Bryant completes tour of Smokies

Bryant completes ‘tour’ of Smokies’ trails

Twenty-one years and 1,700 miles later, you’d think that Gay Bryant might finally take a break from hiking.

You’d be wrong.

Bryant, an associate professor of Web Technology in the new Media Technologies program, has completed one major goal of her near-lifelong love affair with hiking. She has hiked every mile of officially named trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

But she has not finished hiking.

“I think it’s in my blood,” she said. “I just need to be out there. It’s almost like a worship experience for me.”

Back in 1984, Bryant, then in her late 30s, decided to explore all the trails that wind through the park in East Tennessee and western North Carolina, so she and her husband and children began hiking them.

“I just love the Smokies. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, and it’s a relatively safe place,” she said. “The National Park Service does a lot there to make it safe without many resources.”

Over the next two decades, Bryant went back and forth, east and west, north and south, and walked all the paths in the park. Her circuit-ending hike was September 23-24, when she went about 20 miles in the Anthony Creek-Russell Field area, toward the Twentymile ranger station in the southeast corner of the park.

The trails that wind through Great Smoky Mountains National Park vary by length, grade, elevation and degree of difficulty. One trail is 22 miles long, for instance, and the trail to Clingman’s Dome rises to more than 6,600 feet.

Bryant says the total mileage of all the named trails is about 900; because some trails overlap, she covered almost twice that—1,700.1 miles to be exact.

Her feet can attest to that total.

“Blisters? Yes, I get them. For me, after mile 2 on any hike, every step is agony, even with all the advances in shoe technology,” she said. “I always try to relieve my agony by soaking my feet in a creek.”

She says every hike (which she keeps track of on a computer spreadsheet) has its own story. Some are funny; some are inspiring; at least one was harrowing.

In April 1998, she was hiking by herself in the Deep Creek area on the North Carolina side of the park. It was on a spring break, so she had planned a weeklong backpacking trip.

During the course of the hike, she came to a camping spot and hung her food in a tree. Rain started falling and fell the rest of the day and overnight. She continued the hike the next morning, toward where her car was parked, and looked for a log footbridge that was marked in local hikers’ guides as spanning the creek.

The bridge had been washed downstream during winter rains, however, so she decided to ford the creek. .

“The creek had swelled from all the rain, and I was washed downstream. I tried to grab brush and tree limbs at the edge of the rushing water, with no success. I must have stayed in the water about 30 minutes.

“Of course, I was concerned about getting out, and I was concerned about knowing where I was when I did,” she said. “I finally got hung up on a boulder in the creek, and I was able to cut my fanny pack and backpack straps loose. Then I was able to wade to the shore.”

Almost by a miracle, the trail she sought was right next to where she waded out of the creek.

“I had tied my boots around my neck and walked barefoot for a while, and I was met by two brothers, who helped me get out. We walked about three miles, then we met up with some rangers who helped us get to the ranger station.

“That was the last time I hiked by myself,” she said.

Bryant has been a member of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club since 1987. Her husband eventually gave up his spot on the hikes; now only one daughter occasionally accompanies Bryant these days, though Bryant always hikes with at least one other companion.

Bryant says she hikes year-round. In fact, she prefers winter hikes in the park to all other seasons. She sometimes takes a digital camera to photograph scenes and flowers, and she always watches for wildlife. She says she has observed many bears, but she has seen only two rattlesnakes.

“I saw a coyote for the first time on the September hike,” said Bryant, a 20-year veteran of the Pellissippi State faculty.

Bryant has tips for anyone thinking of taking on this kind of hiking challenge. The first, and most important, is to be rested and stay hydrated. This helps the hiker use good judgment in the backcountry. Second, buy hiking poles.

“And get the best gear you can afford,” she said, but not so much that it weighs you down. For future hikes, Bryant will be taking the latest in tent technology—a tent that weighs only about four pounds.

As Bryant looks for new hiking opportunities, she says she would like to hike more in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and along the Blue Ridge Parkway during the next year. She does not intend to hike the entire Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, though she already has hiked part of the trail from Georgia to Damascus, Virginia.

Meanwhile, she feels a sense of accomplishment for her walks in the Smokies.

“It was all worth it. I don’t think I would have hiked as much if I did not have this goal. But it was kind of like childbirth—you think you won’t ever do it again, but a week later, you are ready to go.”

"Inside Pellissippi" is a bi-monthly electronic publication produced by the Community Relations Office for the faculty and staff of Pellissippi State Technical Community College, 10915 Hardin Valley Road, P.O. Box 22990, Knoxville, Tennessee 37933-0990. All suggestions and comments should be sent to Julia Wood (jwood@pstcc.edu).

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