It took about two hours for Greg Harrell and me to
work our way along Breakneck Ridge and down its north slope to Three Forks Pool
on Raven Fork. Three Forks is a pleasant spot in the river where two small
creeks converge just as they flow into the main branch. Here the terrain
flattens just enough to slow the river’s flow and to provide a flat, riverside
area to rest or camp. Actually, camping here is now illegal, but that doesn’t
seem to have completely deterred everyone. There were several campfire rings and
small piles of firewood nearby – remnants of small acts of civil disobedience.
Or, just spots where some guys decided to flaunt federal law and play
hide-and-seek with the rangers. It’s a nice spot, but I wouldn’t call it the most
beautiful spot in the Smokies as the old National
Geographic article had done.
In fact, it was here that Greg and I decided that
we would start our Top 1,000 list – our list of the 1,000 “best places in the
Smokies.” The point is that there is no single spot that is the best or prettiest
or whatever, and anyone who claims there is needs to get out more and look
around. There are hundreds or thousands of river valleys, pools, waterfalls,
heath balds, grassy balds, beech gaps, meadows, cliffs, boulder dens, rhododendron
thickets, hardwood forests, log cabins, rock walls, old churches, mountain top
panoramas, wildflowers, and spruce forests that could all qualify as the most
beautiful sights, but none are better than the others. Don’t even try to come
up with a single best location. Just put them all in the top 1,000 and move on.
So, is Three Forks Pool the most dramatic, impressive, beautiful spot in the Smokies?
Absolutely not, because there’s no such thing, but Three Forks, like many other
bends in the river, is in the top 1,000. It’s tied for first with 999 others.
But Three Forks is special because it’s so hard to
get to. In fact, that is probably the secret ingredient that qualifies some
sites for special recognition within the Top 1,000. Knowing that you are
enjoying a spot that only a handful of people see each year is not only good
for the ego (“We walked four hours to get here. How many people would do that?”), it’s also good for the
soul. The stillness is somehow stiller, the wildness is wilder, and the
isolation is that healthy kind of loneliness that you get when you separate
yourself from the pack because you are following a different drummer, taking a
path less travelled. In this case, literally
a path less travelled, or no path at all. There are reasons why people use
phrases like “off the beaten path” or “the road less travelled” to describe their
great, solitary, life-changing experiences.
The route we took from our car at Round Bottom up
and over Breakneck Ridge to Three Forks takes a total of 3 to 4 hours. However,
because we started our day at McGee Springs campsite, we were less than two hours
into our hike when we arrived at the river. After lounging and fishing (Greg
caught 3 brook trout and one brown on a Thunderhead dry fly) for about an hour,
we were ready for part two: Raven Fork. We hoped to find remnants of the old
Raven Fork trail leading us downstream for about 4 miles down to the Enloe Creek
trail and campsite. The fact that there had still been a light trail across Breakneck
Ridge was encouraging because the river would probably be more heavily
travelled.
To make a long story short, if more people travel
along the banks of the river, we weren’t able to prove it. We followed a faint
trail out of the old (illegal) campsite at Three Forks for 15 or 20 minutes. It
then disappeared into the river, never to emerge again. No pieces of blue tape.
No unnatural openings in the riverside bushes. No worn trail. No government
cover-up.
Of course, there could have been a trail. On those
hikes which we do find an old trail, there is usually no clue to its presence
until we step on to it. It makes such a small dent in the underbrush that you
can be standing three feet away without seeing it. I suppose that’s good news
because you can push your way through a thicket of briers or rhody with the
feeling that you are nowhere close to the old trail, only to suddenly find that
you are standing on it. Although, I suspect that it’s just as common to step on
and across the old trail without realizing it. Or, to bushwhack your way almost
to the trail only to give up just a couple of feet shy of your destination. That
may have happened to us on Raven Fork, but of course we don’t really know how
close we got to the old trail that may or may not still exist.
So we walked along and in the river. [To be
continued.]
