Reboots Required: Hikes That Didn’t Quite Pan Out
Sometimes, things don’t go as planned.
In the Appalachian Mountains, this happens more often than most hikers would like to admit. There is no dry or wet season…just wet and slightly wetter. About one out of every three days in the Appalachians is a bad weather day. Which means that, now matter how well you plan things, something close to thirty percent of all hikes will end with a view that looks something like this:
You can try to plan around the weather of course, but this is often an exercise in futility. Most hikers simply do not have the luxury of picking and choosing which days they are going to be in the mountains. Jobs, family responsibilities and the distance between where hikers live and where the trails they wish to hike are located dictate that plans often have to be made further in advance than the weather forecast will allow. And even then, there’s simply no accounting for the weather in mountainous areas…there’s no way of reliably forecasting something that is, by its very nature, unstable and unpredictable.
Brian and Sylvia have had good luck with weather in general over our hiking career. We recently hiked in Patagonia; anyone who goes to Patagonia expecting day upon day of good weather is probably in need of a reboot themselves. With that said, we had only a couple of days of truly bad weather, and as many or more days of good (the rest were a mix.) The year before, we hiked in the Alps, where afternoon thunderstorms in summertime are almost a clockwork event. Seven of the eleven days we hiked were entirely clear; and of the rest, none were complete washouts. We had fine views every day for at least part of the day.
But we’ve also had some bona fide washouts, too. In fact, part of the reason why some of the classically great hikes of the South do not appear on our list of Top Ten Hikes in the Southern Appalachians is because a few of them were washed out and need to be done over.
For example, McAfee Knob. Though it is perhaps the most famous lookout point on the entire AT, that’s only true if there’s something to look out on. When we hiked to it in 2014, it could have been better termed McAfee Knothing.
Even more impressive in their non-impressiveness were the Roan Mountains. Considered the best section of the AT south of the Mason-Dixon by a great many, the Roan Highlands were getting a bath when we visited in 2013. Instead of stunning views of mountains peaks in all directions, we had to be content with stunning views of soggy shrubs a solid fifty yards away.
The Smoky’s have accounted for a few memorable washouts. We visited the Jump Off, one of the most celebrated hikes in the Smoky Mountains, a few years back. We wished that we HAD jumped off this bandwagon. A more incredible array of clouds and sodden pine trees could not be imagined…we have no photos at all to show of this, it was so bad we did not even bother.
But even THAT pales in comparison to our visit to Andrews Bald and Clingman’s Dome a couple years earlier on a horrifically awful day that probably should have been condemned by the board of hiking health. This may be our worst hike ever. Alas, we did take pictures of that fiasco.
Washouts and being socked in are part of the hiking experience. Weather is beyond the control of the hiker, part of what makes the wild places wild, and the bad days do count too. Most die-hard hikers learn to do more than just endure the weather. Bad weather is an opportunity to test skills and abilities in less than ideal conditions, a thing every hiker must learn to do. Brian still looks back at a hike of New Hampshire’s Franconia Ridge in the late 1990’s, on a day when it would have been far more prudent to stay indoors, as one of the most important of his formative hiking career. Or he thinks back a hiker he met in Patagonia. Told the trail ahead was basically a stream, he merely laughed. “I love it!” He exclaimed.
But by the same token, there’s no question that in a pursuit where visual splendor is such a big part of the equation almost can’t fail to be a disappointment, one that might take months or years to do over. Brian and Sylvia have come to believe that the views are a big part of the experience, and hikes without views these days are generally speaking reserved only for training purposes.
Other things besides just the weather can get in the way of the viewing experience. For example…smog and haze. We have had several hikes in Great Smoky Mountain and Shenandoah NP that were far less than they could have been due to heavy pollution related haze in the area.
Also, crowds on the trail or on the summit areas can adversely affect one’s opinion of a hike. Our recent experience at the Laguna De Los Tres for example, where hundreds of people were milling about, definitely did detract from the experience. Lac Blanc on the Tour du Mont Blanc, or the South Rim of the Grand Canyon or the Garden of the Gods in Colorado were other experiences that we found much less enjoyable than they could have been simply because too many people were walking about, talking, shouting, or standing in front of the scenery trying to take selfies.
That’s why it’s important not to judge a place from one experience. One really must give a place more than a single visit to get the complete picture of it, especially if the first time didn’t pan out. Sometimes you need a do-over…a reboot, so to speak, this time under more favorable conditions. Better weather, clearer skies, less people. Sometimes, a reboot can make a real difference.
McAfee Knob and the Roan Mountains are two places that we need to revisit again in different conditions to experience them to their fullest. Both need a reboot. Perhaps once we have rebooted them, they will make their way onto our list of the Ten Best Hikes in the Southern Appalachians.
One thing bad weather teaches us is to appreciate the good. We plan on rebooting these hikes soon, and when we do, maybe they will be better off in our minds for the effort, and we will be better off for having seen them both ways.
