Smokies Off Trail, Newt Prong and the Wrong Prong, 11-4-07

After my 1998 and 1999 trips up the Bent Arm manway the SMHC continued to lead hikes on the manway every few years. After we missed a couple of the club trips, we got the idea to try to follow the manway ourselves. Mark had been on the latest club trip and gave us good info on the current state of the manway. He also suggested we consider the variation that his group had done, a descent down Newt Prong to eliminate the tedium of the Miry Ridge and Jakes Gap trails. Mark was unsure which fork of the prong his group had descended, but it seemed most likely that it was the named prong on the west side.

Backcountry navigation can get complicated.

Jean, Ed, and I decided to give it a shot for the third of our three weekend trips we would take together that fall. The weather was perfect; cool and calm with blue skies. We left the Elkmont Trailhead at 8:45, and were on the manway by 9:30. I took GPS and Jean took pictures. The old railroad grade at the start was easy to follow with its wide, deep cuts. There was a short unmaintained section at the split with Cucumber Gap Trail (probably to hide the manway from the curious), then we saw a lot of clipping and sawed limbs all the way to the ridge crest which we reached in about 1:30.

With Ed at lunch.

On the ridge crest we found the rhodo tunnel wide open, and the CCC-era retaining walls in place. It took about 30 minutes to pass through the rhodo tunnel. The trail along the ridge crest was obscure, but remains on the crest or left side of the crest. We noted many gnarled and wind stressed beech trees here.

We walked the Miry Ridge Trail to Campsite 26 to descend Newt Prong. We quickly got trapped by rhodo in the flat area around the campsite. We tried a small ridge to the right (east) but that didn’t work well either. We eventually escaped the rhodo after 30-40 minutes of thrashing by going to the left side of the creek in a steep area. But we still found upper Newt Prong slow going with lots of boulders. We did see one waterfall as compensation. It took us about 90 minutes to reach the confluence with the east fork. This upper section appeared much rougher than had been described by Mark. 

In the rhododendron.

Below the confluence with the east fork, the route was much more open. But it still required about 50 minutes to reach the trailhead. We stayed on the left side of the creek through the lower valley and saw one old homesite. On the trail back to Elkmont we encountered a hiker that Ed and I had met on the club’s recent Wooley Tops hike. Total distance was about 8 miles. 

Fall colors.

Mark and the SMHC group had not encountered any of the rhodo that we had seen in the upper west prong of Newt. That led Ed and I to assume that perhaps the club trip had gone down the east fork instead. So, we put the east fork on our “to do” list and were able to make another attempt in January 2009.

1-11-09, Wrong Prong

9.0 miles w/ Jean, Ed, and Claudia

Confident that this hike would be easier than the west fork of Newt Prong, we were hoping that this trip would help start a new winter season off trailing for us. We planned the usual ascent of Bent Arm, with a descent down the new east fork back to Elkmont. The day was cold with fog and blowing snow, along with a small amount of fresh snow from the previous day. I took a GPS track, but conditions were too wet for pictures.

The Wrong Prong looms large as the only trip we ever took where we thought we would get stuck outside overnight. We did almost everything wrong, as if our theme was “a bad plan, poorly executed.” First, we never did follow up to find out which route the SMHC used on Mark’s trip. We just assumed the west side was too rough to be what Marked hiked. Then we assumed our alternate route would be easier, and dressed and fed ourselves accordingly. We also discounted the weather with cold, snow, wind, and especially the old snow coating all the vegetation.

Climbing Bent Arm went well. With the dusting of snow, we could see some old railroad grades coming up from Huskey Branch. The rhodo tunnel and the open ridgetop sections also went well. We had a short, cold lunch at the head of the east fork. This discomfort should have tipped us off that it would be too cold to struggle down the east fork in the salad, but we went on. Both Ed and I believed the east fork would be better than the 30 minute rhodo wrestle we had in the main fork.

The very top did start well, but soon we were consumed in the rhodo. The route was much tougher and much longer, especially with the cold and all the leaves and branches covered in loose snow. It seemed every branch we bashed was covered in powder snow just waiting to soak us as we struggled by. Nearly every step was a wrestling match with the ever present rhodo limbs grabbing our arms, legs, and packs. It took a full hour to get to our first short-lived semi-clearing. We tried to climb out of the creek bottom, but that didn’t help much, and we continued to be pulled ahead by short lived promises of less dense growth.

By late afternoon we were tired, cold, wet and it was apparent that we might not escape the rhodo by dark. Even as we reached a small junction at around 3700’, the battle with the rhodo did not abate. I had entered a few GPS waypoints, but these went by with mystifying slowness. I was just hoping to make the main fork around 3400’ by sunset. By that time, we were mostly going down the creek and were chilled to the core despite wearing all our clothing.

Finally, by around 4:30 we reached the main fork, and the valley soon opened up. There had been no talking for a while, but finally we felt relief that we wouldn’t be seeping in the snow. What had taken us 90 minutes via the west “main” prong had taken us three tortuous hours via the east “wrong” prong. Even then it was still a half hour to the Jakes Creek Trail, and another half hour to the cars, but at least we knew we would make it out.

The only upside of days like these is that the experience ensures more caution on future trips. I’d gotten overconfident from our successes on other off trail trips, and the price for that mistake could have been much worse. We’d go on to make many more great off trail hikes, all bolstered by the lessons we’d learned in the Wrong Prong.

Newt prong and the Wrong Prong.