Ace Gap - Beard Cane - Hatcher Mountain - Little Bottoms

Date: 3/31/14
Distance: approx 16

Having just returned from 2 weeks of business travel, I was ready to get out in the woods, so I elected to not work on this beautiful Monday and go hiking instead.  Fortunately my hiking friend Roger elected to do the same, so we hiked from Rich Mountain to Abrams Creek Campground as a shuttle hike.

The hike began on the Ace Gap Trail which I hiked about 1.5 years ago with the meetup group.  Roger tried to find a place to park a car up on the edge of the park to avoid this section but was unsuccessful, so the 1st 5.6 miles was on a trail that we'd already covered.  Ace Gap is a pretty easy trail to hike and the weather was perfect, so it made for a nice morning.

After stopping for a snack at the Beard Cane sign, we headed down the mountain on Beard Cane.

 Beard Cane has multiple creek crossings.  We lost count at 15.  The 1st 2 required removal of the boots and wading.  It was less the knee deep, but there wasn't a good place to rock hop it.

 There were even a couple spots where the trail was a creek.  This only lasted about 30 yards.

About 2/3rds of the way down Beard Cane, we entered the area that had been damaged by tornadoes a few years ago.  The damage was awesome and widespread. 

The 4.2 miles of Beard Cane felt longer than that and the GPS was indicating more like 5 miles.  This was probably just due to all of the wondering around at the stream crossings, but it was far enough over that we thought we had missed the sign for the Hatcher Mountain Trail.

Hatcher Mountain was more of the same with lots of tornado damage.  This meant very little shade and the day was hot.  I was anxious to get back in the forest, yet it didn't happen till we were most of the way down Little Bottoms.

 At the Little Bottoms trail, I dropped the pack and jogged down to the Abrams Falls Trail to get the very short section between Little Bottoms and Abrams.  It was only a couple of tenths, but the elevation dropped a couple hundred feet.  The jog back up wasn't much fun.

Little Bottoms was mostly on the side of a mountain which had been wiped out by the tornado.  After 15 miles of hiking, it had more elevation gain than we expected, so it was a struggle.

Finally it dropped down to the edge of the creek for a nice walk back to the campground.