On a whim we decided to do an overnight hike into the Smokies to the top of Clingman's Dome. There are no short trails up to it, except the summit road that is closed to cars in the winter, and we wanted to climb from the bottom so we were committed to quite a few miles. We parked at Deep Creek ranger station and headed up the Noland Divide Trail. A couple of the little ridges were quite interesting, especially not being about to see down either side at night.

There was snow on the trail in the last 3 miles, but no ice. The road at the top had a little ice that was easy to avoid, and there was quite a bit of wind blowing us around on the sidewalk to the summit. We did the best we could with the nighttime photos, but they don't do justice to the experience of being alone at the top of the "flying saucer" in the wind in the dark. Photo #1 is me "clinging to my man." Photo #4 was an attempt at backlighting that might have worked better if I had remembered to turn my headlamp off.

We did think it was pretty funny that we drove and walked through North Carolina all day in order to come out at the very top of Tennessee. Somewhere around a marathon worth of miles, 9.5 hours up and down.

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