Thank You, Locke Craig!

I'm just home from a two-day overnight backpacking trip to the Black Mountains. Once again (sixth time) I tackled the infamous Black Mountain Crest Trail. I didn't end up doing the hike I had planned, but I'll leave those details for tomorrow.

However, here are some images and video I took on my trek across the eastern USA's second highest summit on my way to the parking lot where my truck was waiting (on the highest summit in the eastern USA).

Hikers are not supposed to step beyond the wooden trail borders. In order to protect rare plants.

Typical view from the top of Mount Craig.

Mount Mitchell from Mount Craig (with Clingman's Peak in the distance--with radio and microwave towers).

Hiking over the second highest peak and headed toward the HIGHEST peak.

Crest Trail Part III

The hike back to the Mount Mitchell parking lot was a bit of a torture for me after I left Cattail Peak for the last time. The thing about the Crest Trail is that you hit each of these amazing 6,000-foot summits, but after each of these you have to plunge down into the deep gaps that separate them. Thus, you are constantly losing and then having to regain that lost altitude.

I've never seen a profile map of the trail, but it has to be extreme. The constant up and down really works your muscles and lungs even when you don't have a bum knee and a really bad back. For me, it's exceedingly tough and by the time I was less than halfway back I was struggling. Fortunately, I'd started the hike early enough so that I didn't have a problem with daylight and for the first time ever for this trail I'd brought more than enough water.

So, the last three miles for me consisted of LOTS of stopping to rest and LOTS of water breaks and LOTS of extra photography.

Someday, when I'm recovered from all of these injuries, I hope to be able to do this trail as I used to be able to do it when I was in better physical condition. When that happens, I'll do another overnight traverse of the Black Mountains and camp in Deep Gap, one of my favorite campsites in North Carolina.

It was cold up in them thar hills! First icicle of the hiking season!

Some of the best views are from Potato Hill.

On the top of Cattail Peak.

The almost constant moisture on these peaks produces a LOT of moss.

Green, my friends.

The trail is like a tunnel through the red spruce.

Everywhere the moss.

Trees grasping for purchase anywhere.

This is why the trail kicks my ass.

Gnarly snag on Mount Craig as I hit the home stretch.

A last, longing look back where I had been.

Fall paints the lower peaks.

This peak below was interesting because of the difference in vegetation from one side to the other. Evergreens on the north-facing slopes, hardwoods south-facing.

The picnic area just below the summit of Mount Mitchell is EXTREMELY nice! I highly recommend it. They have dozens of picnic tables for the huge crowds that often gather on the mountain to enjoy the scenery and the natural beauty of eastern USA's highest peak.

I took this one between Mount Craig and the parking lot. And there she was: Mount Mitchell. The highest summit in eastern USA. Yeah, it has a road carved into it; a restaurant near the top; a museum just below the summit; a tower on the very top; housing for the park rangers, etc. But even all of that can't wreck the beauty of this amazing peak and its associated range.

Quiet time on Cattail Peak.

Mountains.

I went to see some mountains today. I'll post more later.

The Black Mountains of North Carolina. Highest mountain range in the eastern USA.

Self-portrait taken on Mount Craig, second highest peak in the eastern USA (and also second highest peak in North Carolina).

Six Days.

Six days straight of working without a break at USPS. Time for a brief road trip. I'll be heading up to the mountains. Right around our highest of high country. I think it's my favorite part of North Carolina. Wish I could hang out up there for weeks at a time without coming down.

Can't do that right now, but a day or two will do the job. So this amazing mountain range is where I'll be spending a couple of days after I clock out tomorrow.

The mountain in the foreground is Mount Craig, the second-highest summit in the eastern USA. Just beyond it is another summit that is almost 6,600 feet high. One of only a handful in the east of which that can be said.

Potato Knob. Another of the east's great summits. Over 6,400 feet high.

This rock formation is on Potato Knob. I've often thought about bushwhacking up there and pitching my tent in the shadow of that huge boulder to spend the evening watching the stars. One day...

I love this summit. One of the big peaks of the Black Mountains: Potato Hill. (Not to be confused with the nearby Potato Knob). Also about 6,400 feet above sea level.

The East's Highest Mountain

The Black Mountains of North Carolina have the highest peaks in the eastern USA. Mount Mitchell and Mount Craig are the first and second highest bits of land on this side of the country. The drive up to Mitchell is always interesting because of the change in weather one experiences from the foothills up to the summit parking lot. In our case we drove up from temperatures of about 90 to the upper 60s by the time we climbed out of the truck at the top.

The Black Mountains also remain my favorite hiking destination, especially for backpacking. This is because the trails are relatively uncrowded. Sometimes I do encounter some people when I'm camping in the back country there, but generally I can find some real solitude and quiet. In addition, there's not a lot of this type of country in the South, so it's a very unique and precious area. The forests and the animals who live within it are all very delicate and fragile. I never get tired of the Black Mountains.
The entrance to Mount Mitchell State Park with Commissary Ridge in the background. A couple of decades ago the forests here were all but dead. You can still see the bleached trunks of dead balsam trees (the source of the range's name). But the trees have made quite an amazing comeback and now it's possible to hike in the shade again where the ridges had become sunny from the dying trees, killed by invasive pests and acid rain.

The park office and the road leading up to the summit area.

This is the new trail to the top. It's now paved and well graded so that access is easy even for the disabled.

Carole at the summit sign.

Carole took this of me on the top of the new observation platform.

I'm resting here on the tomb of Elisha Mitchell, for whom the peak is named. He was convinced that this mountain was the highest in the East and died climbing down after another trip to make readings to prove his position that it was, indeed, higher than any other peak in the eastern USA. He was right, but died when he slipped and fell from a waterfall on the way down the mountain.

Carole walks down ahead of me as I stop to take photos.

I enjoy walking off trail on Mitchell. The balsam forests here are so much different from the kinds of woodlands I'm accustomed to that I never tire of them.

Just a nice view I found while wandering around off the main trail.

Spruce trees.

This sign is at the parking lot. Even this point is higher than all but a few peaks in the southern USA.

From that point I took this shot of Mount Craig, the eastern USA's second highest mountain. It's worth the hike over to observe the exposed summit and the great views from the clifftops.

Next, the run up to Craggy Gardens.

My Favorite Trail

My absolutely favorite hiking trail in all of the Southeast is the Black Mountain Crest Trail which stretches across the highest real estate in the eastern United States. The southern terminus of the trail is Mount Mitchell, the east's highest summit, and the northern end is at Bowlens Creek in the Pisgah National Forest.

A hike on this trail takes you across the two highest mountains in our half of the country and to the summits of several other of the very rare 6,000-foot peaks here in the South. It's a strange place to experience for the average southerner who is accustomed to pines and oaks and sweltering summer weather and an almost non-existent winter. This bit of high elevation country is clothed in spruce and balsam and suffers each year through an actual winter time with long periods of sub-zero weather and heavy snowfall.

I'd heard about the trail since childhood but had never hiked it. I finally did on a particularly warm November day some years back and set out at 10:00 am with the goal of hiking from Mount Mitchell to Winter Star and back to my truck. According to my maps it seemed like a straightforward hike of around ten miles round trip. That's not much trouble for me and I take mountain hikes of that length quite often.

However, what I did not realize was that the trail tackles the slopes between the peaks head on. There are no switchbacks. The trail has not been graded to follow softer and mellower slopes. It just goes at the peaks directly, making for some exceptionally steep hiking and scrambling. Added to this is the fact that there are no dependable sources of water along most the trail above Bowlens Creek. This means that for many miles of very difficult hiking you must depend on the water you bring along.

What this ended up meaning for me is that I badly underestimated the hiking time that I would need, and the amount of water that I would consume. I was okay all the way to my goal at Winter Star. But due to the severity of the slopes (you literally are on all fours at times), the hike took me much longer than I had anticipated. And then I ran out of water on the way back. Now, normally this would not have been a horrible problem, but as the hike was hitting about the 2/3 mark my legs began cramping. I found it impossible to walk, at times. The pain was hideous. Also, there was no one else on the trail, at all. I encountered no one the entire day. In fact, the only thing I saw on the trial that day was a black bear who I frightened and who ran like hell when he/she saw me. (We spotted one another at roughly the same time.)

As things ended up, I barely got back to my truck before nightfall and the gates to the park were locked up. Fortunately (as I've recounted in earlier posts) I had all of my camping equipment in the truck so if I'd been stranded in the park I had the necessities to sleep comfortably. But it was a close call getting back, and I walked the final few hundred yards in the dark.

But I love this trail so much that I've been back a number of times. It's one of my favorite overnight hikes, and I'm actually itching to do it again as a two-day backpack. Looking at these photos makes me want to start planning a trip soon.

The view from near the summit of Mount Craig looking north.

Along Potato Hill looking down into the valleys.

The peak known as Winter Star, one of the coolest named mountains I've hiked.

This was taken on the way back, above Deep Gap, as I began to wonder if I'd underestimated the time the hike would take and whether I'd brought enough water.

The top of Mount Craig on the way back toward Mitchell. The sun was going down and I'd been stopped time and again with hideous cramps in my thighs. At this point I was worried that I wouldn't get to the parking lot before darkness set in.

One of the last photos I stopped to take on the last leg. I was still about a mile and a half from the truck. If you click on the photo you can see the bright white dot in the parking lot that was my old Nissan Frontier. The tower on the mountaintop above the parking lot is gone, now. They tore it down to construct one that is handicap accessible. I walked the last bit of the trail in darkness, but got to my truck before the park closed for the night.

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