Scaly Mountain Hike

Saturday I went on a hike in Scaly Mountain, NC with the Atlanta Outdoor Club (AOC). Scaly Mountain is about 1.5 hr drive NE of Atlanta, just inside NC. The weather was beautiful, we seriously could not have asked for a better day for hiking. The hike was composed of two separate hikes a 3.5 mile loop and a 4 mile hike to the summit of Scaly Mtn.

We did the 3.5 mile loop first, this part was mostly going down in the beginning and then up to get back to where we started. There were many little streams of running water, most of which had ice in them or on them. The coolest one was this little waterfall that was mostly frozen:

We had a couple bridge crossings and stream crossings on this part of the hike, but we did not have to cross any frozen water.

The hike to the summit of the mountain was an ascent of 1000 feet in about 2 miles, it was fairly steep most of the way up. Thankfully there were many switchbacks, lol!!! Up towards the top of the mountain is usually muddy/wet, this was really cool because we have had some pretty cold weather lately, which means the mud/water was ICE!! Thankfully my clumsiness subsided for the ice patches & I did not fall :)

Just to give you an idea, this picture was taken from the parking lot where we started our hike to the top of Scaly Mountain. The top is where we were headed! (On a side note, check out the BLUE sky, completely unaltered picture, it doesn't get any better than that!!!)

The view from the top of the mountain was amazing!!!

What goes up, must come down!! So we had the same steep climb on the way back, we were just leaning the opposite direction, lol! I was slightly concerned about the descent, just because I knew how steep the climb up had been. Again my clumsiness subsided for the hike back down, however my prone-ness to injuries did not :) I made it ALL the way back to the bottom, I could see the cars, the only part of the mountain I had left were some uneven stairs (again, was praying to not bust my butt) I was going down the stairs, stepped on a very shallow step and had to grab on to the hand rail (which was just cut 2X4s or 4X4s) and pulled my hand away with TWO splinters in my thumb. It was by far the coolest splinters I have ever had! One came out as I moved my hand, the second one was completely imbedded in my thumb, it was cool! I managed to dig the big one out (it was seriously about an inch long). I had to use a safety pin to cut my skin so we could pull the splinter out. Where is my grandpa when I need him ;0) Here is a picture of my thumb, post splinter removal, the splinter is in the picture too, but its a little hard to see (its to the left of my thumb, in the tweezers).