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This is a tough day hike when you start at Cherokee Orchard just outside of Gatlinburg and go up the Rainbow Falls Trail. It's 14 miles round-trip with a 4200' elevation change. The round-trip took Dave Keffer and I seven hours. We didn't spend a lot of time at the top either because it was COLD. About 3 miles up the trail we came across Rainbow Falls. Soon after, we began to see occasional patches of snow. This was exciting at first, but for the last 2 miles, the ground was completely covered in a foot of snow. The snow was about 2 weeks old, so we could walk on top of it most of the time. For the last half-mile up the Rainbow falls trail, we here hiking on about 2 feet of snow.
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Mount LeConte (6593') is the third highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park behind Clingman's Dome (6643') and Mount Guyot (6621') and the tallest that is not covered by trees. You can see it towering behind Gatlinburg as you drive south on US 441. It is an impressive and intimidating sight. It was windy and bitterly cold at the top. I only stayed long enough to take these pictures.
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We took the Bull Head Trail back down the mountain. It had more snow than the other trail (three feet deep for the first mile or so). Just as the snow started to disappear, it got very windy and started sleeting. SIDEWAYS! This went on for about 30 terrible minutes. Luckily it stopped, and we had decent conditions for the rest of our descent.