Mingus Creek - Deeplow Gap Trail - Cooper Creek - Thomas Divide

Date: 10/10/14
Distance: 17.3
New Map Miles: 13.9
Total Map Miles: 547.9

This weekend was the GSHAG fall campout weekend.  I spent Friday and Saturday night at Smokemont.  To kick off the weekend, I took Friday off to hike the loop formed by Mingus Creek, Deeplow Gap, Thomas Divide, Newton Bald and back to Mingus Creek.  JD had this hike on Meetup, but the early start time prevented me from joining directly.  Instead I started out on my own about 1 hr behind the group at 9:00.

Mingus begins with a walk down a gravel road with a few bridges along the way.  Less than one mile into the 2.9 section to Deeplow Gap, it becomes the more usual single track trail that is found in the Smokies.  This 2.9 had a 1500' climb to get the heart pumping.

After 2.9 miles, I turned left on Deeplow Gap.  At this point, the trail starts down hill losing 1000 feet over 2.4 miles before you arrive at Cooper Creek Trail.

Cooper Creek is a short stub that goes to the edge of the park.  It has one creek crossing, so I carried my Chacos on the trip.  The stub is either 0.5 (park map) or 0.6 (sign post) miles in length and ends at a gate.  On this day, there was nothing to the creek crossing and I just hop rocked on the way down and skirted the edge on the way back up.

Back at Deeplow, I once again turned left and started climbing up the mountain.  On this section of the trail, the 1000' that was lost earlier is gained back in about 1.5 miles.  There was a small waterfall on this leg of the trail.

After 1.5 miles, I turned right on Thomas Divide and continued the trudge up the mountain.  The highest elevation was about 5000' which was 3000' above the trailhead.  At the Newton Bald, intersection I finally caught the Meetup group who had stopped for lunch.  After a short break, we all turned right on Newton Bald for a short section before turning right on Mingus Creek to head back to the car.

The trip down Mingus had an elevation drop of 3000'.  JD was feeling good and practically running down the trail.  I was feeling pretty good myself and somehow managed to stay with him.  We got back to the car at 3:00.

This was a nice loop hike in the park.  There were no great vistas, but lots of creek views, a waterfall and a nice walk in the woods.