Day Hike - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Five adventurous Mountaineers traveled across the country to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee/North Carolina.  Early May was a wonderful time to visit the Smoky Mountains as everything is colored in hues of green.  The cooler temperatures and precipitation contributed to the mist and fog blanketing the mountains, giving it the characteristic “smoky” appearance.   There is no entrance fee for the Park, but there is a daily 5$ parking fee.

We stayed in a cabin in the Gatlinburg area, which was convenient for accessing the park.

The first days of our trip coincided with the Annual Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage, an event featuring professionally guided walks, exhibits, and other learning opportunities to explore the region's rich natural and cultural resources including fungi, ferns, wildflowers, trees and shrubs, medicinal plants, insects (terrestrial and aquatic), salamanders and snakes, birds, mammals (bats to bears), journaling, art and photography, and park history.  These provided great background knowledge for the proceeding hikes.  

The next four days were spent hiking trails designed to showcase the best views, wildflowers, waterfalls, geology and history that this park has to offer.   Our first hike followed the Trillium Gap Trail through a beautiful old-growth forest, viewing a smorgasbord of wildflowers along the way including several unique varieties of trillium such as yellow, Vesey’s and red. We continued to  the tumbling cascade of Grotto Falls, which we were able to walk behind, and is an ideal habitat for salamanders. Hiking through a tunnel of rhododendron, mountain laurel, sand myrtle and other heath family shrubs and bushes we finally reached the summit of Brushy Mountain and were rewarded with outstanding views of the entire eastern flank of the Great Smoky Mountains including Charlies Bunion, Mount Sequoyah, Mount Chapman, Mount Guyot and beyond. 

Our second hike was considered the marquis trail in the Great Smoky Mountains! The trail followed Alum Cave Stream, crossing bridges and streams through heavily forested areas through Arch Rock to Alum Cave.   In the mid-1800s, the cave was mined for Epsom salts, and later, for saltpeter, which was used to produce gunpowder during the war.   The geology of the Anakeesta Rock formation was interesting to learn about.

Our third hike followed the Little River Trail that parallels the river with the same name. The river itself is a beautiful cascading stream with large boulders and several small waterfalls and is now on the list of Outstanding National Resource Waters, and is home to the eastern hellbender, a giant salamander that can measure more than two feet in length.  We passed by several old cottages, many of which are on the National Register of Historic Places . and lunched at Huskey Branch Falls.  The trail was ablaze with wildflowers such as hepaticas, rue anemone, crested dwarf iris, yellow trillium, dwarf cinquefoil, stonecrop, Canadian violets and umbrella leaf.  Shown below are Lady Slipper, Fawn Lily and Cinnamon Fern.

Our final hike began from the Forney Ridge Trailhead and climbed steadily along a rugged and rock-strewn pathway, before arriving at the Appalachian Trail junction, the trail marked with a white blaze.  This portion of the Appalachian Trail passes through an old-growth spruce-fir forest with many birds and wildflowers.  We lunched at one of the shelters on the AT and imagined what it would be like to do a through- hike on this famous trail.

The trip also rewarded us with wildlife, such as Black Bear, snakes, deer and wild turkey.

We all had fun exploring the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.