Porters Creek Trail

Date: 8/31/13
Distance: 7.4 mi

Today I hiked with the GSHAG group on the Porters Creek trail.  The trail starts from the end of the Greenbrier road.  The 1st mile of the trail is on a gravel road along the creek.  There are some nice views of the creek along the trail.

 At the end of the gravel road and off to the right is a short trail to a historic farm site with a cantilever barn.

Behind the barn is the Smokey Mountain Club Cabin which was built in the 30's.

Back at the gravel road, the trail continues along the creek for another 2.7 miles.  About 1 mile in, there is a small waterfall up on the mountain.  It makes a scenic view.

I climbed up to the waterfall.  Up close it is more of a trickle of water on a big rock.

The trail continues on up the mountain (total climb is about 1500') and ends at campsite 31.  We stopped there for some lunch before a pouring rain moved in and we hustled down the mountain.  Luckily the rain slacked off after 20 minutes or so.

Porters Creek is a very nice hike with many things to see along the way.

Finley Cane - Bote Mountain - Lead Cove

Date: 8/30/13
Distance: 9.5mi

After a long few days at work, I took a day off to do a little hiking.  It was a hot and humid day and the hike was tough.

I started the day on the Finley Cane trail.  It is a very nice hike in the woods with very little total elevation change.  There are a few easy creek crossings along the way.  The 2.8 miles on this trail passed quickly.  The trail ends at the Bote Mountain Trail.

I turned right on Bote Mountain.  This is not a nice and easy flat trail. It immediately starts up.  The total elevation gain from Finley Cane to Anthony Creek was about 1740' over 3.7 miles.  I hiked all the way to Anthony Creek because I'd never covered the portion of Bote Mountain between Anthony Creek and Lead Cove.  Earlier in the year, I did the top part of Bote Mountain on the hike to Rocky Top.

I was hot and tired before I reached the junction.  After lunch, I turned around and returned to Lead Cove for the hike out to the car.  Lead Cove was relatively steep as well with an elevation drop of 1400' over only 1.8 miles.  It did make for a quick trip back to the car.

Start Time: 9:40
Lunch 12:00 at Anthony Creek
Back to Car: 1:40

Metcalf Bottoms - Little Brier - Little Greenbrier - Roundtop - Little River crossing

Date: 8/3/13
Distance: 12 miles

I hiked with the Meetup group today from Metcalf Bottoms to the Townsend Y.  The hike was a shuttle hike where we met at the Y and took a few cars up to Metcalf Bottoms to begin the hike.  The hike began on the Metcalf bottoms trail that leaves the picnic area and ends at the Little Greenbrier School.  There was also a cemetery at the school.

A gravel road leaves the school and eventually reaches the 5 sisters cabin.  The cabin is a cool place to visit.  It is very scenic with a Cabin, a spring house and a building that looked like a feed house.

We probably spent 20 minutes milling around the cabin.  The story from the people who knew about the cabin was that the sisters refused to sell when the park was started, but eventually agreed that the park could have the land once all the sisters had died.  One of the sisters lived in the cabin up until 1964.  The gravel road got close to the cabin, but not all of the way.  It would have been a rustic life.

The Little Brier Gap trail leaves the gravel road just above the cabin and terminates at the Little Greenbrier Trail.  This intersection is about 2.5 miles from the Metcalf parking lot.  We took the left fork of the Little Greenbrier Trail towards Townsend.  The trail hugged the edge of the park with several trails that headed down the mountain outside of the park.  At one spot there was a platform with a nice view of Wear's Valley.

This trail terminated at the Metcalf Bottoms Road (not sure this is the name. It is the road from Wear's Valley into the park at Metcalf Bottoms.)  We turned to the left on the road and walked a few hundred yards down the road to the Roundtop Trailhead.  The Roundtop trail had a decent climb onto the side of Roundtop Mountain.  Fortunately it didn't go to the top of Roundtop as that would have been a very hard climb.  The trail was a nice walk in the woods with a few nice views along the way.  It is 7.5 miles in length.  There was one tree across the trail that made life interesting.

The last 0.5 miles of the trail goes down the mountain and ends at the "Y".  It is on the "wrong" side of the "Y", so we had to fjord the Little River to get back to the cars.

Met at the Y at 7:30
Got started on the trail at 8:15
Back to the Y at 2:15

Rich Mountain Trail - Indian Grave - Rich Mountain Road

Date: 7/6/13
Distance: ~8.3 mi

Today there was lots of rain in the area, but mostly to the west, so I looked for a hike that wasn't too long. Since I've never done the Rich Mountain Trail, I went that way.  I was thinking that if the weather moved in, I could turn around and get back to the care quickly.

The hike up Rich Mountain Train had a rather large elevation rise of about 1700 ft over the 2.3 miles to the top.  The trail was well maintained.  There weren't many nice views, but it was a nice walk in the woods.  Once I got to the top, the weather didn't look to bad, so I decided to cover the 0.8 miles down to the part of the Indian Grave trail that I hadn't hiked before.  It was downhill and easy hiking.

I continued on to cover the 1.1 miles on Indian Grave to the Rich mountain road. I did pass some sort of trap along the way.  I didn't see any bait and it didn't look to be armed.  A little farther down the trail, I scared a black bear on the trail.  We both jumped and ran.  I guess I was supposed to hold my ground.  He made some sort of squeal as he took off which surprised me a little.

Once I reached the road, I hiked back to the car on the road.  It was much further than I expected.  In some ways I wished I had turned and followed the trail back.  It seemed longer than the trail, but probably had less elevation gain than the trail.  The road was gravel and a decent number of cars went by.  I probably could have hitched a ride.  There were a few nice views along the road.

 It started raining during the last mile, but not too hard.  All in all a nice hike, but I probably wouldn't hike the road next time.

Gregory Bald via Gregory Ridge Trail

Date:  6/14/13
Distance:  11

Today I took a day off from work and went to Gregory Bald with the GSHAG Meetup group.  The day started early with a meeting time of 7:30 a.m. at the entrance to the Cades Cove Loop Road.  The trailhead is at the end of the Forge Creek Road which is a gravel road which leaves the loop road at the halfway area of the Loop Road.  Our early start helped us avoid most of the traffic on the loop road, however we were disappointed to find the Forge Creek Road closed when we arrived at the turn.  After a brief debate, we decided to hike down the road which would add 2.2 miles each way.  Luckily about 0.5mi down the road, we got word that the road was opening, so the drivers went back for the cars.  I managed to walk about 1.5 miles before getting picked up.

The trail up to Gregory Bald is quite a climb about 3000' of elevation gain.  The 1st 2 miles to the back country  campsite only climbed about 500' and was a very nice walk along the creek.  There were several creek crossings, but none were difficult even though it rained hard on Thursday.  The next 3.5 miles to the bald was a difficult climb.  Luckily it wasn't too hot.  The humidity was low and we had a nice breeze most of the climb.  There were a couple of nice views along the way.

The bald was an amazing place.  It is covered with Blueberry and Azalea bushes.  Only a few of the Azaleas were blooming.  We were a couple of weeks early.

The skies were clear, so there were nice views of Cades Cove down in the valley.

The grassy area was a nice place to lay back and take in the view.

On the hike back down, I noticed a nice blooming Mountain Laurel.

The hike down was tough on the knees, but was much easier than the trek up.  It was an awesome day in the park.

We started up the trail about 9:00.  We got to the top about 12:00.  We left the bald about 1:00.  We got back to the car about 3:30, but spent about 30 minutes cooling off in the creek and waiting on the rest of the group.  The drive back through Cades Cove took about 30 minutes, so I wasn't back to the car until 4:30 and it was after 6:00 before I got home.

Mt Sterling Fire Tower & Baxter Creek

Date: 6/1/13
Distance: 8.5

Today I hiked with the GSHAG meetup group up to the Mount Sterling fire tower.  The day was clear and started off a little cool, but quickly warmed up.  We hiked it as a shuttle hike.  We left cars at the Big Creek campground and drove to Mt Sterling Gap to start the hike.  Most of the drive was on gravel roads and took about 30 minutes.  The Gap was at 3800 ft as measured by my phone.  The Mt Sterling trail heads up the mountain from this point.  The hike is a workout on this section as it is a steady hard climb to the firetower which is at 5800 ft.  There were a few good views on the way up and a few wildflowers along the way.

After 1.8 miles, there is a trail intersection.  You take the Mt Sterling Ridge trail for about 0.5 miles to the fire tower.  The Fire tower is about 60' tall and is open so that you can climb up and view the scenery.  The wind was really blowing at the top, but the tower was not moving at all.  It was very stable.  The Views were awesome today.

Leaving the fire tower, the name of the trail changes to Baxter Creek Trail.  It is a 6.1 mile trail with an elevation drop of 4200ft.  I got very tired of going downhill and was actually happy to have a few very short uphill sections.  Near Big Creek Campground, a short spur off to the right leads to a very large Chimney.  No one in the group knew why it was there.

We started the hike about 9:00 and arrived at the tower about 10:30.  We left the top about 11:30 and arrived at the car close to 2:30.

Virgin Falls

Date: 5/26/13
Distance: 10-11

I was driving back from Nashville and decided to take a side trip to Virgin Falls State Park and hike the Virgin Falls Trail.  It was a beautiful sunny day, but the majority of the trail is under the tree canopy which provided plenty of shade.  There were a total of 4 waterfalls and a nice overlook, so this hike has some WOW factor to it.  The 1st waterfall was the smallest, but it was a nice prelude to the big ones that were to come.

The picture doesn't do it justice.  It was about 20' tall and on this day, had a nice volume of water rushing over it.

The second water fall was larger with a cave behind it.  The water at the bottom of the falls flows into the cave.

Continuing along the trail eventually you reach a loop. The trail has the shape of a lollipop.  I took the right side of the loop and encountered the 3rd waterfall.  This one flows out of a cave at the top and disappears into a cave at the bottom.

I climbed on up the trail looking for the "Sheep Cave".  Eventually the trail ran out and I didn't really find it.  Since I was alone and the trail was faint, I turned back.

Continuing around the loop, I came to the star of the show.  Virgin Falls is the largest of the falls.  It has a side trail that takes you to the top of the falls.  From this trail, I got a few nice shots of the falls through the woods.

At the top the falls there was lots of white water.

On the way out, I took the spur out to the Overlook.  The view was nice, so it was worth the extra 1 mile and the climb up the mountain.  At one point there is a wooden ladder that you must climb.

The hike was not easy.  There is a large elevation loss on the way to the falls.  I didn't realize how far down I'd gone, until I started climbing out after hiking 8 miles.  The climb was tiresome.

I spent about 5 hours on the hike including my time admiring the various waterfalls.  It was a nice day in the woods.