Tricky Landing

We are starting out with another dreary day. We are in the fog with a light drizzle. That description would describe yesterday as well. We did have times of heavy rain. Remember folks, when you are hiking in wet conditions, be extremely careful. The ground is slick. It is not the best day to attempt to make your fastest time up the mountain. I say this because we have had a couple injuries over the past couple of days, due to the wet conditions. We had to fly one person off with a broken ankle. That is not the way you want to spend your day, waiting on the skies to clear so the helicopter can make its way to the mountain. We were lucky and had an hour window between 4 and 5 p.m. The other way down would have been a slow and painful ride off on horse back. The guest was an excellent patient and the Park Rangers hiked up and took great care of him.

The helicopter made several passes assessing the wind around the mountain.

The high yesterday was 60º with a low of 52º. The rain kept it a little chilly up top. The wind was blowing a bit. That made it a bit tricky for the helicopter. It was interesting to watch as the helicopter flew around the mountain to try and assess the weather pattern. For those of us on the ground, we were not sure why it was taking them so long to land. The pilot said the clouds were causing some pockets of wind that we could not tell from where we were. I have much respect for those brave folks who fly those helicopters. I am sure the wind currents through the Smokies are pretty tricky.

Someone yesterday asked about the photographs on the blog. For the past several months, the photos have been taken with my phone. I have been experimenting with close up shots trying to see how much detail I could get with the camera on my smart phone. I do have a professional SLR camera, but I have not used it in a while. The macros you have been viewing are from my phone.