Taming the Trails

For years the Big Butt Trail did not get much in the way of engineering attention from the National Forest Service. I used to hear stories about the scrambling you would encounter if you hiked to Point Misery and beyond. No easy Class I hiking, but Class II stuff and a little scrambling where you couldn't help but use all four limbs to advance up the trail.

But in the past few years the National Forest folk have paid good money to engineer the trail to file off the rough patches. At some of the more difficult sections they did slight re-routes and put in very stout stairs so that you can continue onward and upward without having to result to climbing up rock walls like a spider monkey.

In some ways, I'm relieved. But I always did enjoy a scrambling route now and again. That's gone from this particular trail.

These stairs are really solid!

The cliff faces and boulders that once had to be climbed hand over hand.

These staircases kick ass. Solid as they make 'em.

The Summit of Big Butt Mountain

I ended up doing the easy hike as a day-trip instead of camping out up there. Although I do wish I'd stayed. The weather was nice and I'd have been able to do some star-gazing.

One peak that I wanted to bag, and one that has been on my to-hike list for many, many years is Big Butt Mountain. It's one of those peaks that many people ignore because it's not quite a 6,000-foot summit. My GPS reading came out at 5,961 feet which is, I think, pretty accurate. I calibrated it as nearly as I could before I hit the trail.

One thing that is strange to me is that the summit is clothed in hardwoods and rhododendron rather than spruce and balsam trees like most of the rest of the Black Mountain high summits. What's different about this mountain from other Black Mountain summits that are at, or above, 6,000 feet in elevation?

Yeah, this is a "trail". Unofficial manways like this one tend to get overwhelmed by vegetation when people don't use them. Fortunately for me, something was using this one to help me find my way. That something was...

...a bear! The Black Mountains are dense with bears. This pile of bear scat was sitting in the middle of the manway. Which actually makes it, I would reckon, a bear trail.

This is the marker for the very summit of the peak. My GPS device gave me a reading of 5,961 feet which is probably pretty close to the real figure. Mountains like this one don't get a lot of visitors because they're not on the list of "Sixers"--that is, southern peaks that are over 6,000 feet in elevation. Because of this, there are no official trails to this summit, and I didn't have to deal with any pesky humans. I had the trail, and the mountain, all to myself!

Most of the rhododendrons on the summit were in full, glorious bloom.

I had been told that there are no views from the summit. That information is correct, as the top is fully clothed in dense vegetation. This was the closest thing to a long-range view to be had up there.

This ancient, gnarly birch tree was perched just below the summit. Birch trees at such altitudes tend to get twisted into weird shapes and end up looking really strange.

There were a few rhododendron blossoms still waiting to unfurl at the summit.

No pesky humans! No blabbering companions! No slobbering dogs! Just me and the sounds of the wild forest!