I’ve always been a sucker for peak bagging lists. Most of my early hiking in the White Mountains was in pursuit of the New Hampshire 4,000 footers. Then with my move out west, I turned toward climbing the high points of the western states. But when I moved to Tennessee in 1993 things were different. Maybe it’s because the mountains here seldom have views and often lack trails, but the interest in peak bagging just isn’t there. But just because the peak bagging flies well under the radar, it doesn’t mean it’s still not a ton of fun.
The South Beyond 6000 (SB6K) (also, aka Southern Sixers) was
organized in the late 1960s by representatives of the Carolina Mountain Club
(CMC), Tennessee Eastman Hiking and Canoeing Club, and the Smoky Mountains
Hiking Club. The CMC is the lead organization,
and seems to have the most active members. The group assembled a handbook for
hikers in 1997, and that same year a self-published guidebook by Ron
Tagiapietra was also released. Completions of the Sixers have been continuous
since then, if not frequent. In 2019, for example there were only four new
finishers.
All of the 40 peaks, excepting Mt LeConte, are in North
Carolina, or on the TN-NC border. The peaks cluster in five groups; the Smokies,
the Black Mountains around Mt Mitchell, the Great Balsams along the Blue Ridge
Parkway, Roan Mountain, and the much less known Plott Balsams.
I had a small head start on the peaks from completing the
Appalachian Trail in 1976, which gave me a few of the summits in the Smokies,
plus Roan Mountain. My first real foray into the Sixers was in 1995 when I hiked
the Black Mountain Crest Trail north of Mt Mitchell to get seven new peaks in
that range. In 1996 Jean and I visited Roan Mountain and we climbed the three
other sixers in the range. In 1997 I
climbed several of the Smokies sixers around the Tricorner Knob on a solo trip.
This was after an errant trip on Mt Guyot where a friend and I mistakenly
climbed the false summit on the north side of the peak instead of the true
summit. In 1998 Jean and I climbed the rest of the Black Mountains along the
Parkway. I picked up most of the peaks in the Great Balsams on backpacking
trips to the Shining Rock and Middle Prong wildernesses.
By 2000 I was getting close, but still had not ventured into
the Plott Balsams. The handbook descriptions for those peaks sounded complicated,
and I wasn’t sure if my off trail skills would be up to the challenge. The
descriptions in the published guidebook for off trail routes tended to boil down
to “just follow the flagging”, and I’d notice that every year that got just a
little more difficult as fewer hikers left flagging. Fortunately, I found a CMC
club hike that I could join and was able to hike Waterrock Knob, Jones Knob,
and Plott Balsam with them in 2000. The next year I did the same thing, and
hiked up to Yellow Face with the CMC. On that hike I learned that the very
recent tracks that I had followed the previous day on Reinhart Knob and
Richland Balsam had been from the same group.
Despite being close to finished, I wasn’t moving to fast to
close things out. I hiked up Big Cataloochee in 2002 (see hiramrunhikebike.blogspot.com/2002/),
leaving Marks Knob in the Smokies as my final climb.
Finally, I set up an early May 2003 trip for Marks Knob.
Joining me were two off trailing friends Mark and Iron Mike. Both had a lot of
off trail experience, but little interest in bagging all the Sixers. Our plan
was to hike in from Cosby 11 miles via Snake Den Ridge, the Appalachian Trail,
the Balsam Mountain Trail, with a bit over a mile of bushwhacking at the end.
We started about 8;15 and despite being early in the season had a muggy climb
up Snake Den Ridge Trail. But the climb was broken up by patches of painted
trillium and Fraser’s Sedge. Up on the AT it was early spring again with cool
dry air and the flowers not yet opened. We passed two hikers near the north base
of Guyot. We had a quick chat and I warned not to make the same mistake with
the false summit that I had. We saw orange ribbons going up Old Black, and on
the west side of Guyot, presumably marking climbers trails. It is worth noting that
the SB6 is trying to discourage the flagging of routes on the peaks as that is
not consistent with Leave No Trace hiking.
Our route up Marks Knob in red dashed.
By 1:30 we were ready to leave the Balsam Mountain Trail for
the off trail route to Marks Knob. Most of the Smokies Sixers (for example Chapman,
Tricorner, or Luftee Knob) are relatively short bushwhacks, but Marks requires
the longest bushwhack. We started along an abandoned trail, formerly part of
the Hyatt Ridge Trail that was closed probably back in the 1960s. In 2003, the
old trail was fairly open and clear enough to follow with a couple generations
of old flagging. There were a few blowdowns, but the summer’s annual blackberry
growth had not yet started. We followed the manway for about an hour around Mt Hardison,
swung south of Marks, then headed cross
country for the summit guided by the compass and instinct. 2003 was in the
early days of GPS for me, so I didn’t bring my Garmin. Mike’s waypoints for the
hike hadn’t loaded, so his Garmin was useless, and Mark as of 2020 still doesn’t
use GPS. On top of that, I’d discarded some equipment just before the start of
the hike to lose weight, inadvertently leaving my map behind as well. At least
the others had maps.
There were no markings on the summit when we went over the
top of Marks. We weren’t 100% sure we’d hit the summit until we went up and
over the northern subpeak. We celebrated by spending about 20 minutes on lunch
and then bushwhacked west back down to the old Hyatt Ridge Trail. Three hours
after leaving it, we were back to the Balsam Mountain Trail. It was a long haul
back to the car, but we were back to the Cosby Trailhead by 8:45 without
needing to use the headlamps.
So, 27 years after climbing Clingmans Dome on the AT I had
finally finished the SB6. It is worth noting that the CMC lists the current
record for completing the peaks in one continuous trip as 4 days, 14 hours, and
38 minutes, set by ultrarunner Matt Kirk in 2010. Matt was able to actually run
some of the old Hyatt Ridge Trail on his trip. Here’s a link to his blog post
about the run: https://matthewkirk.blogspot.com/2010/ To complete the circle I should note that
Matt was chasing the record set in 2003 by Ted “Cave Dog” Keizer. Cave Dog also went on to finish
Barkley in 2003. Matt and I both later competed at Barkley.
