“No wild parties while we’re gone.” “Thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” “Stay out of the cookie jar.” Warnings that are wise, but hard to resist.
My old 1973 Sierra Club Hiker’s Guide had this to say about the Porters Creek Trail:
“This trail consists of two sections which are very different in character. For four miles it is an easy walking trail through an undisturbed forest. After that it turns into an unmaintained manway and becomes very steep, rising 2,000 feet in the last mile. This section is for the experienced hiker only and even for him only one way. Nobody should attempt to descend this trail from the AT. This latter section is the most difficult and dangerous stretch of trail described in this entire handbook. Don’t do it!”
What I heard was slightly different from what appeared on the printed page. I heard what I wanted to hear, which was:
“Blah… blah… blah… blah… I dare you to try this one… Blah… blah… blah… blah… You big sissy… You aren’t man enough to try it, are you? Blah… blah….”
I took the “Don’t do it” as a personal challenge, an affront to my manhood. When I read the warning to Greg Harrell, his response was typical for him: “Sounds like we need to give it a try.” So we did.
I had been studying the topographic map of the Greenbrier and Sawteeth section of the park, and couldn’t quite tell how the 1973 trail description fit in with the wiggles and bumps that appeared on the map. I learned that the old manway ended very close to Dry Sluice Gap, which was about a quarter of a mile east of the cliffs of Charlies Bunion on the main ridge crest. So I knew the target that we were shooting for, but the exact route was a mystery. This trip could be pure, trial-and-error bushwhacking that might even take more than one trip to figure out. On the other hand, the 1973 trail description did talk of an “unmaintained manway,” so there might be some semblance of a path. But that was 1973. If it was an unmaintained manway in 1973, what would it be 35 years later?
Sometimes in studying a topo map, you can get a good feel for the ruggedness of an area not by a close examination of the map but by actually stepping back several feet and just looking at the overall color of the map. If your topo lines are brown or black, then where does the map look dark instead of the typical light green? Where does the shading look a bit deeper and darker? On my map of the Smokies, the brown topo lines squeeze closely together and create a fuzzy, brown mass along the north side of the 6 miles of ridgeline from Mt. LeConte along the Boulevard and the AT past Charlies Bunion to Porters Mountain. If you are familiar with land forms and topo maps, those tight topo lines speak of deep, steep, shady ravines. These are the places that get very little sunlight, and even less during the winter months when the sun is low in the sky, so they are moist and cold. The springs and rivulets high on a north-facing slope will probably freeze over in December, providing beautiful walls and columns of ice until March. If these sites are off trail, you can be sure that very few people have seen them.
Lest I exaggerate the trail’s danger and our boldness, let’s get something straight. If a trail was truly dangerous, the hiker’s guide probably wouldn’t even mention it. So, we’d take their warning to heart and be careful, but we knew this trip would probably rate about a 5 or 6 on the danger meter – where 0 is walking along the sidewalk at Sugarlands Visitor Center and 10 is pulling a wild boar’s tail. It’s also worth noting that a guy might pull a wild boar’s tail because he’s very brave or very foolish, and it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference. So we headed to Porters Creek, knowing that the real purpose of the book’s warning was to keep the lawyers out the picture if something went wrong. Happily, the question of whether to sue or not to sue never arose because no one got hurt. [To be continued]
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