TTA Possum Creek

What a beautiful day for hiking. 26 degrees this morning. I met the Soddy Daisy and Plateau TTA  groups at the Heiss Mt Trailhead for Possum Creek on the CT. The plan was for the SD hikers to hike 2 hours in and then head back; the Plateua group was hiking to Imodium Falls and then back out.

 15 hikers started down the trail wearing layers, gloves, hats. The water was flowing deep in all the creeks after 9 days of rain. The rock houses and bluffs all had water falling down them, could have taken an icy shower. Big Possum Creek was beautiful. The climb up the other side was steep but the views from the top of the ridge were clear. Layers started coming off. The sun was warm. 3 of our hikers stopped by the creek and turned back. We kept going. We got a phone call that one of those hikers was misplaced so two more turned back to help find the missing one. After word of this got up the trail 2 more turned back to help with finding the hiker. We were down to 8 hikers. We kept going. We hiked to Imodium falls to have lunch. The falls had more water coming over than any of us had ever seen.  According to the hike description from the CT we were 5.6 miles in. 4 of our hikers decided to hike out to the logging road for a shortcut to Retro Hughes Rd. Now down to 4 hikers, we started back to the trailhead. Were were moving on down the trail, stopping on the climbs to let the old heartrate slow down a bit. We met a hiker coming in; Firefighter from Chattanooga, new to the area, moved here from Miami. He said he had been looking on the CTC site and was hoping to do some volunteer work on the trail. We gave him some info and hiked on. Met up with a lady hiker going the same way we were. Found that she was also in the TTA  from Memphis and a seasonal interpretive Ranger Deena.

The other group had located their hiker, who had started back up the trail thinking the others had already started ahead of him. All was good.

We made it back to the trailhead in good time and the three guys headed toward Retro Hughes Road to pick up the ladies and I headed home.  11.2 miles. Woo hoo!

Pictures: