Smokies Off-trail, Kear Branch via Dudley Creek, 1-7-26

Kear Branch and the Dudley Creek Connector Trail got on our radar after Ed led a pair of hikes utilizing the now abandoned horse concession trails accessed by the Dudley Creek Stables. Ed’s first trip took the SMHC up Mt. Winnesoka via the Big and Little Dudley Creek trails on 3-30-24. Then with Jean and Claudia we explored the rest of the network including the Bell Branch and Duds Branch trails on 10-8-24 (Dudley Cr). These horse trails were closed by the Covid pandemic, and were not reopened when the pandemic restrictions were lifted.

After our October visit, one unhiked trail remained in the system. I don’t know if the old horse trail between Dudley and Roaring Fork had an official name, but I am calling it the Dudley Creek Connector Trail in this report. The Dudley Connector Trail crosses over the divide between Little Dudley Creek and Indian Camp Branch near its junction with Roaring Fork. Like the other Dudley Creek horse trails, this one was built in the 1960s for use by the riding concession, but it was abandoned much earlier. Ed remembers that the Connector Trail was closed when horse traffic was restricted from using the LeConte trails. This is likely the period around 1986 when the packtrains that supply LeConte Lodge replaced their horses with llamas. While horses are still allowed to climb LeConte via the Trillium Gap and Brushy Mountain trails, there is very little horse traffic on LeConte now.

I was interested in hiking the connector and Ed suggested we could make an easy car shuttle by substituting an old manway on Kear Branch for the west side of the Dudley Creek Connector, and by leaving cars at the Gatlinburg Park and Ride and at the Rec Center. Though spelled with a “K,” Kear is pronounced like “Carr”.

Jean and I got an early start on the drive from Knoxville leaving us time to visit the small bison herd pastured on TN 454 just north of Ogle Road. We met Ed at the Park and Ride, then carpooled to the Rec Center to start the hike. We crossed US 321 opposite the Rec Center and walked through the maze of still well signed, but now closed, horse trails. As we headed south on the obstacle free Little Dudley Creek Trail, the underbrush around us was ominously thick with rhodo and dog hobble. We scared up a small flock of turkeys.

The understory looked a little clearer when we reached the junction with the Connector Trail. The start was not clear, but Ed soon found the well dug in trail bed. We climbed through a tunnel of rhodo that was working hard to close itself off to hikers. Soon we reached a spot where the trail should have turned northwest, to make an upside down “U” on the map. We lost the trail here and blundered our way west to try to intercept it on the dividing ridge between Little Dudley and Kear Branch. This was frustrating work, our GPS devices showed us crossing the trail twice with no evidence of a trail to be seen. The rhodo was thicker than on the trail, but still in the merely frustrating range.

Eventually Jean spotted the trail and its deep cut above us. We were nearly in the saddle of the divide and rewarded ourselves with our lunch stop.

Before the trip I had found a map I’d most likely copied from a post in the old “Go Smokies” message board about a 2014 trip on the connector and down Kear Branch. The Go Smokies Poster, who called this the “Herb Clabo Trail,” had lost the trail in the same place we had. But they had ended up going further north and west before rejoining the trail at the same place we did. I wonder if the trail had been relocated onto the Go Smokies route before it was closed, or if both parties had coincidentally lost and found the trail in the same spots.

In upper Kear Branch.

After lunch it was a nice walk down to the homesite in the upper end of Kear Branch. There was a rock pile from a chimney and a few artifacts. Below the homesite the trail moved to the left (west side of the draw) and climbed well above the creek level before reaching a split between the Dudley Connector and the informal settlers trail down Kear Branch with both trail beds very apparent at the junction. We’d seen some signs of rooting and soon encountered a sounder of wild hogs on the opposite slope.

Rock piles near the Marion Kear homesite.

Much of Kear Branch was open forest and we could follow the remains of the old settlement road. The Dudley Creek Connector Trail and the rest of the horse concession trails were built in the 1960s and are not shown on the 1931 or 1947 park maps. But the road up Kear Hollow, and its homesites, shows up on the 1931 map. There were many rock piles left over from field clearing and eventually a rock wall appeared along the side of the roadway. The next homesite was larger and both Ed and the Go Smokies Poster show Marion Kear as owner. 

Walnut tree near the homesite.

I assumed that the rest of the walk would be easy, but the lower part of Kear Branch proved choked with rhodo and had numerous messy creek crossings. Ed clipped while Jean and I snapped branches. Eventually we came out to more open ground at the mouth of the branch finding first an old-style hog trap, and then later a more modern baited trap.

Ed near old style hog trap.

The traps were in sight of a paved, one-way, town road that led us to Twin Creeks RV Park, then to the sidewalk along US 321, and quickly to our shuttled car at the Park and Ride for the drive home.

A newer, active trap.

It may have been the bright sunshine all day long, or the warm temperatures that approached 70F, but this hike was a hit with Jean. There are two stretches of modest rhodo bashing, one with a possibility of bypassing with better navigation, but the other is unavoidable. With such an easy shuttle between the spacious parking areas, this is a great option for a short, impactful hike. The total distance was 4.5 miles including short road walks on each end. 

Bison alongside TN 454.

Smokies, Cow Flats, Off-trail, 12-9-25

Ed invited us on this hike he was leading for the Retired Citizens. We had a group of 10. Jean and I were potentially the youngsters of the group, and we may have had two 80-year-olds. The weather was clear and temps started around freezing and would warm up to mid-40s.

Ed planned to do a loop in the same area as last fall’s Woolly Tops-Little Laurel hike, but swapping the tough upper Woolly Tops and Little Laurel segments for the easy way up the Cow Flats manway. Most of the route is manway on the 1931 map, except for a short trailless segment in a saddle on the west side of Bald Top Ridge. The Cow Flats section received “elf maintenance.” I took a GPS track and pictures, plus tracked most of the hike in Maprika.

Chimney at the Huff Place.

We made a short shuttle from the parking spaces at Plemons Cemetery. We started downstream on a manway on the south bank of the creek. In a quarter mile we turned hard left onto another manway and climbed up the nose of Bald Top Ridge. With much help from the elves’ work, we swung around the nose of Bald Top into Cow Flats, where there weren’t any cows and it wasn’t flat. There was an old homesite just above where we joined an unnamed creek. This was home to a branch of the Whaley family (Ed had details on the residents of all the home sites we would visit.) There was another Lindsey homesite not far above. Both had collapsed chimney piles and small amounts of household artifacts. Above the second homesite the manway turned left and east to head up a side branch to another homesite that we did not visit.

The elf work filled in the gap between manways, and we wove our way up the stream bed and through the rhodo straight into the sun to reach a small saddle in a spur of Bald Top Ridge. It was warming up into the “comfortable” range, and we debated the saddle as a lunch spot, but decided to move on. The descent was essentially a rhodo tunnel, impenetrable without elf maintenance. Don’t try to cross the pass if you can’t find the tunnel! I took waypoints where the tunnel crossed the creek and where the tunnel emerged into the open forest of the flats at the lower end of Woolly Tops Branch. It was a dry, sunny spot so we stopped there for a brief lunch. Because the mouth of the rhodo tunnel would be tough to find from the Woolly Tops side, navigating this loop would be much easier going clockwise.

Jean at the Bohannon Place.

Next was the double chimney of the old Huff (Andy opened the Mountain View Hotel and Jack Huff operated Mt LeConte Lodge for 35 years) place. Again, there was a modest collection of domestic artifacts. I’d been here in November 2024 with Ed and Mike scouting a route from Woolly Tops Branch into Little Laurel Creek. This time we stayed closer to Woolly Tops Branch and followed an old road down to False Gap Prong. There is a final home site (Bohannon) near the junction.

Grave of a Revolutionary War Soldier.

The route from the Huff homesite back to the road is practically a maintained trail. We cruised past one side road leading to a bridge abutment by the river, and enjoyed the impressively large rock stacked walls, still neat and square despite nearly a hundred years of neglect. The last section descended close to Porters Creek offering views of this wildly tumbling creek and its giant rocks. We stopped to visit Plemons Cemetery with graves old enough to hold Revolutionary War veterans. Ed also showed pictures and told stories about the church, school (look for the concrete footers), and hotel that were once located in the precious flat land at the confluence of Porters Creek and False Gap Prong.

View up Porters Creek.

My GPS recorded 3.8 miles and 1,080’ feet of climbing making Cow Flats a relatively easy off-trail hike, but one filled with interesting features and beautiful scenery.

Smokies, Wear Valley FHP Corridor Exploration, 11-23-25

The idea for this hike came from Ed’s Metcalf Bottoms to Gatlinburg multimodal hike on October 18. At the trail junction at Little Brier Gap. I noticed an established foot trail leading north down into Wear Valley. Ed, of course, had already hiked it, coming in from Katy Hollar Road to the north. He suggested that we could make an off trail hike all the way from the east end of the current Foothills Parkway in Wear Valley to Little Brier Gap.

Welcome to the Foothills Parkway.

Ed has long been a champion of the idea to convert the unfinished sections of the Foothills Parkway to foot trails and greenways to benefit those who live around the park, rather than wasting tens of millions of dollars on completing Parkway segments for the benefit of a few visitors, most of whom are motorcyclists. Jean and I have joined Ed on several hikes to explore the so far undeveloped sections of the Parkway corridor. (SMHC FHP Hike)

The most recent parts of the Parkway to open were sections 8E and 8F from US 321 in Walland east to Wear Valley. Construction was completed on November 8, 2018 and the road opened on November 10, 2018, This opening included the 1.8 mile "Missing Link," a long-term obstacle to completion of the road. The 9.5 miles on the west side of the link had been built much earlier. The dead-end road was closed to vehicles. but open to hikers and cyclists. Because of this “in limbo” status, the 9.5 miles was called the “closed section” by the hikers and bikers using the road for recreation, to distinguish it from the FHP between Walland to Chilhowee Lake to the west that was “open” to vehicles.  Sections 8E and 8F total 16.1 miles and are contiguous with sections 8H and 8G which extend 16.9 miles from US 321 west past the Look Rock Tower to U.S. 129 along the Chilhowee Lake impoundment of the Little Tennessee River.

Following the opening of sections 8E and 8F in 2018, the road builders looked to construct section 8D, the next 9.8 miles from Wear Valley east to US 441 at Gatlinburg. The first step in this process was to develop plans for a right of way connecting the FHP to the main body of the Park near Little Brier Gap. Amazingly, this plan would include development of mountain bike trails in the connection. An environmental assessment was released in October 2020 and decision reached in May 2022. The final plan calls for 11.8 miles of mountain biking trails, 2.3 miles of foot trail, and a mile of road which would become part of the FHP. However, no funding has been released for the project, nor has any work yet been done on the trail system. Since the plan has been released, privately built (both free and commercial) mountain biking trails have opened nearby at Townsend (Vee Hollow), Pigeon Forge (Wildside (Here)), and Gatlinburg (Ober Gatlinburg) taking some of the pressure the need for bike trails in Wears Valley. With little chance of any bike trails being built soon, it seemed a good time to explore the area on foot.

The current plan for the Foothills Parkway bike trails.

For the hike, Jean and I parked at the two-car pullout at Foothills Parkway entry sign, just north of junction of the FHP and US 321 in Wear Valley. It took 21 minutes to drive from the east junction of FHP & US 321 via Townsend. There was thick fog in spots. For the hike I used my Garmin to record a track and Maprika on my phone. Ed used Google Maps, which shows the FHP boundary well, and his Garmin. I took a few pictures with my phone.

To start, we walked back on road to south limit of Parkway ramp and then headed south along the wide graded grassy strip engineered to someday host the Parkway. At the north bank of Cove Creek, we went straight ahead to easy crossing (WP1) by dead tree. We emerged into open grassy field soaking wet with dew. When I first looked at the area with Google maps, I was surprised to find most of it is hay fields. It turns out the fields are covered by a special use permit that allows haying.

Ed would do most of leading, he headed straight for end of nearest tree covered ridge. At WP2 we crossed a faint farm road, but it turned out there were several of these, and they are likely to change from year to year. We followed the long narrow ridge south through very pretty and open forest with especially large trees. This was likely pe-park era forest, there may once have been a road as there was a rough lines of trees on each side. Most of the biggest trees were white oaks, estimated by Ed to be in the range of 80 years old. Some old, barbed wire remained. We passed one wildlife camera with an antenna that did not have any NPS markings.

At WP 3 we joined an old road on ridgetop which shows as double dash on USGS topo. We followed road southeast to WP 4 where it split. I took the left and downhill fork, which was not the correct way. The left and downhill fork was not on the map, After a small sinkhole, the left downhill fork turned right and uphill to rejoin the original road near the west boundary of the property. The right fork was correct, and it forked again just out of sight of the first split (we would not figure that out until the return leg). Across the property line was BridgeMont Camp (ID’d from Goggle maps) with a pool, tennis court(?), and some areas blown clear of leaves. We did not see the road shown on the USGS map heading to the east. We climbed up on the ridge to stay in the ROW.

Cove Spring Hollow at Katy Hollar Road.

We hit paved Katy Hollar Road at WP5. To the right only 100’ away is a pullout at the base of Cove Spring Hollow. An old road was blocked off with large rocks, and possibly was an old homesite according to Ed. I took a picture at the start of the road and later took two of Jean and Ed climbing. The road was in good shape up to an informal campsite with a fire pit and rock table at the first creek crossing. Above the campsite the road turned to trail, and we stayed to the right bank for better footing until the trail turned sharply right and began to climb steeply. The climb felt like old CCC-built trail up to Little Brier Gap. I had 2.6 miles at the gap, 0.3 mile of that was on the FHP at the start.

Jean and Ed climbing to Little Brier Gap

We had an early lunch at Little Brier Gap and saw our only hikers of the day. We decided to explore a bit on the way back rather than head down to the Walker Sisters Cabin after lunch. We crossed Katy Hollar and skirted BridgeMont Camp. We weren’t exactly on our outbound route and Ed found a small pit he thought was an old cellar from a homesite. Beyond the camp we stayed on the double dash road and came to WP 4 without repeating my detour from our inbound route. Here we could see the main road and the newer one shown in magenta on the map. There was a building foundation and several buckets, pieces of roofing, and a cylinder that might have been a flue.

Some of the roads shown on the USGS topo were still in place including the main “double dash” road we had used coming in, and the foot trail up Cove Spring Hollow. Cove Spring Hollow looks like a CCC trail and is on the 1949 map and absent from the 1931 map. The layout of the farm roads on the property differs from even the current map as some older roads have been essentially obliterated by haying. The Katy Hollar and Robeson roads that ring the property are shown on both the 1931 and 1949 park maps.

We followed the “double dash” road until it ended at a field at WP7. We decided to follow the now drier meadows back and walked along the right edge of a field with a paved road farther to our right and east. The buildings here are right up against the ROW boundary, but we did not see any signs or fences. There was a road and ditch between us and the modern Mattox Cemetery, so we skipped Mattox and cut directly over to the ford of Cove Creek that we used inbound. We crossed and walked the stub of the FHP grade and then the Parkway for 0.3 mile to get back to the cars at about 1:15. My Garmin had 5.25 miles and Maprika had 5.4 miles and 900’ of climbing.

It took 24:30 to drive back to the junction of the FHP and US 321 in Walland via the FHP, making the Parkway only 3:30 minutes slower vs. the route through Townsend. Though the leaves are down, there was steady traffic on the FHP. We had road noise from hot rods and motorcycles all morning.

Firewater 50K Race, 10-25-25

The last two falls I’ve run the KTC’s 25K trail race at Norris. Both years I’d battled with plantar fasciitis and its aftereffects and wasn’t able to do the work needed for an ultramarathon distance. But this year was different, I’ve been healthy and active and was able to prepare enough that a full 31 miles of running was a reasonable goal.

East Lakeshore Trail Map.

As much as I enjoy the Norris Race, it’s tempting to drop down to the 25K distance. So, I looked at the fall schedule and one other race jumped out. It was local, the week before Norris, and the same Saturday Jean had her MBA teaching. Kathy and Tony’s Firewater 50K follows the East Lakeshore Trail through TVA property along Tellico Lake offering a point-to-point course for the 50K. It seemed like a perfect fit. I’d heard good things about the race from other runners (well organized, pretty trails, good surface, and few hills) and it was only an hour away.

Jean and I on the Coytee Segment in 2009.

Jean and I hiked two sections (Coytee and Glendale) of the trail while it was being built in the late 2000s/early 2010s on club trips. But I remembered little from those hikes except for the cushy lakeshore trail. Our 2009 trip with the Smoky Mountain Hiking Club covered the Glendale section and Coytee Loop. Our 2011 trip with the Sierra Club was a shuttle hike on the Sinking Creek and Glendale sections.

At the start/finish. Photo from Firewater Facebook page.

My summer and fall training went well. I did my usual greenway 8-milers along with shorter runs, mountain bike rides, and of course lots of hiking. I paid particular attention to my long trail runs, knowing these were my most important runs, and the best predictors of my race results. I ran a lot at Norris, both on the KTC 25K loop and on my Barkley hill training loop. I ran a lot in the Smokies on the loops from the Townsend Wye and from Tremont to Elkmont. I also ran the Armes Gap Jeep Road at Frozen Head as I would again be sweeping the Barkley Fall Classic, which requires some much more hill climb training. I even restarted my plantar era stretching and exercise routine.

Those long runs went well, I had three runs over 20 miles, four runs at around 6 hours, and 19 miles of tough terrain at the BFC. I felt ready but realized that my best training runs (Armes Gap 4X and the North Boundary Greenway) had been on gravel, much easier than I’d have on trail. Here’s my buildup of training runs.

Firewater Training List, Long Runs:

7-4-25	FHSP	Armes Gap Repeats	10.8 mi.	2400’	3:05
7-10-25	Sharps Ridge	Lin-Indy-Sharp	10.3	1000’	3:08
7-15-25	Norris	Hills Loop 7X	10.5	3500’	3:45
7-20-25	Smokies	Lumber-Meigs	11.8	1700’	3:44
7-25-25	FHSP	Armes Gap Plus	12.2	2800’	3:30
7-29-25	Norris	Hills Loop 8X	12.0	3600’	4:13
8-2-25	Smokies	West Prong	12.3	2050’	3:22
8-7-25	FHSP	Armes Gap Repeats	16.2	3600’	4:25
8-11-25	Norris	25K Loop	15.6	2000’	4:30
8-16-25	Smokies	Lumber-Meigs	16.0	2800’	5:21
8-25-25	Smokies	West Prong	17.3	2150’	4:48
8-29-25	Norris	Hills Loop 12X	18.0	6000’	5:56
9-4-25	FHSP	Armes Gap Repeats	21.6	4800	6:08
9-13-25	Smokies	West Prong	17.3	2150’	4:48
9-20-25	FHSP	BFC Sweep	18.9	6300’	X.XX
9-28-25	Smokies	West Prong	12.3	2050’	3:18
10-4-25	Norris	25K + Songbird	17.9	2000’	5:09
10-9-25	Smokies	Lumber-Meigs	20.0	3300’	6:04
10-14-25	North Boundary	Greenway	22.2	1700’	5:59

 

Race day started at 8AM at Wildcat Pointe with the 100k runners, who would run out to the Canal Trailhead and back to Wildcat. The rest of us got on a nice warm school bus for a ride to Canal Trailhead, which was the 50K start. Along the way we stopped at Sinking Creek Trailhead to drop off the relay runners and the ruckers.

I sat on the bus with Cody, who would be running only his second ultra. His first was the super tough Quest for the Crest, which he swore never to run again. He lived in Greenback, so he ran and hiked a lot of East Lakeshore. Later, when I first looked at the race results, I thought he’d won, but he turned out to have finished second, to another runner also named Cody.

At Canal TH Kathy gave us a quick pep talk and then off we went. I tracked the course with my GPS, but did not carry my phone. I started in shorts, a light Smartwool long sleeve wicker, and gloves liners. It was barely comfortable with temps in the low 40s. The sky was overcast and dry most of the day, so we had good footing with few leafy or rocky sections.

I started out a bit too far to the front and got passed a lot as the field sorted itself out. There are mile posts on the course, so right away I could tell I was running too fast. My plan was to try and go under 9 hours which would mean 17–18-minute miles, but we were running 12–13-minute miles. But what the hell, it felt pretty darn good. The north end of the course is flat with wide trail, and few obstacles. The course would trace the east shoreline of the lake, except for a few short excursions inland. We saw lots of other hikers, including a group from the East Tennessee Hikers.

I ran a bit with an Alabama runner who claimed to not have run over 10 miles before! I ran the first 8 miles to Antioch at 12–13-minute pace, which is normally what I run on the paved greenway at home. Aid station food was good, there was the usual assortment of snack foods, while some stations had treats like Gus, potato wedges, or bacon. Drinks were water or Tailwind.

By Antioch we were sorted out and calmed down. We began our first excursion running through a golf course and associated community. It was fun to run in the open with the longer views. I was able to follow other runners and save energy rather than trying to stay on course.

Steve Barber was at the Glendale Trailhead. The next section was a little more complex. We skipped the Glendale Shortcut and added the Coytee Loop. The mile markers did not include the Coytee Loop, so keeping track of my pace required some extra math. I was still moving well, now doing 14–15-minute miles, slower than my start, but still ahead of plan. This left me 20-30 minutes ahead of my 9-hour target. I began to scheme for a little better time, despite knowing that I’d pay a price for my fast early pace. So far, the hills had been mild, and everything could have been easily run. The first 100K runner we saw was female and looked super strong.

Coming off the Coytee Loop was a long section without markers. I stopped momentarily and was caught by a woman with the same question. We were soon met by the second and third place 100K runners, who confirmed that we were on course. John Storey and Rebecca were at the Coytee Aid Station, and we chatted briefly before I headed off over the long bridge that was still incomplete at the time of my 2011 visit.

2011 Bridge construction.

I was still moving well (14–15-minute miles) and making up time through the Sinking Creek Aid Station at 17 miles. This is considered the “halfway’ point of the course, since the southern end is more difficult that the northern end. Based on the mile markers, my time at the true halfway point was 3:34, better than my last two finishes at the Norris Dam 25K races. I think this was in this section that we ran by several luxurious lakeside homes with boat docks as we were just across the lake from Tellico Village. After that development was one of the longer climbs of the course, though still with only a few 100 feet of climbing. 

Long abandoned car along the trail in 2011.

Before Lotterdale Aid Station there was a long roadside section where I caught up with my first fading runner. He, like the other handful I passed, was cramping and reduced to walking. I was still running OK through Lotterdale but had slowed to 17–18-minute pace, and occasionally 20-minute pace over the last 10 miles. Mark McPhail was also at an aid station. There were a couple more hills, but just enough to give me an excuse for walking breaks. I reached the last aid station at Peterson at 7 hours.

There was a long section in the highway right-of-way after Peterson, I wouldn’t bother to hike this section unless you were determined to hike the entire East Lakeshore Trail. Near the end a woman came walking up the road and complained that she thought the course was long. I didn’t realize that she was in the race, and that she had turned the wrong way after finishing the spur, until she was well beyond me. Kathy later told me that at least two people had made wrong turns coming off the spur.

There was one last hill before the spur. The mile long spur gave us our only chance to see the runners ahead and behind us. I first saw a group of 5, and then three others that I’d run with earlier in the race. At the turnaround I grabbed a wristband from the pumpkin to prove I’d been to the bitter end, then dashed for home at ~20-minute pace. I only had 8 minutes on the next guy behind me, enough for him to make up if I didn’t push it in. The next 3-4 runners were mostly those whom I passed when they were fading. Once back on the main trail, it was a short, steep pitch back to the start at Wildcat Point.

After thanking Kathy and Tony I proudly collected my finisher’s whiskey flask and sat down for chili, coke, and snacks. The race could not have gone better for me. I had no plantar fasciitis symptoms and no knee troubles. My back that had been wonky all week felt fine. I had no blisters, chafing, or cramping. The footing had been great, so I had no stumbles, and I’d not gone off course. I’d been lucky with my food and hydration, eating the minimum to keep myself fueled and drinking enough to stay hydrated in warm dry weather. I was stiff and sore the next day but had no long-term effects. Best of all, I was 30 minutes under my goal time, and never really paid the price for going out faster than I’d planned.

Finish photo from Firewater Facebook page.