Old Dan Walking

To skip the chatter and go right to the pics of this walk, click the link below:

Noland Divide Trail(Opens in new window) 

7.4 mile out-and-back walk in the high country of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, not far from Clingmans Dome. The walk started and ended at the northern Noland Divide trailhead on Clingmans Dome Road – June 18, 2011

When the temperatures in the Midlands of South Carolina start hitting triple digits on a regular basis, I can’t help but count the minutes until I can be walking up on the cool high elevations of a Great Smoky Mountains trail. So on the eve of Father’s Day I bolted up north for a quick walk to get my fix of the high country spruce-fir forests. Arriving in Cherokee for the Friday overnight I could see that the weather had rough around these parts recently, with an abundance of downed trees littered about and a fleet of Asplundh trucks standing by in a nearby parking lot. Some were fitted with cool fat monster-truck tires to deal with terrain, something I’d never seen before on a big cherry-picker truck. Motels were stocked full this weekend due to various activities, such as a Cam-Am motorcycle rally. Hundreds of these strange looking motorcycles were everywhere. Saturday morning, after taking in some great morning views from the Clingmans Dome parking area, it would be an early start for a short out-and-back on one of the high country trails starting just a few tenths of a mile east of the parking area.

Noland Divide – north-south ridge

Noland Divide is one of the north-south ridges that form either the ‘arms’ or ‘ribs’ of the Smokies, depending on how you look at it. If you look at a terrain or relief map of the Smokies, the main ridge, comprised of most of the highest elevation peaks, the NC/TN border, and the Appalachian Trail and sometimes referred to as the ‘spine’, runs mainly west-east from the Fontana Lake area in the west to I-40 in the east. There are several ridges that intersect the main ridge nearly perpendicular. I walked two of those ‘arms’, Forney Ridge and Hughes Ridge, last year. Today I would walk Noland Divide Ridge, another of those ‘arms’ that starts way down in the low country at the Deep Creek Campground and ends at the Smoky’s crest very near Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Park.

Noland Divide separates the Forney Creek watershed to its west with the Deep Creek watershed to its east. The trail that follows the Divide north or south, depending on your starting point, follows the Divide for about 12 miles and climbs or descends around 4500’ feet in elevation from one end to the other. This is a popular trail for those doing shuttle hikes, leaving one car at the southern trailhead in the Deep Creek Campground and shuttling another car to the northern trailhead on Clingmans Dome Road. I don’t typically do shuttle hikes, so I was going to grab just the upper 3.7 miles of the trail in an out-and-back starting at the small parking area beside Clingmans Dome Road. My starting point today was at nearly 6000’ in elevation.

Noland Divide Trail and the awesome Smokies high country

What can you say about the Smoky’s high country? Just awesome. The upper few tenths of the Forney Ridge Trail are along an old roadbed, overgrown on both sides but easy walking to allow me to enjoy my walk in the beloved spruce-fir. Signs of recent storms are just a short distance down the trail, with three big spruce toppled over and ripping the forest floor up like a can opener, exposing the virgin soil underneath. Around a bend to the right I see the acid rain monitoring tower, also a victim of the big storms. Several large spruce have toppled directly onto the tower, hitting it high up and also at the base, destroying the chain link safety enclosure. It’s tough sledding up here in these high hills. The trail bends off to the left and then comes upon a spur to the right that used to be a service road to a pump station for the Clingmans Dome bathrooms. Thanks to those newly installed vault toilets now at the Dome, there will be no need to use this road anymore. I give a moment of silence for my old friends the flush toilets at the Dome. Vault toilets are the pits..literally.

After the spur the trail thins and becomes more of a trail than a road. Alongside the trail, mixed in with the spruce and dead fraser fir, are the gnarled, twisted trunks of various types of birch and beech. The trunks of these trees are twisted in all sorts of ways by the high winds that often occur up at these elevations. Many of the red spruce trees are large, having escaped logging operations that occurred nearby because the ridges were tough to access. Dead fraser fir skeletons are reminders of the Balsam Wooley Adelgid infestation that decimated the population of mature firs in the 1970’s and 80’s. Knowing that I’ll be doing the vast majority of my uphill on the return leg, I appreciate the gentle decent, which is only noticeable steep in a few spots. Most of the descent is gradual and a pleasant walk through an aromatic and scenic forest. The only downside is ridge views of Forney Ridge to the west and Thomas Divide to the east are mostly obstructed by the thick forest.

Wildflowers zones and Upper Sassafras Gap

Today’s wildflower show was noticeably broken up into zones. At the upper elevations of the walk, Christmas fern, Hobblebush, and lilies were everywhere. None of the lilies had blooms and most did not have their seed stalks, with the exception of a few bluebead lilies that had not yet turned blue. Trillium were abundant but all had already gone to seed. In the next quarter of the descent, it was the Fire Pink show, with a cluster of blooms every hundred feet or so. Fire Pink is a distinct bright red flower with serrated or ‘pinked’ edges.

The third quarter of the descent was dominated by Squawroot, a parasitic plant that often grows on the boundaries of trails and looks like ears of corn sticking up. This marked the point where I had left the spruce-fir zone and descended into a much drier forest of dead hemlocks and oaks. Big trees were abundant as were the sprouts and decaying trunks of the blighted American Chestnut tree. The bottom quarter burst with Galax wands and flame azalea blossoms. Although technically a shrub and not a wildflower, the yellow, orange, and yellow-orange flowers of the flame azalea are a major treat this time of year in the upper-middle elevations.

Before long I reached the end of my descent at the peaceful and remote Upper Sassafras Gap (elevation ~4240’). This was the intersection with two other trails, Pole Road Creek Trail to the east and Noland Creek Trail to the west. Noland Divide Trail continued south and straight ahead towards the Deep Creek Campground. The last time I was in the Smokies I walked the southern end of Noland Creek Trail. It will be much harder to return to this spot and check off the upper miles of this trail along with Pole Road Creek Trail, a connector trail that heads east over to Deep Creek Trail. I will save those miles for another day, for it was time to retrace my steps and tackle the 1700’ ascent back to my car on Clingmans Dome Road. On the way, the heavens opened up and it stormed like there was no tomorrow. Lightning and thunder popped all around. I was thankful to be on an enclosed, rather than exposed, ridgeline. I made it to the car soaked from head to toe, but thankful for another nice walk in the Smokies high country.

Low elevation on my 7.4 mile out-and-back walk was around 4240’ at Upper Sassafras Gap and high elevation was around 5910’ at the trailhead on Clingmans Dome Road. The walk included about 1880’ in overall climbing, an easy day compared my last Smokies walk.  

For pics of this walk, click the link below:

Noland Divide Trail(Opens in new window)

Happy Father's Day to all you great dads out there, including this site's most loyal reader. :o) We're blessed to still have the architect of our family with us and I'm very thankful for that. Have a great day Dad!