Mount Mitchell

After spending an entire day waiting for new brakes for the truck, we missed the windy/cold day for climbing a mountain and instead had great weather for our ascent up the trail to Mount Mitchell.  To the high point of North Carolina!  Asheville was a good base for climbing trails up various mountains.

John getting ready to roll:

Here comes the sun:

Another nice trail, more rhododendron companions:

OK, here's a new thing!  Ice hairs growing out of the mud...what?  Looks like the water was squeezed out of the muddy ground and then frozen in tiny parallel tendrils a couple inches long.  We spent a couple minutes marveling at this phenomenon.

This we named a "Sapsicle":

Icy trail in the upper part - a good place for the micro-spikes:

He don't need no stinkin' micro-spikes:

Lots of great views, this one from the powerline cut partway up:

And the obligatory view of the briers in the powerline cut, yeah I tried it briefly but decided to stick to the trail this time:

Pretty ice formations in the creek:

Trees growing on an overhanging rock:

Check out the interesting platform on top.  The park road was closed so we had the place to ourselves that day.

More good views in all directions:

Playing around with summit poses:

You can see the set that I picked for the highpoints page here:
http://www.kipley.com/marcy/highpoints/northcarolina.html

The other side of the ice-covered creek:

Not far down, no more ice:

One of John's favorite trail diversions - clearing brush and trees.  He couldn't resist working on this big one lying over part of the road:

Highpoint #21!