A hurricane of high wind and blowing snow and tree limbs blasts the mountainside (and us) as the chopper lifts off to carry the injured hiker to a hospital in Knoxville.

The lucky hiker (from Germany) was released from the hospital the following day.

By the way, the pilot of the Lifestar helicopter deserves kudos for his skill at setting the chopper down under very difficult circumstances. Even though we had tried to clear out sufficient space on the pad for the chopper to land, we greatly underestimated the size of the craft. Luckily, the wheels just happened to line up with the spots that we had packed down while walking around the pad.

There are a few lessons to learn from the experience. For one, the hiker was hiking alone, on an extremely dangerous trail that was covered for much of its length in a thick sheet of ice, he wasn't wearing crampons, and it's probably safe to say that if he'd fallen in a lesser-traveled region of the Smokies, he may have died. Having said that, he could have also died in the heavy traffic clogging the streets of Gatlinburg. We make our choices, and live (or not) with the results. If nothing else, he will have one hell of a story to share when he returns to Deutchland.