eevy24012
Clingmans Dome
This commenced the 3rd day of our trip and it was far and away the most physically demanding. The reason we had come to the Smokies was for our backcountry reservations this night, to be up on Gregory Bald for the azalea. They open the Cades Cove road so late where we would need the access there would be no hurry getting to that side of the park. We had spent the night in Cherokee at a hotel, and got up really early in order to see the sunrise at Clingmans Dome, the highpoint of the Smokies and 3rd highest in all the Appalachians.
I'm glad that Darren was so enthusiastic about getting up really early to make all of these sunrises cause I was feeling like crap most mornings from lack of sleep...no way I'd have made them all. I knew there was a really good chance that this mountain would be shrouded in a total fog-out as so often seems to be the case here, but did have a Plan B for that scenario as well so the drive up wouldn't be a total waste of time. We were the first up to the observation tower, quickly followed by a couple from Chicago that looked fairly miserable from the cold, wet wind. We had our set-up aimed eastward though we could see nothing but fog. Fortunately, there was a break in the clouds that lasted no more than a minute where we were able to snap off a few exposures. After that the fog only increased so we put the Plan B into action.
We headed back down to the parking lot and accessed a trail that leads over to the nearby Andrews Bald to see their renowned Flame Azalea in the foggy conditions. We had already done a mile of very steep up and down to the observation tower, this hike was 1.8 miles out to the bald, the same coming back....nothing like almost 5 miles of hiking early in the morning all on an empty stomach! The azalea were in peak form though and we got many great shots there and I'll post some later. After there we moved down the mountain to the Chimneys picnic area to make breakfast from our mobile kitchen. This was all the easy part of the day since later we would be carrying our heavy overnight packs up to Gregory Bald. Who said landscape photography was going to be easy?
This photo has a LOT of flaws, so much so that I actually just started over from the beginning. Any exposure adjustments, that were needed since the trees were too dark, led to the lines in the fog showing up in processing. I read many tutorials on how to get rid of them and tried a few tools, but nothing worked. I like the abstract look of the scene and colors though so just went ahead and posted it, hopefully do a better job later at some point.
Clingmans Dome
This commenced the 3rd day of our trip and it was far and away the most physically demanding. The reason we had come to the Smokies was for our backcountry reservations this night, to be up on Gregory Bald for the azalea. They open the Cades Cove road so late where we would need the access there would be no hurry getting to that side of the park. We had spent the night in Cherokee at a hotel, and got up really early in order to see the sunrise at Clingmans Dome, the highpoint of the Smokies and 3rd highest in all the Appalachians.
I'm glad that Darren was so enthusiastic about getting up really early to make all of these sunrises cause I was feeling like crap most mornings from lack of sleep...no way I'd have made them all. I knew there was a really good chance that this mountain would be shrouded in a total fog-out as so often seems to be the case here, but did have a Plan B for that scenario as well so the drive up wouldn't be a total waste of time. We were the first up to the observation tower, quickly followed by a couple from Chicago that looked fairly miserable from the cold, wet wind. We had our set-up aimed eastward though we could see nothing but fog. Fortunately, there was a break in the clouds that lasted no more than a minute where we were able to snap off a few exposures. After that the fog only increased so we put the Plan B into action.
We headed back down to the parking lot and accessed a trail that leads over to the nearby Andrews Bald to see their renowned Flame Azalea in the foggy conditions. We had already done a mile of very steep up and down to the observation tower, this hike was 1.8 miles out to the bald, the same coming back....nothing like almost 5 miles of hiking early in the morning all on an empty stomach! The azalea were in peak form though and we got many great shots there and I'll post some later. After there we moved down the mountain to the Chimneys picnic area to make breakfast from our mobile kitchen. This was all the easy part of the day since later we would be carrying our heavy overnight packs up to Gregory Bald. Who said landscape photography was going to be easy?
This photo has a LOT of flaws, so much so that I actually just started over from the beginning. Any exposure adjustments, that were needed since the trees were too dark, led to the lines in the fog showing up in processing. I read many tutorials on how to get rid of them and tried a few tools, but nothing worked. I like the abstract look of the scene and colors though so just went ahead and posted it, hopefully do a better job later at some point.