Smokies, Timber Ridge, Stove Camp and Marks Creek, 10-29-05

Stove Camp Branch is an obscure tributary of Lynn Camp Branch in the Tremont area of the Smokies. Though the 1931 park map shows a trail up Stove Camp, these days the creek probably doesn’t get as much as a visit a year. But as our knowledge, ability, and ambition grew for exploring the Smokies off trail, I had the opportunity to visit Stove Camp twice in just a little over two months. As so many of our hikes in the backcountry of Tremont led to ideas for other new hikes, these two trips make a fine pair for a single report

10-29-05

This hike was part of a “Clydathon” where Clyde had arrived for a multiday feast of off trail exploration. I got lucky and was able to join his usual crew of Michael and Teri to help explore what they thought might be a good SMHC trip. They had devised the route by looking at maps, and had no idea what these new off trail sections would bring. The trip was set up with a shuttle. We left a car at Upper Tremont, and drove over to Elkmont to start our hiking there. We started the hike by taking the Jakes Creek Trail to Jakes Gap. We would then hike off trail back to the Middle Prong Trail.

The upper Tremont bridge in 2021.

At Jakes Gap a manway leads north to the site of the removed fire tower on the top of Blanket Mountain. We started toward Blanket Mountain, but as soon as the manway turned right we continued ahead cross country along contour into the rhodo and laurel. The 1931 park map show a trail from Jakes Gap down to upper Marks Creek, but we recognized no trace of that.

Clyde was doing the leading, or in this case the following, as his GPS dictated our route around the slopes of Blanket Mountain. This was another lesson for me in using GPS, there would have been no good way to find the start of Timber Ridge by map and compass alone. I recorded a GPS track of the route, by we were still too cautious with our digital camera to expose it to the risks of serious off trail hiking.

After an hour, the nav work brought us to the crest of Timber Ridge, which was narrow and well defined, but also covered with greenbrier. Once on the ridge we could occasionally discern a faint trail. I found one small piece of the heavy gauge wire used for old phone lines, indicating that the faint trail might mark the phone line for the old fire tower.

We followed Timber Ridge for one knob past the point where the ridge began to bend south. Here we used the GPS to turn west again, aiming for the small saddle at the head of Stove Camp Branch they called Hemlock Gap. There was some debate about the route at the gap, but we made the decision to descend Stove Camp. Michael found the old manway shown on the 1931 map on the right side of the draw, but fairly high up. The manway would come and go, but stayed right. Eventually we reached an old campsite below a large boulder that we assumed was the stove camp. From the camp we found a path through the rhodo and dog hobble to Lynn Camp Prong. The water was very low, and we rock hopped easily. The crossing was about 100 yards downstream of the old car that marked the east end of the Green Camp Gap manway. Total distance for the hike was 7.3 miles.

We all thought that the cross country thrash from Jakes Gap to Timber Ridge was too brushy and too hard to find to make a worthwhile SMHC trip. But still this was a great adventure for me to experience exploring a new area, and an opportunity to do that with a highly experienced group of off trailers.

The Timber Ridge, Stove Camp, and Marks Creek routes.

 1-7-06, Marks Creek and Stove Camp

After our trip up Timber Ridge, I was eager to get out and explore more routes in Tremont. Michael agreed to accompany Jean and I on a trip up Marks Cove, but he had to cancel with illness. But we had good route data from him, and thought we could hike up the old Marks Creek railroad grade to Bearpen Gap and back. I took a GPS track, but we have no digital images.

From upper Tremont we hiked to the ford of the Middle Prong leading to Marks Creek. The air temperature was 25F, but we would soon ford again in colder weather. After the knee deep crossing, we found the old railroad grade about 50’ above, on the left or north bank. The grade was wide, easy to follow, and had a trampled look like it got regular traffic. A light dusting of snow brought out the terrain features, and revealed a surprising amount of animal tracks, mostly from coyotes and mice.

There are two close switchbacks on the grade about a mile in, we ignored a path heading northwest from the second one. The grade then passes a flat area with room for a camp, but we did not look hard enough to see if there were any remains. We did see two culverts (Marks Creek apparently had a short history as a NPS road), old cable, some metal pieces, and a boar trap. The boar trap used an old road sign for its trap door.

Mike and Steve at the boar trap in 2021.

The grade was easy to walk and easy to follow to its end at a low angle, walk over crossing of Marks Creek. Beyond that point it is more of a faint manway, but is still easy to follow. We found the fork in the manway shown on the old map and went ahead. We went a bit beyond the fork where the grade began to climb and stopped there for lunch. I assume that this was the right, or south, fork of the grade that shows on my maps as a dead end. That grade was heading more in line with Jakes Gap, than with Bearpen Gap, which was our nominal target.

On the way back we decided to return via Stove Camp, to show Jean a bit of what I’d seen on my October trip with Clyde. The 1931 park map shows a manway from the Marks Creek side to the gap in Timber Ridge. We thought we had found the manway before getting caught in some unfriendly rhodo, and deciding just to follow the drainage up as it was clearer. The climb was reasonable, with a steep pitch at the top.

At Timber Ridge we were getting tired and could not find the elusive Stove Camp manway from October on our descent. But we did arrive at the same rock shelter campsite, and found the path through the greenery leading to Lynn Camp Prong. Jean found a log spanning the creek and we butt scooted along with dry feet. The cold and the extra energy of the all the navigating decisions had left us more tired that the 7.7 miles of the hike would have indicated.

Jean crossing the Middle Prong.

Though we would head up Marks Creek on other adventures, this would be the last time we would visit Timber Ridge or Stove Camp. But this hike had reinforced the idea that we could plan and execute off trail hikes on our own, as long as we had good route information.

2005, 10-13, Snowbird, NC Backpack Trip

 In the early 2000’s Jean and I did a considerable amount of exploring around the Cherahala Skyway as part of our quest to hike all the trails of the combined Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock and Citico Creek wilderness. Understandably, as we got more familiar with the area, we also became interested in some of the nearby trail systems. I included two bike rides in my 2003 biking guide  (Backroads Bicycling Guide) to the Smokies and Blue Ridge area; an out and back trip on the Skyway, and the gravel Jakes Best-Doublecamp loop. We also begin an exploration of the Brushy Ridge Area, the series of six trails that lead southwest off the Skyway down to the Tellico River, with hikes on the McNabb Creek and Hemlock trails.

By far the most interesting of these nearby areas is the Snowbird Backcountry Area. Because it is not a wilderness area, Snowbird is far less known to hikers. It is located in the Nantahala National Forest, west of Robbinsville, NC. This roughly 8,000 acre area has 37 miles of trails in various states of repair.

Old car on Big Snowbird Trail.

I had the chance for a brief visit to the area in 2003 when I joined a Smoky Mountains Hiking Club trip for a ten mile roundtrip hike to Middle Falls. On that trip we started at the Junction Trailhead on NNF Road 75 and hiked up the Big Snowbird Trail (#64) to Middle Falls. We saw an old, abandoned car and plenty of large, appealing campsites. At Big Falls we took a bypass trail to Middle Falls and were stunned by the beauty of the falls, a 30’ high by 100’ long water wonder with a beautiful pool at its base. The drive home was a serious, but tolerable 2.5 hours. I knew this would be an area Jean would love, but it would be some time before we could return.

Middle Falls.

In the meantime, I tried to gather up what information I could find on the area. I found two online trip reports, both of which described the area as “challenging”, mostly due to rough, and difficult to follow trails. We had learned that in the nearby Cherokee NF trail maintenance was done on a long term cycle with trails essentially being recleared periodically and left to gradually grow over until it was their turn again for maintenance. The secret to hiking in that environment was to find out what trails had been cleared in the last few years and walk those while they were still open. My trip notes don’t indicate that we knew the trail conditions in advance, but in general, we found the Big Snowbird Trail in good shape, but the trail markings on Mitchell Lick and Kings Meadow trails badly needed an update.

For fall break in 2005 we planned a four day trip to the area. On our first day we completed our Map of the Joyce Kilmer Slickrock and Citico Wildernesses with a hike of the Flats Mountain Trail. (Link ) That afternoon we headed further east on the Skyway. We planned on trailhead camping, but first headed to Hooper Bald (best known as the site of the old private hunting reserve where wild boar first escaped to infest the Smokies region). We planned to take three days for a loop around the Big Snowbird and Kings Meadows trails. Water along Big Snowbird would be easy to find, but the return on the Kings Meadow Trail (#63) looked to be dry. So, we decided to cache three 2 liter bottles of water just below Hooper Bald at the junction of the Mitchell Lick (#154) and Kings Meadows trails.

We liked the top of Hooper Bald well enough we decided to camp there instead. We arrived at sunset, with the fog rolling in so didn’t get to enjoy the view. The bald was growing over, with few grassy places and lots of blackberry, but much better than camping at the trailhead with hunting vehicles driving in and out.

10-13-2005

Morning brought another dense fog. Arriving at the Big Snowbird (aka Junction) TH there were only two other cars. We checked out the end of our return route on the Kings Meadow Trail just to confirm there was a bridge over Snowbird Creek. The first three miles to the Trail 65 junction at the old car were easy, as was the next mile to Big Falls. The trail follows the route of the 1928-1942 lumber operations in the Snowbird Creek Watershed. The side trip to Big Falls is short but tough; steep and slick with two ropes in place. Big Falls is more of a long cascade than a true waterfall.

We ate lunch at the start of the bypass trail (#64A) where we met our only other hiker of the trip. Though the bypass skips the 11 creek crossings of the old RR grade, it requires some steep climbing of its own. The west end of the bypass had the only trail sign of the day. We looked for some campsites in the complicated area around Middle Falls, and I made a rough sketch map of the trails. It seemed that the blaze colors for the trails did not match the trail names on our map. After a bit of waterfall watching we decided to head further upstream and look for a better campsite. We passed the junction with the Sassafras Trail, then a pile of cables that we thought might have been for a planned bridge. The trail here was still a wide well cleared old railroad grade. We’d gone about a half mile upstream when we found a modest campsite where we decided to stay. We found the upper part of the stream similar to the Deep Creek area of the Smokies, the streams are about the same size and are both lined with rhodo and hemlock.

Middle falls, 2005.

Upper Snowbird Creek CS, 6.6 miles

10-14-2005

While the previous day’s hike had been in the more used, better known, part of Snowbird, the rest of the trip would venture into unknown terrain that was notoriously tough to navigate. We awoke to fine, cool morning. There was just a tint of color to the leaves, a hopeful sign that fall was finally on its way. The trail started mostly easy, except for in places where it climbed the banks to avoid places where the old RR grade had crossed the creek. We saw an old lumber camp and modern campsite at the mouth of Meadow Branch. There were some old RR artifacts, but unfortunately also plenty of modern trash.  We missed Upper Falls, which was reputed to be tough to find in the rhodo.

Our first pair of creek crossings were just beyond, but we were able to get across with dry feet. The next campsite we saw was near the head of the creek across from the mouth of Bearpen Branch. This campsite too was fouled with trash. After a snack we pushed up the head of Snowbird Creek, then started thrashing through the rhodo along the creek bed. Luckily, we realized something was wrong and backtracked to an obvious, but unsigned junction with the Mitchell Lick Trail. We turned east onto it, but Mitchell Lick was not blazed, and required several false starts before we got going along it. We next stopped at what we thought was the junction with the spur trail to Hooper Bald and I dropped my pack with Jean to hike up to our water cache. After about 5 minutes of walking, I came to the sign for the spur at the actual junction. I ended up walking up to the cache, retrieving our water, toting it down to the sign, then walking back to Jean and the packs, before hiking back to sign to reunite us with our water.

The spur junction was at nearly 5,000’, the high point of our trip, so we celebrated with a nice long lunch before heading down the Kings Meadow Trail. The Kings Meadow area on the northeast side of the Backcountry Area is private land, and a maze of ATV roads connect to Hooper Bald and the trail, which was steep and often eroded. We did our best to follow the ridge line down, with only a few yellow blazes to guide us. Despite all the ATV roads, we did not see any vehicles and found a large ridgeline campsite where we made dinner using the water from our recovered cache.

Kings Meadow CS, 10.2 mi, plus 1.6 mi RT to recover water cache

10-15-2005

Luckily, the night passed without any visits from nocturnal ATV’s. We had a short walk to Deep Gap where the ATVs mercifully exited the trail. But as soon as we entered the woods the trail grew obscure. No footway, no signs, no blazes, and heavily overgrown. This trail obviously had earned its reputation for difficulty. We walked warily until the trail joined Firescald Ridge and became a little clearer. The end of the trail wound through an area of an old logging railroad with the characteristic pattern of alternating steep and nearly level sections. Finally, we reached the new bridge over Snowbird Creek and the Junction Trailhead. While we thought the lower part of the Kings Meadow Trail was pretty, overall it was not worth the hassle of hiking the ATV marred section.

Snowbird had fulfilled our goal of finding a new and challenging backpacking area similar to the Smokies and Joyce Kilmer. Just following the trails beyond Big Snowbird required skill and patience. The Snowbird Mountain and Sassafras trails were reputed to be even less obvious than the Mitchell Lick and Kings Meadow trail that we had used. The ATV marred area on Kings Meadow was a downer, but we had known of that before we left and the land there is partly privately owned. The major waterfalls are spectacular and within moderate day hiking range for someone who might be visiting in Robbinsville. However, much of our reason for not returning to Snowbird was a pivot to the west in our interest in new hiking areas as we began to explore the new land acquisitions in the Cumberland Mountains by the state of Tennessee.

We returned home via the Skyway with a stop for me to hike the 2.5 mile trail to Huckleberry Bald. 7.5 miles

Huckleberry Bald.

Our 2005 Snowbird Route.

The best map to the Snowbird Area remains the 1990 NNF Map available here.

2005 10-12, Finishing our Joyce Kilmer Map!

Not long after finishing hiking all the 900 miles of trails in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Jean and I started looking for some other hiking challenges to complete. The thrill  of hiking new trails and seeing new places was too much for us not to take up another quest. But much of what makes the 900 miles so epic is its size, there are very few places that host such an extensive trail network. We knew we’d have a smaller area for our next goal, but we ended up trying to complete two separate maps: one for Frozen Head State Park in the Cumberland Mountains, and another for the combined Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Creek and Citico wildernesses.

Citico Creek Wilderness.

The combined wilderness areas lie southwest of the Smokies and are essentially a continuation of that range across the Little Tennessee River. The Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness is on the east side, mostly in the Nantahala National Forest, and mostly in North Carolina. The Citico Creek Wilderness is the west side, mostly in the Cherokee National Forest, and mostly in Tennessee. The area’s prime attraction is the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, a grove of huge trees named in honor of the poet Alfred Joyce Kilmer, known primarily for his poem “Trees.” For simplicity, most hikers refer to the combined area as “Joyce Kilmer.”

Evening on Bobs Bald.

We didn’t know anyone else who had tried to hike a map of Joyce Kilmer, so we were free to make up our own rules for marking the map. We decided to use the USFS paper map “Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Creek and Citico Wildernesses” as our guide. We wouldn’t consider trails on the map outside the wilderness across the Cherahala Skyway, and we would skip the few trails completely outside the wilderness off the Big Fat Gap Road (NNF 62). Otherwise, we would hike all the trails on the map connecting to the wilderness. Finally, we would hike all the trails together. After we completed our map the Benton MaKaye Trail was located through the wildernesses, including on some new trails, but we did not hike those new sections.

Hiker on the Hangover.

Our timing on the quest was lucky. We were able to use the 1998 edition of Tim Homan’s wonderful guidebook to the area. For the Citico Creek side we also had the Sierra Club’s newly revised “Wilderness Trails of the Cherokee National Forest.” We would be exploring 33,285 acres of wilderness and hiking 123 miles of trail.

Jean and I been hiking in Joyce Kilmer together since the late 90s and were able to markup plenty of these trails to get ourselves started. The most popular hikes in the area are from the Cherahala Skyway to the meadow on Bobs Bald, and the wonderful, wet trail up Slickrock Creek. Beyond these two areas Joyce Kilmer is empty enough to live up to its wilderness designation. We’d already done many of the more popular backpacking routes; Naked Ground and Bobs Bald, Upper Slickrock Creek and the Hangover, and North Fork Citico-Pine Mountain as examples. We would end up doing most of the remaining loops as backpack trips, the ability to pick your own campsite gives Joyce Kilmer an advantage in flexibility over backpacking in the Smokies. Those trips introduced us to a few of our now favorite campsites such as the High Oasis on Fodderstack Mountain, and the upper campsite on the South Fork of Citico Creek that Will Skelton revealed to us.

When the list of unhiked trails got shorter, we turned to day hikes to try and get more new miles for our efforts. Fortunately for us careful planning had led to a long streak of successful backpacking trips. It was during our day hikes were when the “adventures” began.

Maple Springs Overlook.

Our first bonus miles were picked up on a Labor Day trip in 2002. Day 1 was a short hike from Farr Gap down the Stiffknee Trail (no, not named for me) to a small campsite at the junction with the Nichols Cove Trail. Our plan for the middle day was to do a loop with the Nichols Cove, Yellowhammer, Hangover Lead North, and Windy Gap trails.

Nichols Cove Trail was fine, but the Yellowhammer Gap Trail is famous for being hot and steamy, and for having a few more rolling hills than necessary. We reached the Gap with no problems and took a break at this complicated 4-way junction. We then went up the Ike Branch Trail about one hundred yards to the junction with Hangover Lead North. Here we found we found a well maintained trail (not something to take for granted in Joyce Kilmer) next to sign for the Tapoco Watershed. It had a gentle grade and was marked with pink flags, so off we went. With nice, easy trail ahead Jean and I both slipped into a daze. The pink flags were soon replaced by green blazes. After far too long, I realized that for a trail that was supposed to be climbing toward Big Fat Gap, we seemed to be going awfully level. In about an hour the trail joined an old road, and then we hit a mowed wildlife opening, then another opening.

Even worse, we soon came to a wooden bridge over a small creek, not something one would expect to find on a hike up the nose of a ridge in a wilderness area. We sat on the bridge to eat lunch, gradually accepting the sad fact that we were very lost.  We retreated through the wildlife openings and then retraced the old road section. I had a GPS unit, back then, but wasn’t good at loading target waypoints yet. Finally, with some map work and the help of the GPS I finally figured out about where we were, somewhere on the upper part of Caney Branch, well below Hangover Lead. Though we later figured out that our route was part of the Belding Trail, that trail was not then on any of our maps, and we had no idea where it was leading. We faced the harsh reality that we’d need to turn around and try again another day.

So, five hours after leaving Yellowhammer Gap we were back again, and able to immediately spot our mistake. At the watershed sign we should have turned hard right, climbed up a bank and then followed the crest of Hangover Lead. We salvaged a bit of the day by picking up a section of the Ike Branch Trail on our return, but our navigational mistake would require us to plan another trip to finish Hangover Lead North.

The next year we took an anniversary trip to Tapoco Lodge and were able to connect the lodge trails to the turnaround on Caney Branch, at least partially redeeming ourselves.

Bear Creek Falls near Tapoco.

Then in June 2003 we were walking the Rocky Flats Trail, an isolated trail on the Citico Creek side of the area.  We’d already needed a CNF ranger to help us find the start of the trail in the clutter of the informal campground on Citico Creek at the west end of the trail. In the quiet of the forest, we heard a sudden skittering in a tree by the trail. Looking up about head high we spotted an adorable bear cub, about the size of football, and engineered to be the cutest thing on the planet. We froze for a second, remembering that with any cub, mama is close by. We briefly considered a full retreat, but then realized the chance that mama was ahead was just as good as the chance she was behind. We scooted past the cub who was now 50’+ up the tree and shot down the trail, trying to give ourselves whatever cushion we’d need to placate mama. Of course, we still needed to come back the same way at the end of the hike, but even being able to spot the same tree, we did not find the cub.

Old homesite on the Flats Mountain Trail.

Our most memorable trip though was probably our shortest. For folks like us who don’t undertake a map marking project until after they’ve starting hiking in the area, there are always a few trail odds and ends that need to be wrapped up Our most egregious was the Wolf Laurel Trail (NNF 57) that connects from an obscure trailhead well off the Cherahala Skyway leading to the Stratton Bald Trail on Horse Cove Ridge. The trails that climb out of Little Santeetlah Creek to the wilderness high country are long steady climbs and we must have been worn out when we reached the Wolf Laurel junction and passed it by.

7-16-05 was the day we’d pay our price for this oversight. After hiking the Grassy Branch Trail off the Skyway, we got back in the car and pressed onward to the state line, and then endured 20 miles of long gravel roads on NNF 81 and 81F past Swan Cabin to reach the Wolf Laurel Trailhead. The steeper trailhead road 81F alone took us 30 minutes. After all the driving we thought we’d at least get a chance to stretch our legs after the drive, but no. The feeder trail from the trailhead was only three minutes and thirty-five seconds long (Jean measured it on the return). How could we not even have seen the trailhead from the junction if we were that close? Sometimes we need to learn a lesson twice for it to stick, don’t ever pass up those short stub trails without checking them out! Thankfully, we didn’t have to drive all the way home after that anticlimax. We had planned a hotel night in Robbinsville so that we could join the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club the next day on a loop around the Jenkins and Naked Ground trails.

But finally, in October of 2005, the big day was here. We planned a big four day weekend over UT’s Fall Break and our first stop would be to walk the Flats Mountain Trail to finish our Joyce Kilmer map. We had left this trail until last after hearing from the CNF that it likely had a lot of deadfall from pines killed by insects. We figured by waiting until the cooler temperatures of fall we’d be comfortable in the long pants and sleeves needed to keep the brush at bay. We started the hike on the Cherahala Skyway, assuming that it would be easier to hike down through the brush, and knowing we could return via the Grassy Branch Trail if needed.

It was foggy in the morning and the dew was thick in two wildlife openings before the wilderness boundary, so I ended up with wet feet all day. About two miles in we hit stands of pine. Many were down, but most were easy to pass around. The pines seemed to hug the crest, while the trail generally passed a bit below. Luckily, we soon left the pines behind and the last four miles of the trail were really nice. We’d hoped for a big celebration when we reached the end of the trail at Beehouse Gap on FS35, but a bunch of boar hunters were parked there cramping our style. They had just killed a rattlesnake and warned us to be careful.

We decided to take the longer, but hopefully easier return back via the South Fork Citico and Grassy Branch trails. There was a trashy former horse camp on the South Fork Citico Trail at the wilderness boundary and lots of trail damage from horses beyond it. But still the walk along the creek was wonderful and graced with many views of this beautiful creek. We managed to avoid two fords near the junction with Grassy Branch. However, on another bypass we managed to come face to face with a rattler as predicted by our boar hunting buddies. We made the long climb up Grassy Branch, and then we still had a 1.5 mile walk on the Skyway back to our car.

Fall Branch Falls.

2005 was great year for map marking for us. In addition to the Joyce Kilmer map, we had finished the Frozen Head State Park map that February. Fortunately, many adventures still lay ahead of us. After camping that night on Hooper Bald, just off the Skyway, we’d begin a three day backpacking trip around the Snowbird Backcountry Area in the NNF the next day.

Hikers at Rock Creek Falls.

Our completed Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock and Citico Creek Wildernesses Map.