Old Dan Walking

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

Mount Pisgah Loop (opens in new window)

Approximately 6 mile loop walk to the summit of 5721’ Mount Pisgah. The loop started and ended at the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway – August 22, 2010

My website world has been a shambles lately, so I’ve been busy trying to get everything back in order. An apparent hack attack put my site on the warned list at Google, so I’ve moved it over to a new server home. Thanks for sticking with me while I work out the kinks of this new application. 

My most recent walk was another of those repeats from long ago…a Sunday climb to the summit of popular Mount Pisgah on the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is another of those walks I did a long time ago, as a teenager with my best bud Ted. About half way up the climb we started jogging to the top, then collapsed in a heap on the brand new observation deck when we reached the summit. Up came a spry older gent, celebrating his birthday number 80-something. “I climb this mountain every year on my birthday.” He wasn’t even winded while the two of us struggled to get a breath and couldn’t move a muscle. I wouldn’t be surprised if that old guy was still alive today. 

Setting out from the Inn

At long last the cooler weather is beginning to make an appearance up in the high country. It has been a scorching summer and personally I’d be ok if it decided to call it a 2010. The winds were blowing as I set off from the Pisgah Inn parking lot for my climb to the summit. The walk starts on the obscure trail across the Parkway from the Mount Pisgah Country Store. After dropping down a flight of stone steps, the trails enters a dark and dank high elevation forest of large oaks and spruce. I turn east and pass between the campground property and Parkway through a tunnel of rhododendron.

Although the trail is well worn, I notice the fact that I have to bend down a lot as I walk through the tunnels, something you don’t typically have to do in the Smokies. Despite the fact that I’m walking just a short distance from the packed campground on one side and the busy Parkway on the other, the trail gives a feeling of being in the middle of nowhere. As with my previous walk, I’m treated to a great showing of mushrooms of all varieties, shapes, and colors. A white rectangular blaze painted on the trees, exactly like the one on that other trail we all know and love, helps keep me on track.    

In a short while I pass a few small seeps that are the headwaters of creeks that will drain towards Canton to the north. Jewelweed and ferns are abundant on the trail perimeters. At about 0.8 miles I reach the parking lot for the Pisgah picnic area, where they’ve conveniently painted blazes on the asphalt to direct you back into the woods on the opposite side. I pass some pretty Pink Turtleheads and then skirt the north side of the Buck Spring tunnel, under construction with stimulus funds.  A short while later I reach the intersection with the trail that 99% of Pisgah summit hikers take near the main parking area.

 To the top – 30 years later

 The popular 1.5 mile summit trail is wide and well-worn. It starts with an innocent climb for the first several tenths, passing a large exposed rock on the right and a few view clearings on the left. From the clearings you can look back towards the west and see Frying Pan tower. You’ll have an even better view of the tower if you make it to the top. The trail bends around to the right and I can begin to see my destination, with its huge TV tower coming in and out of the clouds. A short while later the trail turns left and begins a tougher climb.

Here the trail changes character and begins to climb up slippery staircases of rock. In a few spots there are clearings that afford a view back to the south. I stop to catch my breath and admire the Filmy Angelica and Heart-Leaved Astor growing abundantly beside the trail. The bees are busy and don’t seem concerned of my presence. I switch now back to the right and the climb is really getting steep. Above my head are huge clusters of bright red Mountain Ash berries. I step aside and let several people and their unleashed dogs go flying past me. Seems I’ve lost my hiking legs and lungs already. It takes years to build stamina and only a few short weeks to lose it.

Finally…the 5721’ summit. Here the huge red and white WLOS-TV tower and outbuildings dominate the landscape. I rest on the same deck I collapsed on almost 30 years ago and think of my old buddy Ted in Florida. The clouds come and go but the views are nice all the way around of the Inn to the south and Cold Mountain in the Shining Rock Wilderness to the west. The north is obscured by a big ugly tower and the view towards Asheville is clouded in. I sure don’t want to leave, but must.

Buck Spring Lodge and the MST 

On the return walk I take the southern route, following the Mountains-to-Sea Trail for a short distance. Here I pass the remains of George Vanderbilt’s Buck Spring Lodge, which George had built as a hunting retreat for himself and his summer guests. The nearby Shut-In Trail was used by George and company to travel the 17 mile distance between here and the opulent Biltmore Estate. Being so close for day-walkers from the Pisgah Inn means this portion of the MST is well maintained with log steps and wide paths. I pass a few spur trails that would allow for longer adventures if I decide to come back and stay. Shortly after I see the crew quarters for the Inn workers and then spot the changing colors of what looks like the Columbine wildflower. Autumn is coming soon, and I’m ready for it.

Low elevation on my roughly 6 miles of walking was around 4800’ on the outbound trail and high elevation was 5721’ atop the Mount Pisgah. I don’t know how much overall climbing I did, but my guess is it was probably somewhere around 1200’.

For pics of this walk, click the link below:

Mount Pisgah Loop (opens in new window)

 

To skip the chatter and go right to the pics of this walk, click the link below: Palmer Creek Trail(Opens in new window)

6.6 mile out-and-back walk on Palmer Creek Trail in the Balsam Mountains of the Great Smoky Mountains. The walk started and ended at the Palmer Creek trailhead on Balsam Mountain Road – July 31, 2010

While on a camping break with the family I took the opportunity for a quick last-Saturday-of-July walk in one of my favorite Smoky Mountains areas, the high country of the Balsam Mountains. I was treated to a great wild turkey show on the way up beautiful Heintooga Ridge Road towards the trailhead. Three separate flocks were feeding in the cleared areas along the roadside, including many chicks that cautiously huddled close to their parents. It was an obvious and fitting prelude to walking a trail named after former Cataloochee resident Turkey George Palmer. I had no clue of the socked-in conditions at the mile-high elevations when I left the steamy low elevation camp. It was a different world, cool and damp with no visibility. 

Today I would catch the short Palmer Creek Trail, one of only a couple that I’d not yet completed on the Heintooga Ridge Road/Balsam Mountain Road/Round Bottom Road/Straight Fork Road conglomeration. This road combination is a terrific day’s journey in itself, starting a mile high in Balsams on the Blue Ridge Parkway and eventually ending up in Cherokee after a long, winding, gravel one-way downhill plunge. I cruise slowly through the fog for seven miles on the one-way gravel section before reaching the western trailhead for Palmer Creek Trail. Balsam Mountain Road makes a sharp left at the tip of Trail Ridge, and this is where I’ll park the car for my short out-and-back. A large church van fittingly from Eden, NC sits beside the trail sign, but I would not meet the occupants on my route today. Palmer Creek Trail drops east out these high mountains and down into Cataloochee Valley, so I presume folks use this trail as a start point for a backpack trip to one of many options in that area. Mount Sterling can also be reached from this start point, but to do that hike you’d have to gain back the 1500 feet you drop on Palmer Creek Trail and then some.

 

 

 Palmer Creek Trail – The mushroom show

 Palmer Creek Trail starts with an innocent but short ridge walk amidst tall rhododendron, and here is where I get my first look at the amazing show I was in for on this day. Mushrooms of all shapes and sizes were on full display throughout the length of the trail. In nearly 600 miles of walking around these mountains, I’ve never seen a show quite like it. Big shrooms, miniature shrooms, orange, white, red, and all colors in between…It was a quite a show. Unfortunately with batteries running low I had to restrain from taking a picture of every one for fear of missing the creek views later in the trail.

 

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Shortly after the start there is an abandoned trail that goes off to the left. I follow it around just to see where it was going and come upon what I presume is a weather monitoring station set up by the Park Service. I backtrack and then begin the drop off of Trail Ridge amidst thick walls of mountain laurel and rhododendron. Unfortunately both of these shrubs are past their peak of bloom for the year, and although I’ve seen some good laurel shows on Bote Mountain I’ve missed the rhodo show for 2010. Oh well, that will give me an excuse for next year. I come upon some fantastic displays of Yellow-Fringed Orchids, with showy orange bloom clusters at the end of long stalks. A short time later I enter an excellent 300-foot-long rhododendron tunnel. 

With just a short walk today and a still-recovering back I’ve once again set out on the trail without my faithful 2 year companion, my Kelty daypack. On recent walks I’d not worried too much about not having it along because I was on short, heavily-traveled trails. This area, however, gave me that sense of remoteness…and I began to wonder if it was a good idea to be out in these deep woods without my usual compass, maps, GPS, overabundant food and water supply, first aid kit, lighter, etc, etc. My hip pack would have to do for today. Hopefully I wouldn’t have another Poinsett Passage experience. Creekside strolling After the rhodo tunnel the trail descends the side of Trail ridge through an oak forest with the occasional views to the south of Shanty Ridge. The dark spruce trees stand out like soldiers in formation along the ridge’s crest. The sides of the trail are lined with tall laurel and rhododendron and in the air is the distinct smell of this forest type that is hard to describe. A pleasant fragrance but definitely distinct to the closed oak forest. I soon come to the first of three footlog crossings on today’s trail, this one across Beech Creek just before the confluence with Falling Rock Creek. The brown book includes a description of the unfortunate incident that gave this tributary its name.

 

Beyond the pleasant crossing the grade levels some and the forest changes character to the cove hardwood variety. More impressive mushrooms keep my camera occupied and I begin to see larger trees, many of them dead hemlocks. One huge maple beside the trail bares a scar from nearly top to bottom that must have been a lighting strike. At another nice footlog crossing of Lost Bottom Creek the trail turns sharply right and then travels the majority of the remainder of its distance about 50 feet above and to the left of Palmer Creek. The creek tumbles through multiple picturesque cascades across large blocks of sandstone, but unfortunately it’s just far enough below me as to not allow a decent picture through the trees. In no time at all I’ve reached the level bottom land at what used to be called Indian Flats. One more crossing of Pretty Hollow Creek and then I come to the end of my descent at the intersection with Pretty Hollow Gap Trail. From here a hiker can turn left and ascend Pretty Hollow Gap Trail and eventually reach Mount Sterling, or turn right and reach the Cataloochee area after an easy 1.6 mile descent.

Today I’ll do neither. I grab a quick snack and begin the 1500’ ascent back to my car. Ascending at the end of a walk is something I try to avoid, but I can’t really complain due to the minimal distance I’d cover today. About a mile up the trail the rain started, and shortly after it became a full-on monsoon complete with occasional claps of thunder overhead. Ah…another reason I miss my daypack….my rain poncho. The rain keeps me cool though for the ascent. Watching the muddy runoff pour down the mountain, I get a flashback memory to December 16, 1979. 15 years old, I was in Tampa Stadium (a.k.a. the Big Sombrero) that day as I watched the Bucs win their first NFC Central Division championship with my friend Ted in an absolute monsoon. The game is an all-time top 10 weather game in the NFL, and an all-time great memory for me. 

The rain pouring down the trail brought back the memory of the water pouring down the steps of the old Sombrero. I could picture former Buc greats Cecil Johnson, David Lewis, and Jimmie Giles dancing in the mud at midfield, all serving to keep my mind off the 1500’ climb. The only dancing I did was when I reached the end of the climb at Balsam Mountain Road and settled in to my dry car for the ride back to camp, completing another great day in the Great Smoky Mountains. Low elevation on my 6.6 mile out-and-back walk was around 3000’ at the east end of the trail, the Pretty Hollow Gap Trail intersection in Indian Flats. High elevation was around 4500’ at the western trailhead on Balsam Mountain Road. The walk included just over 2000’ in overall climbing.

For pics of this walk, click the link below: Palmer Creek Trail(Opens in new window)