Our first bitterly cold morning of hiking on Wednesday and 18 hiking fools...excuse me..hiking lovers met at the Bi-Lo parking lot at the foot of Signal Mountain, divided up in cars, and headed for Suck Creek. Wintry clouds held the reigns over the skies while we parked and started up the road on near freezing pavement that kept our pace quick and light. Soon, we were hopping over the metal guardrail and headed down to the bridge that carried us over rushing water swelled with rain from the previous day.
Then, it was a moderate climb up the gorge with the trail through the middle of a rocky bed. (Most of us remembered the climb down this bed back last winter....surprisingly, it seemed worse going down than up!)
The speedy trio, Richard, Stormy, and Pete, waited on the bluff for the rest of us and then we were off again. Winding in and around the trail that took us down and around to another gorge where we crossed the swinging bridge spanning another portion of Suck Creek. Here a few rested while others headed on up to Mushroom Rock to add a bit more distance to the hike.
The Chronicler, Arlene, Gary, and Monty were headed up when they met the trio headed back down (having already touched Mushroom Rock). After reaching the Mushroom Rock, we took a break and then were joined by Trish. On the way down, we passed Bill making his trek up!
Rejoining those waiting at the swinging bridge, we left by two's and three's and backtracked over to the bridge by Suck Creek and waited until we were a group again. The air still had a bite, but we were blessed by blue sky as we made our way back across the rushing water on to our cars. We all met up at Merv's for lunch. It took some doing but we all eventually had lunch!
