Date:   October 6, 2023 at 10:58:12 AM EDT
Weather:    66°F Mostly Cloudy
Location:   Wolf Ridge Trail, Almond, North Carolina, United States

GSMNP – Twenty mile – Gregory Bald 

Day 1 – Uphill to Gregory Bald

We started this morning from our campsite. We basically car camped last night at Abrams Creek campsite. This morning was good. I made some coffee had some breakfast and we packed up the camp.

We got on the road and started towards 20 mile ranger station. On the car ride over James asked me if I’ve ever done tail of the dragon, it’s a particularly difficult roadway in mountains area that has lots of hair pins. He was telling me about it and there would be photographers on it, and how lots of people like to be on it and race, their cars and motorcycles. While we were on this road, while he was talking about it, we saw several photography tents set up. It turned out we were indeed on the dragon tail! We weaved our way over to 20 mile

We start up the trail knowing that we had a full day of uphill climb, we had 7 miles to do in 6 1/2 of them were uphill. We had to do over 3000 feet in just under 7 miles! The first 2 miles were pretty nice we went over lots of bridges going over streams.

The next 4 miles the uphill climb got steeper, while it was difficult it was still manageable. Lots of switchbacks, but the trail was well-maintained, and for the most part, the terrain on the trail was relatively flat and not cambered to one side or the other.

Met group of people on the way up who started at the same place that we did. Obviously our paces were a little different. We finally arrived at the campsite just shy of Gregory bald. Once there, we ran into the remainder of the group that was going up the same way we were.

We set up camp, and almost as soon as we got done getting tents pitched, and our items put in again to drizzle. The rain never settled down. It went away and came back and drizzled the entire time. At one point we thought it had died down to manageable level where we could cook food, but it came back. We spoke to the group that arrived at the same time that we did And they told us about their annual trip and how they packed in fireplace logs and we’re gonna start a fire regardless of the rain. He invited us over if they were able to get the fire started.

James and I saw their fire get started and walked over. We ended up grabbing our chairs and sitting with them for about an hour or so in the rain, at one point, the rain got much heavier, and we had to retreat to our tents. And this is where I leave the evening.