My friend Mark is one of those born mountain runners. He is a strong, superb climber and exceptionally experienced in the mountains. His favorite routes are usually deep in the Smokies or in the lesser travelled mountains near Greenville. When he calls, I should know better to answer the phone, especially early in the season when I’m not in shape, but sometimes I just forget myself.
One route Mark had on his to do list was NC’s Black Mountain Crest Trail from Bowlen’s Creek to the top of Mount Mitchell, the highest point on the east coast, and back. He thought the full trip would be ~25 miles with some serious climbing and a lot of really rough trail. I’d hiked the Black Mountain Crest from Mitchell south to Celo Knob as part of a peak bagging trip to the South Beyond 6,000, but not all the way down to Bowlens Creek. Mark also had done some hiking in the range, we both had run the Black Mountain Marathon and Mount Mitchell Challenge several times. The run seemed like a great way to get up out of the heat, see some new trail, and climb some high peaks. When Mark offered to drive, how could I say no?
At least I was smart enough to pack light. I had my vest with water, some food, maps, and GPS. I did not bring a camera, so photos of the trip are from Mark. We left my place at super early and he drove seemingly forever (120 miles via Mars Hill per Google, and every bit of 2.5 hours) while I nodded off in the car. The Bowlens Creek TH was unique. We parked in a weedy barely marked unattended lot with a homemade fee tube, but it seemed safer than just leaving the truck by the side of the road.
Bowlens Creek Trailhead
Most of the
main climbing was on the first 4.3 miles of the Bowlens Creek Trail. We
expected this to be a tougher section of the climb so were pleased that it was
well graded and seemed to be an old road. Mark probably would have run most of
the climb, but my conditioning was nowhere close to being good enough for that.
Still we were up on the crest near Celo Knob in 90 minutes. From the southern
sixers trip, I remembered that much of trail on this end was very overgrown and
was happy to see that now it was only covered by deep grass. But with all the
grass obscuring the trail tread we still weren’t doing any running.
Black Mtn. Crest near Celo Knob
But soon after
Woody Ridge the gentle grassy sections were behind us and we were on the
classic Black Mountain Crest Trail. This means super steep, deeply eroded trail
that winds up and over every exposed rock and root on the mountain. We struggled
to maintain 2 mph. I remembered some of this rough trail from backpacking trips
with Jean, but was surprised at how relentless the difficult sections were.
Again, Mark could have run some of these sections, but the footing was too
tricky for me to be comfortable running. We started to have one of “those”
discussions, how far could we afford to go before we’d need to turn around. I
should have sent Mark ahead to go to the summit of Mitchell and back, after all
that was the goal of the trip. Instead we spent some time stopping at the tops
of Winterstar and Balsam Cone, two of the other sixers along the way. Mark
didn’t have much interest in bagging the sixers, but I’m always a sucker for
picking up a few easy peaks. With most of the day spent high on the crest, the
typical summer heat and humidity of the Southern Appalachians wasn’t the issue
it normally is.
Taking a break on
the crest
Finally, we reached our turnaround time of 4:30 near the top of Big Tom, still nearly 2 miles from Mitchell. After a 15 minute break, it was up and over carefully through all the rough stuff again. I only had done one decent training run recently and it wasn’t enough to prepare me for all this effort. But finally we were back to the top of the Bowlens Creek climb. Mark agreed to go ahead and wait for me at the truck and after 7-8 hours of “running” I was able to really run the last few miles into the parking area. I hadn’t been running much downhill lately and paid a severe price for the downhill in very sore legs for the next couple of days.
It was disappointing not to have gotten all the way to Mitchell. The fault was primarily mine, for not being in good enough shape, and for not remembering how difficult the trail was, and therefore how little of it I’d be able to run. Maybe with an earlier start and softer deadline to return home we’ll be back.
Final Stats:
20.8 miles, 5400’ of climb, time 8:50
