Longarm Ridge was a hike on the 2015 SMHC schedule suggested by George Ritter. George had hiked it many years back, and remembered that the long, narrow ridge had been used to transport logs in the early days before the park. But it didn’t appear that the ridge had been hiked recently, and by handbook time, no one had volunteered to lead the hike.
In
the meantime, Jean and I had discovered the wonderful Meigs home sites route in
the same area on a March visit. We told the SMHC that I was not signing up to
lead Longarm, but that I was willing to scout the route. I suggested that if
the Longarm route wasn’t good for the SMHC trip, we could lead the home sites
route instead. That was a perfect fit for the use of Ed’s skills at both route
finding and discovering and interpreting old home site, so we were lucky to
have him along on the trip. We planned to spot a shuttle car at the small
pullout near Longarm Bridge on the Little River Road, drive over to Elkmont,
and hike back for seven miles.
George's Long Arm map.
For
the hike we met Ed at Longarm Bridge, and shuttled over to Elkmont with him. The
lower end of Longarm Ridge pushes the Little River north into a hairpin turn.
At the top of the turn, the bridge crosses the creek. This meant reaching the
road on the east side would require a ford of the river. A west side route was
no picnic either, with a steep rocky roadcut to descend, and no shoulder along
the road.
We
started at Elkmont walking through the old summer home area. At the upper end
of Elkmont we detoured on a side trail over to the NPS horse barn where Ed
found a stash of sycamore logs he’d been hunting for his trail maintenance work.
The Chattanooga Chimney.
On
the Meigs Mountain Trail we passed a large party camped at CS 20. We easily
found the east end of the home sites manway, and proceeded to show Ed the sites
we’d seen in March. We had no trouble finding the home sites again, including the
Eli Owenby (aka the leaning) chimney. Lunch was at the Meigs/Curry junction at
the west end of the manway.
The leaning chimney.
Unfortunately,
Longarm Ridge proved heavily overgrown from start to finish. The underbrush was
a mix of laurel and greenbrier, neither conductive to forward progress. The
easiest part was a patch of tall, mature rhodo near the start. Despite the
narrowness of the ridge, we needed GPS to mark turns in two locations because our
visibility was so short. We saw no sign of an old road along the ridge top, and
doubted one had ever existed. We did see the trace of some old grade crossing
our path in a small saddle. My GPS plot showed us mostly on the west side of
the ridge, though we generally followed the ridge crest. The west slope looked
too thick with rhodo to walk.
We
followed the ridge to its northern end where we could look down on the road
below us. We backtracked 50-100 yards to where we remembered a slight break in
the roadcut that we thought we could descend. The descent route worked, but
dumped us into midsummer park traffic. With limited visibility, it was hard to cross
the road to where there was a shoulder. We were standing right next to the
passing cars where we recognized the SMHC Program Committee chair whizzing by. We
joked she was checking in on us within a minute of our finishing the scouting
trip!
The Long Arm Ridge route.
We eventually made it back to our car in the pullout. The temperature was 87F at the trailhead, and it would later reach 97F in Alcoa on the drive home.
All
three of us were convinced that Longarm Ridge would not be an appealing club
hike. We told the Board that Ed and I would lead the Meigs home sites instead.
Ray was initially reluctant to make the change, maybe thinking we were just
being skittish about a little brush. But he relented when he realized that
there was still no one to lead Longarm. George was understanding. He knew the
character of unmaintained routes in the Smokies changes over time, and that this
was a case where the change was not for the better. We went on to lead the Meigs
home sites trip for the club on 12-5-15. I plan to make a separate write up for
the Meigs Home sites routes covering all four visits, including a 11-24-19 club
trip.
The December 2015 SMHC hikers.
