Post-900 Hike #162: Noisy Creek 0.4 mi., Old Settlers ~8.5 mi

I picked up Cecil Rowe at 0700 and we proceeded to Sevierville where we met Bob Bolinger at 0745 and proceeded in his SUV to the 0830 meet-up on U.S. 321 East of Gatlinburg with those who for the most part do their hikes with the Tom Wainer-Bill Broome Sub-Group of our Margaret Stevenson Wednesday Hiking group. (I last hiked with this group on 11/9/11 when we did Curry Mtn, Meigs Mtn,& Meigs Creek.) Rather than doing a key-swap, vehicles were shuttled to the ending point in Greenbrier and all 12 of us started the hike at Noisy Creek at 0915 ~0.4 mi. of our starting point on Old Settlers Trail (latter was ~8 mi. West of this trail's Eastern trail head at its Madron Bald junction).

The Noisy Creek manway has deteriorated since I last did it for the creek has overtaken part of its route; if I were to do this hike again, I would go to the ridge on the right which would lead would also lead to the Old Settlers Trail. Shortly after we started we in essence were split into two groups, for some of us wished to move at a slightly faster pace. Although we had ~7 stream crossings, none required water shoes.

At 11:45 we stopped for lunch; it was at this point that I realized that my GPS batteries died out 3.5-4 mi. into the hike. After we ate we waited for the rest of our group and I then took the first picture.



Those of us who had finished our lunch went on and our subgroup finished the hike at 1400. My Omron pedometer registered ~9 mi. (19,919 steps with 16,817 being aerobic, 715 kcal burned); the post-lunch GPS data indicated that we traveled 4.27 mi., with a moving average speed of 3.0 mph (we could move on the post-lunch part because it was basically down with only one stream crossing).

When we finished (road to Ramsay Cascades trail) I took the picture of Peter Lloyd to show his unique trekking poles; 8-days ago I had given a presentation at Wilderness Wildlife Week and one segment of my presentation was on Trekking Poles. I was only able to show a poor picture of this design which is unique in that it has two handgrips; this permits, for example, using the upper grip for downs and lower grip for level trails without having to adjust pole length.



On our return trip to the other vehicles, Tom Wainner and I volunteered to ride in in the bed of a 5-passenger pick-up over a few miles of rough park roads to the other vehicles. Because we have sons that went to high school and church together, we were able to "shorten" the trip by relating issues of their respective lives.