Cooper Road - Hatcher Mtn - Abrams Falls - Wet Bottoms

Date: 12/22/15
Distance: 13.9

Today's hike was a really nice loop hike in the Cades Cove area of the park.  I started the hike at the Cooper Road Trailhead which is on the Loop road about 1 mile before the Abrams Falls Trailhead area.  There are only a couple of parking places at the trail, but the hike works equally well starting at Abrams Falls Trail.

Cooper Road Trail is an old road, but the hiking along it wasn't too bad.  It was mostly a dirt track with very few rocks.  The road meanders along the edge of the valley going up and over several small ridges.  At times the road passed through areas damaged by the Tornadoes a few years ago, so if the sun had been out it would have been quite warm.  Today was very cloudy, but the temperatures were in the 60's so I still warmed up and was down to shorts after a few miles.  After 5.7 miles on Cooper Road, I arrived at the Hatcher mountain trail.

I turned left onto Hatcher.  Hatcher was a really nice trail.  It is the classic single track trail and had long stretches without much elevation change.  It also passed through damaged areas.  There were also a few views of the surrounding ridges.

 After about 2 miles, Abrams Creek made its appearance and was a companion for the next 0.8 miles of Hatcher and all of Abrams Falls Trail.

 I turned left on Abrams Falls trail and hiked the 1.9 miles to the falls.

 After a few minutes at the falls, I hiked the 2.3 miles back to the Abrams Falls parking area.  At that point, I turned left on the Wet Bottoms trail.  Wet Bottoms lived up to its name.  Just a tenth or so down the trail, there was a creek crossing.  I could have walked back to the Abrams bridge and just walked along the other side of the creek, but there was a convenient tree that I was able to walk across.  Wet Bottoms is also muddy and mushy and generally not that nice. Wet Bottoms was 1 mile in length back to the Cooper Road trail where I turned right and walked the 0.2 miles to the car.

 This nearly tame dear was on the Wet Bottoms Trail.

 This is the view from the parking area.

The GPS didn't lock for the first 1.5 miles.  The elevation change wasn't huge on this trail, but there were a large number of smaller climbs.