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.

Cooper Road - Hatcher Mtn - Little Bottoms

Date: 9/4/15
Miles: 12.2

I decided about 11:00 on this fine Friday that I was in need of 1/2 of a day off and a little hiking, so I headed for the mountains about 11:40.  After a quick stop at Subway, I arrived at Abrams Campground about 1:00 and prepared for a warm walk in the woods.  The temperatures were in the 90's today and these trails are at low elevation.

The Hiking parking area is actually about 0.5 miles away from the campground, so the 1st 0.5 miles was on the gravel road between the ranger station and the campground.  Cooper Road Trail leaves from the back of the campground and terminates at Cades Cove.   On this day, I only hiked 5 miles on Cooper over to the Hatcher Mountain Trail.  Cooper is an old road.  The road is in decent shape.  It is mostly a steady climb from 1100' up to about 1900'.  There were a couple of ridges that it crosses but nothing too steep.

After 5 miles (5.5 including the road), Hatcher Mountain Trail leaves off to the right.  Much of Hatcher is on the ridge which limits the tree cover.  In addition this area was damaged by tornadoes a few years ago, which destroyed even more of the canopy.  The result is that much time is spent out in the sun.  It made for a really hot hike.  This hike is probably best saved for the winter months,  There were a few views along the trail. 

 A few summer flowers provided a touch of color.

After 2.6 miles of mostly downhill hiking, I arrived at the Little Bottoms Trail.  Instead of taking it immediately, I continued another 0.2 miles to the Abrams Falls Trail to finish off Hatcher.  At Abrams, I enjoyed some time at the creek.  It was nice to dunk my head and shirt in the creek and to replenish my water supply.  I then backtracked 0.2 miles to start Little Bottoms.

Little Bottoms follows Abrams Creek back to Cooper Road.  The trail starts by climbing up on the side of the gorge, so there were some steep sections.  In addition, there was still no tree canopy, so it wasn't very pleasant on this day.

 After 2.3 miles on Little Bottoms, I arrived back at Cooper Road.  Turning left, I hiked the 1.4 miles back to the car.

I made good time today covering 12 miles in 3 hours and 35 minutes.  I made it back to the house about 5:50.

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.