Mt Cammerer (GSMNP)

wsp_scott

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Mt Cammerer
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
12/17 - 12/19/18 (2 nights)

Big Creek is a great way to hike 6ish miles and gain ~1000' of elevation. I love hiking next to a raging Smokies creek


Mouse Creek Falls across Big Creek


There was a patch of smooth water that was catching the light off the trees above that I spent time trying to photograph, this was the closest I came to capturing the light.






Then up to the AT and a nice ridge walk on a gorgeous day


Mt Cammerer Fire Lookout high on the ridge


Waiting for sunset, I spent a little time reading the graffiti. I don't understand why people and especially AT thru-hikers feel the need to leave there mark everywhere they go, but all the AT shelters are covered with this crap.

Quoting Edward Abbey in graffiti seems a just a little bit wrong, especially this quote "I promise you this, we will outlive the bastards"


Troop 65 from Morgantown WV needs a little bit of Leave No Trace training.


And snapchat user ilynnstevens just plain sucks


The beautiful sunset reset my mood after the stupid graffiti




Almost full moon over the fire lookout


Amazing sunrise the next morning




Interesting group of pine cones


A couple nights in the Smokies was a great way to get ready for holiday chaos
 
Gorgeous photos! Especially that sunset shot. I'm with you on the graffiti. But hey, always better to find it on man-made structures in the woods like shelters, than on trees and rocks. Putting up social media usernames takes it up another level though. Some people are just starved for attention I guess and constantly crave it. There's an old shelter/shack at the top of a popular mountain by my home that gets plastered by graffiti every year by thousands of hikers. Since it's become a community bulletin board of sorts up there, I did take the opportunity once to throw up a BCP sticker on the inside of the roof. :whistle:

But yeah...no real sense or good purpose fo plastering names and quotes over things like that, especially when there is a summit log/register at the same location can be signed.
 
Beautiful photos! Thanks for sharing.
It’s fantastic to get a break from the holiday chaos. This year we escaped it entirely- we hiked every day throughout it. It’s much more fun, when you have younger kids around, like you do!
Did you give them any hiking / backpacking related Christmas gifts?
 
My oldest (just turned 10 on 12/24) has been asking for a pocket knife, so I got her a Swiss Army Knife (Tinker) and a book about whittling. Other than that, no outdoor related gifts, but we are already making plans for this summer.
 
Gorgeous photos! Thank you for sharing!

I don't understand the point of vandalizing structures or nature. However, when I do see it, I imagine it will be studied far in the future; like how we study pictographs now. Maybe pictographs were all drawn by attention needy teens from tribes. LOL
 
NICE! We've backpacked a lot in and around that area, but haven't yet been to Cammerer nor to that section of Big Creek downstream of the Swallow Fork / Low Gap turnoffs. My wife, looking over my shoulder, commanded me to go to your blogsite and find out your camera settings on the Mt. Cammerer pics....
 
NICE! We've backpacked a lot in and around that area, but haven't yet been to Cammerer nor to that section of Big Creek downstream of the Swallow Fork / Low Gap turnoffs. My wife, looking over my shoulder, commanded me to go to your blogsite and find out your camera settings on the Mt. Cammerer pics....

I had never been on that section of Big Creek either and it had been 3 or 4 years since I had hiked Big Creek at all. I've been wanting to check out the fire lookout for a while, but I save the popular parts of the park for winter when there are fewer people around, still saw 8-10 people on the AT though.

All the photos are with a Sony A7ii, the sunset photos were handheld with a Laowa 15mm, the sunrise with the Sony 24-105 zoom (handheld). In other words, nothing special from a photo point of view other than a full frame camera and a couple nice lens. Hope that helps.
 
Thanks for the photog info!

Yeah, the GSM has many truly amazing areas, but timing it so that you miss people takes some planning skillz. My wife hates the AT shelters, so it's a challenge to come up with a route that skips over them. We've had some great winter trips there, including one 5-day route where we saw only 1 other person. (Although, the fact that they had closed the park and locked the gates due to a massive snowstorm while we were out might have accounted for the few people --er, person-- we saw...)
 
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