On a crisp October afternoon, my daughter, her husband, and I had paddled across Fontana Lake to the Lower Forney Creek campsite. As evening approached, Melissa and John sat in their camp chairs by the small fire they had built. Wood is not plentiful at these backcountry sites, but we can always find enough downed wood if we’ll just search away from the trail. I’m not much of a fire builder, which gives the appearance of a thoughtful, low impact, wilderness ethic, but the truth is simpler – I’m lazy. I like a campfire, but I can do without it. Fortunately, just about every other person on the planet enjoys a good camp fire, so unless I’m camping alone, I usually have a fire provided for me. I felt guilty for letting Melissa and John do all the work, but not guilty enough to actually get up and help. In their youthful enthusiasm, I don’t think they even noticed.
Later that night, well after we had settled into our tents and sleeping bags, it started to rain. Rain on a tent fly, one of life’s best sounds. We all slept well. Mud in the morning is a small price to pay for rain at night.
The next morning was cloudy and wet, but not rainy. I ate a brown and orange breakfast – cheese crackers, granola bars, ginger snap cookies, and filtered river water. Lunch will be the same, plus some peanut M&M’s. One of the best things about hiking is that I can eat chocolate and peanuts with reckless abandon – a guiltless pleasure with no consequences; although, I have discovered that if I hike more than 12 hours, something amazing and unexpected happens – I get tired of the chocolate and peanuts. That’s something that has never happened in the other, civilized part of my life. It’s one of those indescribable mysteries that can happen in the mountains.
After breakfast I took off on another excursion – a seven mile hike up Bear Creek Trail to Welch Ridge and High Rocks. Melissa and John had decided to lounge around the campsite and attend to three essential campsite chores: eating, reading, and napping. Through self-discipline and sheer determination they managed to accomplish all three in the seven hours I was gone.
I didn’t necessarily expect High Rocks to be the most dramatic spot in the mountains because I don’t think there is a “most dramatic spot” in the Smokies. There are numerous great spots, and I don’t waste my time debating which one is the very best. However, it did seem that High Rocks could be one of the most isolated spots in the park – a site rarely visited even by avid hikers. It’s not a famous or dominant peak; although it is high, almost 5,200’. It is too far from any roads for it to be the destination of a reasonable day hike, the shortest route being a 10 mile (one way) walk from the Road to Nowhere. Twenty miles is beyond the upper limit for a day hike for most folks.
And, High Rocks is not really “on the way” to anything famous. It’s sort of on the way to Hazel Creek; although it’s near just one of several trails to Hazel. Actually, High Rocks is at the end of a half-mile, dead-end, side trail off Welch Ridge Trail, so to go there you have to intend to go there. All I can say is, I didn’t see anyone else at High Rocks or on the trails.
So I set off on this cloudy, cool, almost-drizzly morning. I soon arrived at Bear Creek Trail and began ascending the eastern slope of Welch Ridge with Bear Creek flowing next to the trail. Like many trails in the Smokies this one is wide and smooth because it was once a railroad bed for the lumber companies of the early 1900s. The fall colors were vivid – mostly yellows at these lower elevations, with brilliant reds and corals kicking in at the higher elevations. I love all the colors, even brown, but there’s something about the reds and corals that just make me stop and stare, as if God had just invented them and was showing them to me to see what I thought about the idea.
I paused for a second to tell Him that I was impressed and pleased. [To be continued]
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