Date: 12/19/15
Distance: 14.1
On the drive home from Mt Sterling last night, I got a text telling me about a chance to hike Eagle Creek today. Eagle Creek is very difficult to get due to the transportation requirements and the large number of creek crossings. Winter isn't a great time to hike it, but I wasn't about to pass up the chance.
We met at 6:30AM at the Lead Cove trail where we left a car and then drove over the the Foothills parkway. Frank (JD's friend) was nice enough to drive us from there to Fontana marina where we boarded the boat about 8:45. Unfortunately the boat driver was confused and took us to Ollies Cove instead of Eagle Creek. We were freezing so we weren't paying much attention either. The temperatures were below freezing and the boat wasn't enclosed in any way. The driver reversed directions and delivered us to Eagle about 9:45. It was nice to get off of the boat.
We hike 0.5 miles down Lakeshore to the Eagle Creek Trail where we turned left. Eagle climbs all of the way to the AT in 8.7 miles. It also crosses the creek about 20 times and only one crossing has a bridge. The 1st crossing arrived much too quickly and we geared up for the day. I opted to wear an old pair of running shoes along with my wool socks. I think this actually worked pretty well. My feet didn't get near as beat up as when I didn't wear the socks, and my feet didn't really feel any colder. The water was COLD though. Each time I came out of the creek, my feet just ached and I walked funny for a few hundred feet. After about 18 crossings we arrived at campsite 97 were we crossed one last time and then we switched out of our water shoes as the climbing section was about to begin.
The climb over the last 2 miles was tough. It is one of the steepest sections of trail in the park. Eagle gained a total of 3200'. We finally arrived at Spence field about 3:00. After a short break, we headed the short distance down the AT to reach the Bote Mtn Trail. We hike 2.9 on Bote and then the final 1.8 on Lead Cove. Bote and Lead Cove are steep trails down the mountain, but by now we were ready to be done, so we moved fast arriving at the car about 5:00.
Long tough day, but it is nice to get Eagle marked off on map 2. With all of the creek crossings, I didn't get the phone out of the backpack and I failed to turn off the GPS when I got in the car, so no pics or gps tracks this time. See Eagle for some pictures and GPS data from a previous hike.
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