A Mental Trip

Driving to work one day, I was paying attention to the road. Paying as much attention as I can on the 6.5 mile route that I drive twice a day. Bored with the usual radio fair, I was listening to an NPR Science Friday podcast. The host, was talking about how trees are dying in western forests. “Global warming…insect infestations… acid rain...dying old growth trees….” That’s when my mind left town.

I started thinking about the peaks in Colorado, Mt Shasta in northern California and the Trinity Alps in southwestern Oregon. My mind even have wandered to the Gila Wilderness in western New Mexico. All places that I have never been, but plan to visit and experience before, before I can’t visit or experience those places anymore. As I daydreamed, I wondered, why these places "call" to me. The answer is that I always see & experience memorable things during these trips.

This realization connected to a conversation a few days before with a friend’s wife. She had told me that she had agreed to go backpacking with her husband for a couple of nights on the AT in northern Georgia once the weather warmed up. She seem excited about it, but also not so sure if this was really a good idea.

After she left and the conversation had ended, I kept thinking about what was in store for her, besides the exhausting climbs, lack of facilities and sore muscles. She was going to be in places and see things that almost everyone she ever knows will never see or experience.

I occurred to me why I am always thinking about the next adventure. Sure, I enjoy the planning, the physical challenge, the company of a couple of good friends and of course the excuse to get more cool gear. But what draws me most is the chance to be places and see a part of the world that most people will never see. AND then when I return to my life and am back at my desk, I can remember the trails and vistas and creeks and waterfalls and all of the small things along the way.

Foothills Trail

Our Scout troop does a week long trip every June. We have hiked portions of the AT, biked the C&O canal towpath & the NC Outer Banks, and paddled sections of the New River. It was time for something new for 2008. After some online research we found the Foothills Trail. The FT is about 85 miles long & is located at the end of the Blue Ridge Escarpment near where NC, SC & GA borders meet. Everything we read suggested this was a great destination. Moderate elevation changes, beautiful vistas, lots of available water and hundreds of waterfalls of all sizes! (Upper Whitewater falls is the highest cascade in the Eastern US at 411 feet.)

In Feb of 08 we headed to SC to scout out the trip. Our goal was to find about 40 miles or so of trail where we could easily access the start & finish with the vehicles needed to transport about 30 of us. This was a weekend full of wrong turns & side trips. We took a new Garmin 60Csx with us, but hadn’t had time to load all of the software. Impressive gps, but every time we left the area covered by the National Park software, it wanted us to turn around. It seemed that as long as we trusted it, we were destined to stay lost. One side trip turned out to be up someone’s driveway, back into a “holler” with a single-wide & a pick up truck. We managed to get out of there before shots were fired…. The weekend ended with a sense of the geography and too many of the roads, but still unclear the sections of the trail we would hike in the coming summer.

Our original plan was to cover a “middle” section of the trail, but access, shuttles and parking just proved to be more than we could manage. My eyes are usually much bigger than my stomach when it comes to planning these adventures. Fortunately, my friend, Robert, has a better sense for what is achievable and I have learned to listen, although sometimes reluctantly, to his advice. Once we returned to Raleigh and studied the maps some more, we found a route that would work out to around 42 miles. The route would give us 3 nights on the trail with 2 of them along the Chattooga River.

Our route began on the FT at Bad Creek Access, but left the FT after about 10 miles to follow the Forked Mountain Spur Trail through the Endicott Wilderness, rejoining the FT near the Walhalla Fish Hatchery. We ended at Oconee State Park. The route was great. We averaged about 10 miles per day with great campsites every night.

The Endicott Wilderness is beautiful. Once we entered the wilderness near Sloan Bridge, we were alone for 2 days except for one small group & a solo hiker. The trail is not difficult and it is fairly well marked although you do need to watch the blazes in some areas. Once we reached the Chattooga for the second night’s camp, everyone was into the water too cool off! After swimming & cooling off, everyone had dinner followed by a campfire & sharing of stories from a book on Native American history.

On the advice of the local forest service, we put up bear bags every night. I am not sure this was necessary, but it sure was entertaining watching everyone try to find large enough & high enough branches to secure the bear bags. Our troop really stresses Leave No Trace camping, so we were careful to minimize our impact on the trail. Several of the boys found a truck sized inner tube in the river at one of the campsites. One of the boys was determined to haul this “piece” of trash out of the wilderness. This is one more time I was reminded of the difference in my stamina & the stamina of a 16-17 year old young man. I am certain that tube added almost 10 lbs to his pack, but he carried it over 10 miles to remove it from the wilderness. Nice work.

Oconee State Park is one of the nicest that I have ever scene. It is about 30 miles north of Clemson SC and is at the southern terminus of the FT. We actually used this as our base camp. Staying at Oconee the first night, on Monday, we shuttled everyone to the starting point of our hike with the help of one of the local folks who will provide shuttles for a small fee. We finished the backpacking portion on Thursday afternoon.

On Friday, we drove to Wildwater Adventures for a rafting trip on Section 3 & part of Section 4 of the Chattooga River. The water levels were very low due to the long drought, but the scenery on that river is amazing! Back to Oconee on Friday night where tThe group camp area is adjacent to a large barn. Every Friday evening during the summer, the park hosts a square dance with a live bluegrass band for the surrounding communities. What a great way to end a trip into the southern Appalachians!

Joyce Kilmer Memorial - part 2

The 4.5 mile moderate to strenuous ascent from the parking lot to Naked Ground was through huge trees. In order to see the larger trees, we side tracked and followed the Poplar Cove Loop trail that is part of the Joyce Kilmer Memorial trail. We saw eastern hemlocks are close to 6 feet in diameter & the some of the poplar were close to 7 feet thick & 300 feet tall; not the proportions of the giant redwoods in the West, but unquestionably massive for the Eastern US. At the base of the trees were large ferns & rhododendrons. This trail was once part of a Cherokee trading path that ran along side Santeetlah Creek to Naked Ground and then down the Slickrock Creek trail into Tennessee.

During the last .5 mile to Naked Ground, the trail climbs very steeply. Most of this section of the trail is a series of switchbacks with about 1,000 feet of elevation climb. With the different levels of experience in our group our pace slowed considerably. As a result, we reached the top much later than we had planned. In addition, we should have refilled our water before we left the creek & started the climb. We found no available water sources at Naked Ground or on Bob Stratton Bald. Instead of continuing on west from Naked Ground into the valley, we decided to stop for the night. While we could have pressed on, the trail ahead would have been very challenging and the return to the high ground at Naked Ground could have been a real problem.

We found a great camp site for the night & pitched camp. While we were exploring Bob Stratton Bald, we encountered a couple of hikers who had lost their dog. She was an older Vizsla, who had backpacked with them many times before. Unfortunately her nose had lead her away from them on this trip. Apparently, her hearing and eyesight were not that great and the dog’s owners were understandably worried. We left them as they were retracing their steps, calling the dog’s name. We worried about the dog’s safety all night. Much to our relief, by the next morning, the dog had found her owners and everyone was very relieved.

As the next morning arrived, we found that at least one of us was feeling the effects of the previous day’s climb to the extent that we decided to shorten the trip. In addition to the extreme fatigue, we had very little water left. We decided to eat a few granola bars and get an early start on the Stratton Trail back to the car expecting to find a water source an hour or so into the morning’s hike. This trail is about 8 miles of moderate trail that descends along the wilderness boundary back to the Rattler Ford Campground where we had left our car.

The Stratton Bald trail was easy to follow, but clearly does not get much use. It descends from Bob Stratton Bald along tree covered ridges. At times the trail ran along ridges that were barely 20-30 feet wide, dropping precipitously away on both sides. Once about a third of the way down, we emerged from the tree cover onto the side of the mountain. The trail was about 2 feet wide with mountain on our left and a sharp drop on our right. Stepping off the trail on the right would have resulted in a tumble down a very steep incline into the tops of trees below. The view was incredible! However, this section of trail was only about 50-75 feet and then plunged back into the woods.

At times, we walked for long stretches through pleasant smelling sassafras bushes. Other sections of the trail were almost clear of any underbrush. We didn't encounter any other hikers on this trail. It was a real wilderness hike.

While we expected to find water soon into our hike, we walked for almost 5 hours before finding even a small water source from which we could filter drinking water. A couple of us were completely out of water & it was good that we found it when we did. Once we had water the rest of the hike progressed quickly. We arrived back at our car tired but determined to return another time to cover the full route.

Joyce Kilmer Memorial/Slickrock Creek Wilderness- part 1

"I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree...."

Background
Joyce Kilmer, a poet & WWI hero, was honored by Congress when a VFW post in New York lobbied to have a stand of forest set aside in his name. This all occurred during the early twentieth century when America was accelerating it’s development and many of our forests were being aggressively logged. (According to the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club’s website, almost all of the state of West Virginia was clear cut during this time in our history! article) As most of the stands of “virgin”, old growth forest in the eastern US were disappearing, the search for an appropriate stand of forest to honor Kilmer was underway.


In 1935, a small forest in southwestern North Carolina was identified as a possibility. This section of forest had for the most part had escaped the logger’s saws and axes. Access to the area was limited when a railway bridge was washed out during a flood. In addition, the economic crisis of 1929 significantly decreased the price of timber. Since this area contained one of the few remaining tracts of virgin hardwood in the Appalachians, Congress acted to protect the forest and the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest was established. The forest is part of a larger wilderness area that includes the Slickrock Wilderness in NC and the adjacent Citico Wilderness in TN. Total acreage for the combined wilderness is 33,620 acres.


The Trip
I had originally planned a backpacking trip into this area in 1999, but the plans were “washed out” due to weather. Finally, in late summer of 2007 the trip was back on! We planned the trip to start from the Joyce Kilmer Memorial parking lot and hike a combination of trails in a figure 8 loop that would allow us to minimize hiking any portion of the trail twice. Our plan was to cover about 20 miles over the 3 day Labor Day holiday. The trails were “Naked Ground”(red), “Slickrock Creek”(red), “Haoe Lead”(red) and “Stratton Bald”(blue) trails. The Jenkins Meadow trail was also an option if we found we needed an alternative route back to the car.

All in all, this was an extraordinary adventure. The forest and scenery are some of the best that I have experienced and I plan to explore more of the wilderness in the future. However, during the past few years as my backpacking experience has increased, I have realized that there always are factors that affect the trip that aren't expected during the planning stages. As with most things, experience leads to better preparation.

While we spent weeks planning & training for the trip, we didn’t anticipate some of what we encountered. Portions of the trail were significantly more steep and challenging than we expected. Water sources were minimal in some areas due to drought conditions. Each individual’s experience and preparation for the physical demands of the trail varied. As we hiked, our plans changed....