Yesterday morning I loaded Rocko into the car, along with my walking stick, water, compass, camera and nifty little Sierra Club knapsack, and we went a few miles up the road to the Big East Fork Trail. I took 90 pictures; these are just the highlights.
Note: my camera's clock was 19 minutes slow. I noticed that when I got home; I knew for a fact that it was just after 2 PM when we got back to the car, but the last photo timestamp was much earlier.
We went in at 9 AM, despite the timestamp on this first photo. Not a great picture, just documentation for the hike.
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| Going in. The sun was still behind the mountain so my camera chose to use a flash. |
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| An early view of the river. First drink break for Rocko; he doesn't drink often but, when he does, he drinks a lot. |
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| Early in the hike, the trail is broad (as seen here) but still full of rocks and roots. Later it gets narrow, often with a steep drop-off on one side, and there are some on-all-fours points when you have to climb rocks and roots. Despite the glorious surroundings, you have to keep your eyes on the ground a lot. If you fall and break your leg, there is no cellphone service here and it might be a long time before anybody comes along. |
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| Foggy morning, Big East Fork of the Pigeon River |
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| A feeder creek that crosses the trail. |
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| Foggy morning II, Big East Fork of the Pigeon River |
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| We found this campsite an hour in from the road. Rocko is playing Smokey Bear, making sure the fire is out. |
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| End of the line, at least for us; three hours in from the road and over 1,000 ft. up. Not sure just how far we went; I ought to get a topo map for next time. |
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| Looking downstream from the same location. We took about a five-minute break here before heading back downstream. It was three hours in and two back out, but going out was almost all downhill. |
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| Almost back to the car, tired but happy. |
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| And we're back out, five hours later. |
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