Hiking in the Smokies

By this late in April, my friends and I had seen most of the common wildflowers in the Smoky Mountains, so we decided to hike in the Cumberlands. The wildflower seasons in the Cumberlands generally seem to be about 10-14 days behind the Smokies, so we hoped to get early spring wildflowers all over again. We were quite surprised at the quantity of flowers and different species that we saw on the Piney River Trail. We counted over 50 flowering plants and shrubs in about a 4-mile distance on the trail.

The Piney River Trail can be reached by taking I-40 east from Nashville or west from Knoxville and turning south on U.S. Highway 27 to Spring City. In Spring City, you turn west onto TN Highway 68 and park at the Piney River picnic area, just a mile or so out of town. The trail is 10 miles long, and ends at Newby Forest Camp. If you want to start at the far end of the trail, you drive past the picnic area, and turn left on Shut-In Gap Road and follow it to the Newby Branch Forest Camp.

We chose to begin at the picnic area, and after 3 miles, walked across a 102' suspension bridge (pictured above) and two more bridges that cross the Piney River. The trail follows the river, and is in very good condition. About a mile later, after the two smaller bridges, we hiked uphill to a fork in the trail, and took the right fork to see a huge cliff house (see photo above). Along this side trail we were thrilled to see one yellow ladyslipper. Photos from this hike can be seen by clicking on the "photos" link at the top of the page.

Six of us walked into White Oak sinks, in the Smoky Mountains, via Schoolhouse Gap Road. I prefer to go in that way, as we see lots of wildflowers along the road bank, as well as enjoy the pastoral valley we walk up. We counted 30 species of flowers that we saw this day.

When I first starting hiking in the Smokies, in 1997, White Oak Sinks was still a carefully guarded spot that had little foot traffic going into it. However, several newspaper articles have appeared in the last few years describing the beauty of the Sinks, and giving detailed instructions on how to get to them. Now it is not unusual to see groups of as many as 50 people walking in White Oak Sinks, and inevitably stepping off the trails and stomping and killing many, many plants. More disturbing now is the fact that many people are even more thoughtless, and walk off the trails intentionally to get a better view or photograph of something they can see right at the edge of the trails. On the day we hiked into the Sinks, we saw several photographers lying in the middle of a bunch of plants, trying to focus from ground level on a flower. We even saw someone sitting on the ground, about 5 ft off the trail, surrounded by Trillium grandiflorum (I hated to think how many she was sitting on).

In the past, the trails have gone around the edge of the sinkholes that have Virginia bluebells and Shooting stars, but now, someone has cut a trail to the bottom of the bluebell hole, and we saw people scambling up and down the trail to photograph bluebells at the very bottom. I shudder to think how many bluebells were killed cutting the trail, and by people slipping up and down it.

White Oak Sinks is a very beautiful, but fragile ecosystem, and it is rapidly being destroyed by people who only think of themselves, and seem to have no knowledge of how disastrous their actions can be.

Click on "photos" above to see pictures of some of the wildflowers we saw.

Five of us decided to hike in the Abrams campground area of the Smoky Mountains, starting at an elevation of 1100 ft and hiking up to aboput 1500 feet. We thought we might see an abundance of wildflowers, and we weren't disappointed. We counted 34 different species of flowering plants as we hiked up Cooper Road and Little Bottoms trail to it's junction with Hatcher Mountain trail. See my Day Hiker's Guide to All the Trails in the Smokies for directions on getting to Abrams campground and the specific trailheads.

The banks along the edges of Cooper Road trail were covered with wildflowers -- blue phlox, yellow trillium, little brown jug, wild ginger, rue anemone, and many more. See the photo gallery for Cooper Road/Little Bottoms wildflowers for pictures of all we saw (Click above on "photos"). Service berry was in bloom providing bright spots of white in the woods.

Little Bottoms trail has had several sections that were very badly eroded, and dangerous to hike along. I was pleased to see that the Park Service has repaired all of the badly eroded sections, stabilizing them and adding steps where needed. Much of the trail follows Abrams Creek, and it was fairly full of water, and sparkling in the sunshine. At the beginning of the trail we pass through giant hemlocks and felt sad that they will most likely fall prey to the hemlock wooly adelgid that has infested most of the hemlock stands in the Smokies. Photos of the hemlocks as they stand today, and one of a branch with the wooly adelgid can be seen in the photo gallery for Little Bottoms (click above on "photos"). As we hiked further up the trail, we passed through a large section of dead pines that appeared to have fallen prey to the pine bark blister beetle, and then through a stand of pines that had burned.

This landscape was rather stark, but amidst it all, we found bleeding heart, firepink, and trailing arbutus in full bloom on sunny banks. As we progressed out of the burned areas, we saw many Trillium catesbaei, wild ginger, and the biggest surprise of all -- some nice bunches of Fringed polygala (Gaywings). Photos of these can be found in the photo gallery.

Today, three of us decided to hike up Old Sugarlands Trail in the Smoky Mountains, and follow an off-trail path to an old stone house that we had tried, unsuccessfully, to see a few weeks before. Earlier, we had a lot of rain, and we had to cross a stream to get to the house, and it was way out of its banks, and impossible to cross. Today, however, the water was low enough for an easy rock hope. We were very surprised at how large the stone house is, and although it is falling down after many years of neglect, it is a wonderful structure (see photo album for "stone house").

We were told that there was an Arrowmont School for children near the house, and that the stone structure was the teacher's cottage. The remains of the apparent schoolhouse foundation can just barely be discerned at the site.

We started at 1500 feet where the trail leaves from Newfound Gap Road, and hiked up the trail to 2500 feet at Bullhead Trail. At the lower elevations, there were a lot of early spring wildflowers in bloom: rue anemone, Halberd-leaf violet, long-spurred violet, sweet white violet, many yellow trilliums (T. luteum), pennywort, and bloodroot. I saw a very few fringed phacelia in bloom. As we got to the higher elevation, we found a bank full of trailing arbutus, just beginning to bloom. Later, at the creek we crossed to get to the stone house, we saw a few Trillim grandiflorum. Check out the photo album for Stone House for pictures of the flowers we saw.

Nineteen of us met at the Fontana Reservoir marina, in North Carolina, at 8:45 am to meet the boat shuttle to take us to campsite 77 on Lakeshore trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Information on directions to Fontana, and contact numbers for the boat shuttle can be found in my Day Hiker’s Guide.

It was overcast and windy for the boat ride, but most of us had brought layers to bundle up in. Fontana is 70 feet below normal summer pool, and the exposed banks made hiking into campsite 77 a bit time consuming. The photo above shows the entrance into 77 via Pilkey Creek. We estimated that we added on about ¼ mile each way just gaining access to the boat. We didn’t start the hike until 10:45, and most of us felt a bit stressed to hike the 13+ miles to campsite 90 at Eagle Creek, where the boat was meeting us at 3:30. But, it turned out to be a beautiful day, and although Lakeshore Trail stays at the lower elevations, once again, there was some pretty fall foliage.

The sections of Lakeshore between campsite 81 and 90 at Eagle Creek proved to have some very strenuous climbs, much to our surprise. We got to the old town of Proctor on Hazel Creek right at 1:30, leaving us 2 hours to hike the 5 miles to the boat at Eagle Creek and campsite 90. Most of the old buildings at Proctor have disappeared, but the bridge is still present. If you turn to the right onto the Hazel Creek trail, just over the bridge, you can still see some old foundations evident. Calhoun House, across Hazel Creek, is the only building still standing, and it is utilized by the Park Service for temporary housing. We noticed an array of solar panels in the back yard, indicating that the house has some capacity for electricity. We continued to the left after crossing the bridge, passing by Calhoun House, and on these last 4.4 miles of Lakeshore, we saw lots of evidence of previous habitation. Remains of several old cars can be seen, as well as some old chimneys and stone walls. Click on the photos link, above, to see some more photos. This section of trail is new, built to replace the eroded Pinnacle Ridge trail that once connected Jenkins Ridge trail to campsite 90 (the Pinnacle Ridge trail is officially closed to hikers and horseback riders).

When we finally arrived at Eagle Creek, we found we had to hike quite a distance to get to the boat. Eagle Creek had enough water running in it that we had to wade it, but since most of us were already late for the 3:30 pickup, most of us just walked across with our boots on. Those with long legs were able to find some convenient rocks to hop across. The “Miss Hazel,” a large pontoon boat was waiting for us at the end of our hike. It took another 30 minutes to get back to the marina, and a 2-hour drive to get back home – a long day. Click on the photo link to see a few more photos taken during this hike and the drive home.