Summiting Cowrock Mountain on the Appalachian Trail from Tesnatee Gap

About 5 years ago my first experience on the Appalachian Trail was a little hike at Tesnatee Gap. My wife (girlfriend at the time) Meagan and I pulled off of the Richard B. Russell Scenic Highway to take a look and I was excited to hike a little on the AT. It was a bit arduous and we only went a little bit in as we were travelling.

This past Friday afternoon I wanted to go to the Tesnatee trailhead. I didn't realize that was where we had gone 5 years ago but I thought it looked familiar on the map. Meagan came with me again but she was not really wearing appropriate footwear. The hike at Tesnatee is pretty arduous, with some very steep ascents at the beginning and then for most of the second half of the hike up to Cowrock Mountain.

We were slogging up that second half when Meagan decided she was done and so I decided to quickly get up to the summit which I figured was close before we left. I kind of jogged up the rest of the way to the top which ended up being another four or five steep switchbacks up! I was exhausted by the time I reached the top, having also brought my 4x5 camera and kit, but I was treated to a phenomenal view and a fortuitous storm cloud passing by just as I reached the peak.

I quickly pulled my 4x5 out and a 150mm lens and snapped several photos. I used an R25 filter and a 2-stop GND filter on the lens. with T-Max 100 film dev'd in FX-39. Here was the view (cropped square):

I was lucky to grab this shot at just the right time. The cloud was too far to the left pretty soon after. Also, the negative is not the best. My FX-39 developer had apparently oxidized and started to fail. The negative is really thin and underdeveloped due to this but I was able to salvage the negative scan here. I've been researching some intensification methods to see if I can get the negative to a more usable state to print in the darkroom. If not this may be a situation where I actually get a digital negative made up to print it properly because I love this shot. We'll see.

Cowrock mountain is definitely somewhere I'd like to try camping. The sun will rise somewhere in this view in the morning I believe. Off in the distance you can see the famous bare face of Mt. Yonah. There's a couple other prominences on Cowrock that I will have to find another day.