Our first AT hike of the year, we drove to northeast Tennessee and hiked three miles up to Double Springs Shelter from TN 91.
The lower portion of this hike crosses the Osborne Farm which is in trust to the A.T. This includes a couple stile crossings of pastureland.
Stile crossing on the Appalachian Trail
After the farm the trail is wooded and winds up the ridge. Double Springs shelter is just barely off the trail.
Double Springs Shelter
Bearwallow Mountain is remarkably close to Asheville but not directly accessible from the Blue Ridge Parkway so not nearly as well known as some of the other area mountains.
David on Bearwallow mountain.
The hike itself is pretty easy, about a mile up a forest road which is maintained because of all the radio and cell towers at the top. On a clear day there are good views of Asheville, Hendersonville and Lake Lure.
View north from Bearwallow
Panthertown is a valley in the eastern portion of the Nantahala National Forest, just north of Lake Toxaway. It is not heavily used and this was our first visit to it – a few days after Toxaway had received more than 10 inches of rain.
Schoolhouse Falls
The trails in general are not well-signed and there are old trails that are being reclaimed by the forest, new trails that will eventually be official, and then some unofficial trails. It’s generally a map and compass area. Schoolhouse Falls is easy enough to find however. Almost everyone else we saw in the forest was in the vicinity of Schoolhouse Falls which has a lovely big swimming hole at the base of it.
Greenland Creek Falls
About 2 miles upstream from Schoolhouse is Greenland Creek Falls. The trails go up out of the gorge and connect back with the river about a half mile from the falls. We decided to bushwhack up the river directly. There was an old trail on the east side of the river but portions no longer exist. With high water, this is a strenuous hike that involves almost as much climbing as hiking. There are several more falls along the way. Pothole is the most impressive of these but it involved hanging over the river from branches just to get a glance at it.
The Greenland Creek Falls trail is not marked but it mostly heads upstream from an old forest road. At high water it involves crossing several tributaries.
Leaves in Greenland Creek
There are a bunch of waterfalls in DuPont State Forest, most of which we have neglected to visit so we decided to check out a couple of them.
Triple Falls
Triple Falls – named for obvious reasons is only about a quarter mile hike along the river. The only vantage point where you can see all three sections is from the trail well above it but there were people scattered all over the rocks at each level of the falls.
High Falls
Another half mile or so down the same trail is the creatively named High Falls. There are probably about 5 “High Falls” within 30 miles of our house and oddly enough none of them are really all that high. This is a rather popular picknicking area. There are several nice pavillions on the ridge above the falls which no one uses. Instead, most people prefer the rocks at the base of the falls.
Trout below Triple Falls
Also partial to the base of the falls is Trout. This is actually a little ways below Triple Falls but it was a moderately hot day. This hike appears to generally be very popular with dogs.
South Mountains State Park is about halfway between Asheville and Charlotte, located off a confusing network of roads south of Morganton. Despite the relative difficulty in getting there, it was pretty crowded on the day we went.
South Mountains State Park
The park has a dense network of trails in the eastern half. By far the biggest draw is High Shoals Falls which is about a mile or so from the parking area. Several different sources bill this hike as easy. While it’s short it actually involves a lot of climbing on uneven, slippery stairs.
High Shoals Falls
Technically, there’s no swimming at the falls although we saw about 20 people directly in front of the no swimming sign. There are a multitude of decent swimming holes along the trail though which generally follows the bank of the river.
From the Black Balsam parking lot, it’s about a 5 to 6 mile loop along the Little Sam trail to Chestnut Bald and then back around to the Balsams on the MST and the Art Loeb Trail.
Berry Field
In early August, we were able to collect a bit more than a pint of wild blueberries. We could have almost any number of blackberries if we’d wanted as well but we have plenty of those in the meadow at home.
View towards Looking Glass Rock
This is the view south from the saddle between Chestnut Bald and Silvermine Bald, neither of which are particularly bald these days. There are good views further along the Art Loeb Trail and also good open meadow campsites.
These two falls are located in the southwestern part of the Pisgah Ranger District. Toms Springs Falls, besides being hard to pronounce has about 4 other names depending on the map you use. It’s not particularly difficult to get to, there’s a trailhead a bit west of the fish hatchery and it’s a half mile hike along an old forest road to the falls. It’s fairly impressive but there’s not really a good spot to sit at the base of it or swim in a pool.
Toms Springs Falls
Catheys Creek Falls is located right along side Catheys Creek Road. There are a series of cascades visible if you walk along the precipitous edge of the road and peer over. Well below most of the drops there’s a tiny pull-off, big enough for one car and a goat path leading down to the river. This picture is just the bottom section of the falls, most of it is not visible here. We couldn’t find a decent vantage point of the whole thing. Trout was disappointed to discover that Catheys Creek isn’t a good spot for swimming either. There’s a small pool here but more rocky drops just below it.
Catheys Creek Falls
The crazy 8s race in Kingsport, Tennessee was my first 8k race (on roads anyway). It was attractive mainly because of the late night start time (10 pm).
Running in the Crazy 8s
That’s me in the center with number 101. As usual, I get a low number due to alphabetic superiority. 101 is much better than 1 though. When you have number 1 people actually expect you to be good.
Crazy 8s stadium finish
The race itself is really impressive, along with the stadium finish portions of the course cover luminary-lit rural streets. Nearly every house along the course had people in the front yard. It appeared that all of Kingsport was out late for this event. Incidentally, I did run the entire course and finish, survive, etc…
There were 1,950 runners in this race. Orienteering races don’t have mass starts generally and the largest 5k race I had previously run in had probably 250 people in it. Lots of extra skills are needed here like not tripping over other runners and getting trampled.
This entry could be called Round Butt Bald because that’s the mountain we circled but since we didn’t summit it that seemed wrong.
Wet Camp Gap
From Bearpen Gap on the Blue Ridge Parkway we took the connector trail to the Mountains-to-Sea trail and followed that to Wet Camp Gap. Wet Camp is a high open meadow filled with blueberries, blackberries and assorted wildflowers. There’s also a small pond in the center but it was mostly empty on our visit except for a couple remnant pools that were packed with tadpoles.
Summit of Gage Bald
There’s an unofficial but easy-to-find trail leading southwest out of Wet Camp Gap. This eventually becomes a steep manway to the summit of Gage Bald where there are excellent views of the surrounding mountains. We had a bit of a picnic up here. By the way, these little sling chairs are incredibly light but they’re a bit tricky to set up and it’s definately a learned skill to get out of them with any modicum of grace.
Swallowtail and flame azalea
Usually we expect to be scratched up after any sort of bushwhacking. We were after this hike but it wasn’t from Gage Bald, it was actually from the MST heading around Round Butt Bald back to the Blue Ridge Parkway at Haywood Gap. This section is narrow and treacherous, especially overgrown with blackberries and nettles. At the high point on this trail we considered hiking up to the summit of Round Butt Bald. The east approach to the top was pretty much a wall of blackberries and after donating some blood to them we abandoned the attempt and decided to try some other time in a less-summery season (like say, winter).
Green Knob is located just off the Blue Ridge Parkway a little north of Mt. Mitchell State Park.
Green Knob Firetower
It’s a half mile hike from the parkway or it can be reached from the Black Mountain campground which is much longer and more arduous. There’s not much of a view on the way up but the tower is situated to give a spectacular view of the Black Mountains.Inside Green Knob Fire Tower
Inside Green Knob Fire Tower
The tower is open to hikers and slightly more comfortable than the rocks below it. The top of the trail is overgrown in the summer and requires a bit of pushing through rhododendrons. The view is also partially occluded in June, so it’s probably a better trip in early Spring or late Autumn.