Post-900 Hike 160: Bullhead & Rainbow Falls

It rained Wed. and most if not all of the Margaret Stevenson Wednesday Hiker group's hikes were cancelled. After my presentation WWW this past Tues. Bob Bolinger, BZ Lane, and I briefly talked about doing a hike; Bob called on Thurs. eve about hiking out of the Gatlinburg area because weather had already closed US 441. I met Bob at our usual meet-up site in Sevierville; Bob then drove to BZ's home in Gatlinburg which is very close to several trail heads. We decided to do the Bull Head--Rainbow Falls Loop (without the trip to LeConte).

We left from the Rainbow Falls parking lot ~0920. First we did the 0.4 mi. on Old Sugarlands Trail that took us the Bull Head trail head; it was cold. Although there was not much more than a trace of snow as we left, of course with altitude gain snow increased proportionately.

The snow on the trees was beautiful; although I forgot my camera, Bob forwarded me some pictures. Since he is in essence a professional photographer, it's a benefit to the viewer. The first picture is about 2 mi. into Bull Head; the second one is of "The Pulpit" with BZ presiding (~2.4 mi. up).





The next two pictures were also taken on Bull Head; the trail really offers some great views and Bob (the photographer for this blog) really knows how to capture them. In the first of these two pictures BZ is on the left and I'm on the right; in the second one I am on the left in the foreground and BZ is on the right up a bit.





Bull Head (almost 6 mi. in length) became quite a slog in its last two mi. (3,500' gain overall and all basically "up"); we lunched 0.5-1.0 mi. prior to its junction with the 6.7 Rainbow Falls trail. It was here that Bob and I donned our Stabilicer Ice Cleats. Not sure what happened, but when we finished Bull Head my GPS registered ~2 mi. more than it should have; thus I deleted its data in hopes that I would get a correct reading for Rainbow Falls. Although the latter trail basically descended (i.e., 2,880'), it has many rocks in it and is not very much fun. Of course snow waned as we descended; however, there were still slick spots and despite this, ice cleats were contraindicated for the lower half. Although we did not see anyone on Bull Head, on Rainbow falls there were 2-3 groups going to the LeConte shelter and one said he was going to the Lodge (it's closed in Winter?). Below the falls we met a few tourists; they did not seem sure where they were going.

When we arrived at the Parking lot my GPS trip odometer registered 5.5 mi. (the map indicates 6.0 mi.) with a moving average of 2.4 m.p.h.