Having heard all the awesome stories of backpacking in the smokies over the years I finally decided to take a trip about 4 years ago. Challenging, memorable, and all out fun is all I can say about the trips we have taken. At first I had no gear of my own, but was completely outfitted on my first trip. Since then I think I am considered a veteran at backpacking and own all of my own gear. I have been back many times since. It is always and adventure and no trip is the same as the last. I feel lucky to have seen the stuff I have seen in the mountains, but not just experiencing it as a tourist, from a car or tour bus. I have gotten to experience the mountains the way you are supposed to, by hiking, backpacking and living off the land. If you want to challenge yourself physically and mentally and want to experience something that most people on this planet never get to, you should give it a try. You will not regret the choice to book a trip!
-Mike Burkett

I went on the Firefly trek last month, and it was a truly awe inspiring experience. Having not gone on a hiking trip in many years, I was afraid I was too out of shape to really enjoy myself. It was quite the opposite! Although challenging, I was amazed that the experience was so incredibly enjoyable. The firefly show was so fantastic - words cannot do it justice. A thousand fireflies blinking like crazy christmas lights, twinkling madly - so bright it lit up the ground around us!!
Another thing I found awesome was the beautiful vistas - the water flowing and cascading over many rocks, babbling throughout the entire trip. The smell of the mountain air was exhilarating - the freshest air ever experienced! Also, seeing wild turkeys, coyotes, and deer was cool, as well.
I am hooked!! I cannot wait to go on my next trek!
-John Monoson

Went on the Beartooth trip this year, and wanted to give a quick testimonial about how wonderful the trip was.

So, we went to Montana this summer to do the "beaten path" -- actually going up from Rosebud to Fossil Lake and then back down. I really did not know what to expect.. seeing mountains in pictures is always beautiful, but seeing them in person, and hiking through them is something I haven't done. I have done another trip with Rob to the Smokies a few years ago, and that was excellent, but the Smokies are really mountains that have trees and not like the majestic mountains in the West.

At any rate, the trip started in Rosebud, and the first day was very tough.. actually tougher than I expected. We hiked through to Rainbow Lake through some canyons, and the views were spectacular. We saw some mountain lion tracks (which reminded us that we were really getting out there). By the time we got to camp, I was pretty tired.. the funny thing is that I had run a marathon two weeks before, but running a marathon is really not the same as taking a 40 pound pack up an ascent.

The next day was very cool, we saw Impasse Falls, a very large waterfall. On the way back, we ended up camping on the top of it, which was very memorable.. sleeping on top of the rock and hearing the waterfall all day was like being a billion miles away from cubicle life.

We got to Fossil Lake that day, and that was also a very physically challenging day. It was great to eat snowcones from snow and Gatorade.. which was something that seems so funny when you are "in real life", but tasted incredible up there.

Fossil lake was very neat, a little bit cold at night, but I had never seen so many stars. We stayed up and counted the shooting stars at night, and the trout in the lake pretty much would bite on every cast. It was probably a fisherman's dream to be up at a lake like that.. I am not really into fishing, but really enjoyed throwing the spinners in the lake and getting trout that had probably never been hooked before ever.

The next day we stayed there and scrambled up some peaks, and ran across some snowfields and found a skull of a bear that probably had been there for at least a year. It was cool to see something like that, because people probably hadn't been there for a lonnng time.

At any rate, this is probably getting long.. but I have to say that this trip was something I will remember for the rest of my life. Most people do not get a chance to do something like this, and I feel very lucky to be able to. The mountains were absoloutly spectacular, and the pictures will never do justice to actually being there. I remember someone in the group making that comment, and that is the truth..

-Chadwick C Brown