The Great Smoky Mountains in 5 Days

Fontana Dam to Standing Bear Hostel - 5 days and 75 miles (71 in the park)

The biggest struggle we had through the journey was the weather - below freezing every night, raining and cloudy most of the days.  Shelters were packed, everything was wet, I would have given anything to be warm and dry.

Hardship aside, we pushed on and averaged 15 miles a day through the park!  (recommended is 10-15, so we went over this by a bit). The views we did find were absolutely stunning.

Day 1 - from Shuckstack Mountain, in the rain

Day 2 - everything was frozen

Day 3 - Summit Clingman's and Collin's!

After a lot of confusion with our resupply, and almost having to drop a night and go into Gatlinburg, an absolutely wonderful woman named Calyn was nice enough to drive the package from NOC up to us at Newfound gap --  thank you thank you thank you to her for being such an awesome person!

The resupply completely filled my (empty) pack -

Day 4 - Rain rain, go away!

I'm calling it the Appalachian River.  This is no trail.

We did get some good views from Charlies Bunion

Day 5 - And we're out!

The view from Mount Cammer Lookout

Victory!

This one after the park was pretty good, just before we got to the hostel (note the blazes) -

Onward towards Hot Springs!!