The third day of my Wilderness Wildlife Week was this very cold, single digit, hike up Cove Mountain and down Laurel Falls trails. Starting at Sugarlands Visitor Center, we follow an old road up along the boundary of the park. Gatlinburg butts up to the boundary. Some homes were built trailside. One in particular was wonderfully created to blend with the landscape but others were standard issue vacation homes built without regard to the surroundings. We also passed the upper end of Gatlinburg's Ski Mountain ski resort. I had no idea snow making machines were so loud. Are they jet engines?
The trail eventually parallels the access road to Cove Mountain's fire tower. The tower has been converted to a weather station, weather data collection site. Data from the tower is sent to locales across the country for analysis. We stopped here for lunch. I was glad to get moving again as it was quite cold to sit still and eat. Many water bottles froze. For some reason, the wide mouth nalgene bottles want to freeze across the opening.
The hike down past Laurel Falls is through very picturesque forest. We met no one on the trail until the falls. From there to the road is a paved trail and the most walked trail in the park.
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