This happened on the trail to Spruce Flats Falls, one of many beautiful waterfalls in the Smoky Mtns. I’ve hiked over 25 miles of trails in the Smokies over the last two years and I hiked this trail last year. It is the roughest trail I have hiked out there and I named it the goat trail. It’s around 2.5 miles round trip and the only trail I’ve seen bears on.
This was the first trip to the Smokies for my daughter, granddaughter, and S-I-L and I was playing guide. At one point you go down a turn just before getting to the falls and you step, step, step down and curve left around the ridge. It had rained the night before and the trail was slick in spots. My daughter went to the left side and I stepped down to the right. My left heel caught a root and when I stepped on down the next step was slick and threw me forward. I jammed my walking pole down to catch my balance and it sank in the soft dirt at the trail edge and I started falling toward the trail edge. I grabbed a Spruce tree with my left arm to catch myself but my backpack weight flipped me on over the edge. I was about a 45 degree slope and I lit on my back. My pole was stuck in the ground and that stopped me from sliding on down the hill. I had barely stopped when my S-I-L landed next to me to stop me from going on down the hill.
We got back on the trail and I was cleaning the dirt off and trying to figure out why my ankle was burning when my granddaughter pointed at my arm and said “that doesn’t look right”. And it didn’t look anywhere near right. She then asked if we needed to go back and I told her no because the falls were just around the corner about 200 yards away. I’ll post some pictures of the trail and the falls soon.
When we got back to the car we went to an urgent care and they referred me to an orthopedic urgent care unit where they took an x-ray and made an appointment for an MRI at the hospital in Knoxville. They burned the image to a disk to bring home and put me in a sling. We still had three days to explore and I didn’t want to cut the trip short for my kids. On the rest of the hikes I heard a couple of comments of ‘must be pretty a tough guy to hike these trail with your arm in a sling’. But like I said before, my arm never really hurt. I was just careful not to damage it further.
All in all it was a fun trip with my family. I was just wishing my youngest daughter and her husband had been along but the are currently living in Montana.
