My most interesting hike is two: on my longest hike going up to Thunderhead in the Smoky Mountains, my friend and I came across a doe on Bote Mountain Trail. We had no choice but to follow it from a distance and it became very suspicious of us. After about half an hour it hopped into the trees and once we passed it, it started to follow us! It followed us for a good 1.5 miles or so until we came to a trail crossing where it went down to a watering hole. We figured it was used to humans and wanted some food from us. Of course we didn't obliged to her.
The other was my previous hike. It was my first solo hike ever and it was 21 or so miles in Tremont in the Smoky Mountains. I had never hiked that much in the snow, but it was the first snow of the season. It was predicted to snow above 3000 feet and most of my planned trail was under that (maybe 2 or 3 hours above it). Well, they were wrong
I came across snow within an hour. It was fine until I reached Meigs Creek Trail, which I failed to look up and find out it has 18 creek crossings that are dangerous when swollen (and with melting snow, they were). I had several dangerous crossings, then I came to Jakes Creek where I gained I believe 2000 feet in 2.9 miles, in sleet and about 4 inches of snow. Which, I was unprepared for hence my tennis shoes I was wearing. At one point I had to change my socks and there was no place to sit, so leaning against a tree I went to put my shoe back on only to have it slip out of my hand and fall off the edge, getting caught on a branch about 10 feet down. I eventually said "screw it" and monkey crawled down, threw it back up and scrambled back up. At this point I felt pretty miserable. Once I got to the peak of my hike, I had to go down a horse trail with fresh powder snow, mud and leaves. Once I got to the end, I had a large stream crossing that was swollen, water up to my knees, no rock hopping available. Needless to say, it was a challenging hike, my most miserable yet, but I learned a lot of lessons in being prepared for
anything.