at the city limits of Gatlinburg, walk into the Park and end the hike one vertical mile higher on the very top of the peak. LeConte, rising as it does to 6,593 feet above sea level, is one of the highest peaks in the eastern USA. And it is certainly the "tallest", marking probably the only mile-high wall on this half of the country.

When you start your hike at the base of LeConte, you are traveling in typical southern hardwood and pine forests. It gets about as hot in Gatlinburg as it does anywhere else in the South with summer temperatures routinely hitting the 90s. But by the time you reach the summit of that tallest of eastern peaks, the forests are the same as one encounters in southern Canada, and the temperatures never top 80 degrees on even the hottest of days in the valleys below.

LeConte: the mile-high wall above Gatlinburg.

Just a thousand feet or so above Gatlinburg I moved into a dusting of snow and a different forest type (then dominated by hemlocks seen here, but which are pretty much all dead now from hwa infestation).

About 2/3 of the way up the forests become dominated by spruce trees and the snow is getting deeper with every foot I climbed.

At over 5,000 feet the snow was getting seriously deep.

Just before the top of the mountain. It was still snowing as I got there.

Yours truly, on the snow-covered summit of Mount LeConte, March of 2005.

And then it was time to head down, slogging through 17 inches of fresh snowfall until the mountain's varying climates slowly took it all away from me.

Backpacking Weather

When I'm backpacking I often enjoy the weather, even when it's "bad". Too much rain can become a real drag, but most of the time any kind of weather is just part of the journey. I don't mind the tougher parts to enjoy the solitude that comes with the long walks through the wilderness.

Flash photo of my favorite backpacking tent (MSR Hubba). I suspected it would snow during the night, and it did.

I love waking up in the morning to fresh snow when I'm backpacking.

At another campsite (the night before the one above). First it was lightly raining after I'd got my tent set up. Then the temperature dropped and it began to sleet. Some minutes after that it became all snow. Then it warmed up, the clouds broke, and the sun was out.

Just a short stroll from my tent.

Mountain Snow!

Since it rarely snows here in Charlotte anymore, I like to head for the mountains of North Carolina if I can find the time. It does still snow in our high country, but some years not even very much there. Last year was a notoriously lousy one for snowfall in the Carolina mountains. I only got one chance to hike in the snow in the mountains during the past winter.

When Carole and I realized that the mountains were getting hit with a major snowstorm (high elevations only) we decided to head up that way since we both had Sunday off. We got up very early, went and had breakfast at a Waffle House, and then hit the road for the big mountains.

You can say what you like about the mountains of the South. We don't have a lot of what amount to impressive vertical scenery here, but there is some of it that stacks up favorably with the big sky country of the west. The higher ridges of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia are genuinely impressive. There is enough elevation, in fact, to create disparate climatic zones between the bases of these mountains and the summits. We do have some honest-to-gosh mountains here.

One of the easiest to access monster peaks for us are the Grandfather Mountain/Roan Mountain systems. Both of these mountains qualify as genuine massif. They stand apart from the ridges around them, and they dominate the skyline for quite some distance. Winter weather hits these ridges with some fierce conditions, and we were hoping for the best as we headed toward them.

When we passed Grandather/Tanawha, we were rewarded with a view of a mountain socked in with heavy snow and rime ice. We weren't headed for the top of that one, but we realized in short order that we would be seeing some decent snowfall when we got to the Roan highlands. How much snow, we weren't sure.

Passing across the NC/TN border, we headed for Roan Mountain State Park. We noticed a couple of herds of whitetail deer, but when we stopped to take their photo they got spooked and headed off at some speed. I reckon they're still skittish from hunting season. From there, we headed up the incline of 19E for Carver's Gap where we would stop and have lunch and then hop out to take photos and do some hiking.

We were stunned by the beauty of Winter's harsh gift when we pulled in to the parking  area at Carver's Gap. All of the trees were coated in snow and rime ice. The place was ablaze in ivory. The sky was cobalt blue, the temperature in the mid-teens, the wind racing around us, the sun glaring down. There were other people in the Gap also. Some were just there to snap some photos, but others were there with kids to go sledding, to hike, to backpack, and to cross-country ski. It was a grad day for all of this.

After our packed lunch, we got out and played in the snow. It was far deeper than I would have guess. When we ventured into the forest to hike we encountered thigh-deep snow with drifts five to six feet in height! Carole and I took pictures and then it was time for me to hike to the summit of Round Bald where I hoped to take in the views from more than 5,800 feet.

Tanawha, also known as Grandfather Mountain.

The Grandfather massif.

Rime ice and sunshine.

 

 On the summit. Raging wind and tremendous cold.

On the summit. COLD!!! COLD, I SAY!

Icy panorama on the Appalachian Trail.

When we hit the forest, we found DEEP snow!

Beauty everywhere we looked.

Frigid.

Waves of mountains.

Spruce transformed into sculptures of rime ice.

 

Hiking down from Round Bald.

Last Snow Hike

It has been over a year since I've seen snow here in North Carolina. It has snowed since the last time I was able to experience the stuff, just not when and where I've been present. So the last time I was able to hike in the snow here in North Carolina was January 16, 2012.

Because of the effects of human-caused global warming, it just doesn't snow here in North Carolina all that often. There was a time, of course, when it snowed a lot here in my current state of residence. But not anymore. The companies who make sure that we get so much of our energy needs from oil, coal, and natural gas have seen to it that there are no other options. Things are just going to get worse as far as our climate is concerned.

So, in honor of that last time I was able to hike in snow here in my own state of North Carolina, here are a few photographs from that hike on Tanawha, also known as Grandfather Mountain.

This part of Tanawha/Grandfather Mountain is called "The Boone Bowl" and is thought to be one of the few glacial cirques formed in the southern Appalachians. The scientific jury is still out on whether or not it's a glacial cirque, but having seen plenty of them now in my experience as a hiker and backpacker, it sure does look like one.

Two of my hiking pals, Bob Johnson and Andy Kunkle.

View from one side of the "Boone Bowl".

Fresh, soft, dry snow.

What ya call yer powder. Light, fluffy powder.