Hiking Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Kevin Adams, a naturalist, writer, teacher, and photographer, has had a lifelong love affair with nature and the outdoors, and he enjoys sharing his passion with others. A photographer for nearly 30 years, Kevin is the author of nine books, including the bestselling North Carolina Waterfalls. An accomplished photography instructor, Kevin leads photo tours in the Southeast and abroad and teaches numerous workshops and seminars throughout the year. Often called the “MacGyver of Photography,” he designed and produces several unique products for photographers. His favorite photo subjects are waterfalls and anything under the night sky. When he can get out of the office, Kevin enjoys hiking, of course, as well as traveling and exploring the outdoor world. Kevin lives in Waynesville, North Carolina in the shadow of the Great Smokies with his wife, Patricia, their two cats, Lucy and Titan, and a groundhog that lives under the house and eats Patricia’s plants. For more about Kevin, visit his website at www.kadamsphoto.com. Peter Barr, also the author of Exploring North Carolina’s Lookout Towers, has been voraciously exploring the Great Smoky Mountains on-and-off trail for two decades. He has hiked all 900 miles of trails in the Park and married his wife, Allison, in Cataloochee’s Palmer Chapel. When not exploring the Smokies, Peter serves as Trails Director for Conserving Carolina, a land conservancy in western North Carolina, where he is a two-two time nationally award-winning trail designer and has developed more than 20 miles of sustainable trails on protected lands in the Hickory Nut Gorge. An accomplished peakbagger, Peter has reached the highest point in all 100 North Carolina counties and climbed all 790 summits above 4,000 feet in elevation the eastern United States, as well as more than 2,000 peaks nationwide. He has also completed a thru-hike of the 2,181-mile Appalachian Trail. Peter and Allison live in Asheville, NC with their two cats, Sweetie and Oscar.