Thanks to Karl for helping this first page load a lot faster! Here you go, enjoy.
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Friday night I found myself doing what many of us from this forum do - figuring out where to hike on Saturday.
I sent out a couple of "feelers" to see what other people were doing. Karl had an interesting idea - since he'd never hiked up Kings Mountain before, why not do that? To make it interesting he/we decided to make a loop out of it. Further texting between EP, Mayhem and others resulted in this loop: hiking to the summit of Kings, down the back side and around to Elk Creek. Down the Elk Creek Trail, and back on the Wilson River Trail. That is one loop I've never done before (in that order at least).DISCLAIMERS: FIRST, most of these pics were taken by Mayhem and KepNW. A few by me. Also, I ended up doing the TR because I was the slowest one to say "not it!" when the task was being discussed. hehe so if you're expecting a seriously boring description of the hike... I'm not capable of such.
Finally tally had four of us meeting at a very non-loony 7:30am at the Kings TH. Locked 'n' loaded we hit the trail.
But not before getting in a group picture.
EP was a bundle of energy as usual, and spent a considerable amount of time dashing ahead, lingering behind, and taking lots of pictures & video. In fact, I'd estimate our total pictures taken to be more than 400! Fortunately I'm not uploading that many...
Headed up Kings Mtn there is one thing you quickly recognize: you're going up. And up.
We reached the top in blisteringly fast time. Unfortunately we didn't clock our ascent time exactly, but we estimated that we hit the summit in about 1 hour 10 minutes or so (guys - correct me if I'm wrong on that time haha). It was my fastest time up Kings, and Karl's first ever hike to the summit. Victory shot by the summit box:
Views from the top:
We shot down the backside and quickly hit the first of several spots with downed trees. Eric quickly sprang into action, using his super powers to move the logs. Before Crusak could say "not it!" he had them cleared.
I'd never been down the back side of Kings - only up it. But I knew that it'd be a bit scary-dicey-hairy-crazy in spots. And it was. Which was what we were looking for.
I have no idea why they guy on the right is frowning. I guarantee all four of us were having the time of our lives!
At one point Eric ran on ahead. We soon found out why - the video man was looking for a new angle. He definitely found it!
We hit the three way junction and took a short break. EP planned to leave the group and go up/over/down Elk Mountain. The three remaining TFFs were gonna go down Elk Creek.
We quickly found out about the snow levels at the top end of the Elk Creek Trail. Karl found out that it was knee deep in places...
We hit the next junction after hiking at a leisurely pace that we'd maintain for the rest of the way down and around.
Several trees down along the upper end of Elk Creek - big ones! But we could see evidence of the work that Sean Thomas had done along the way. Nice job, Sean!
More shots from the Elk Creek Trail:
The three TFFs at the WRT junction, near the Elk Creek Campground:
We passed the Elk Mtn junction:
Snake! This little guy nearly went unnoticed.
Crossing the creek - the bridge is out, so the trail has been rerouted over to this huge log. It works well.
The sinkhole area:
Ants busy at work on a very large anthill:
The famous "Little Stonehenge" - we discovered a trail leading up the hill behind this spot. No, we aren't going to tell you what we found up there...
Home stretch!
And parting shot back at the trailhead. Super fun day of hiking! It was about 12.5 miles and 3800' EG on our loop. EP plans to share his adventure after we parted ways in a follow-up reply after this...
Fun day guys! The weather was perfect, as was the company. Great workout in the best scenery around.
gpsfly upload: http://gpsfly.org/a/2348
And here's a screenshot of our loop:
