As a fairly recent transplant to the South, I'm still adjusting to the lack of a winter. One way to ease the withdrawal is to drive the 4 hours from Charleston up to the mountains of North Carolina. This weekend some friends and I took a trip up to the Shining Rock Wilderness. The idea behind the trip was that we were going to get a great view of the Leonid Meteor Shower. Of course, that meant it was overcast most of the trip, but it still was a great time, and we got something we didn't expect to see quite this early in the year: SNOW!
Overall it was a fairly low key trip, but it was a great warmup trip for some further winter hiking ambitions we have. The hike out in the morning was absolutely beautiful. The wind blew pretty hard all night, and made for some interesting snow coverage patterns. No meteors, but I didn't hear any complaints.
My pictures are up on Flickr, and if you want more pictures, Mark also posted his.
