Last weekend's hike was an amazing hike. Ben and I were planning to hike a portion of the AT on Saturday, but he woke up with some sinus issues and didn't feel like going, so I regrouped and planned a different hike for Sunday. I'm sure the AT hike would've been amazing, too, but I'm actually really glad I picked this hike and got to do it at this time of year.
The hike started at a relatively low elevation, at the Huskey Gap trailhead on Newfound Gap Road, about a mile and a half from the Sugarlands Visitor Center. I had a beautiful drive to get there because (1) at 6:30AM, there's very little traffic coming through Pigeon Forge and on the Gatlinburg bypass; (2) due to standard time (which I always lament because I love saving daylight), the sun rises so dang early that I could actually see the scenery on the bypass even though I got to the trailhead by 7:15; and (3) the fall leaves are spectacular at lower elevations right now. I was really excited to get out of the car and onto the trail.
The Huskey Gap trail climbs for a couple of miles up to its intersection with the Sugarland Mountain trail at...Huskey Gap (who would've thought, right?). There are a few steep places, but overall it wasn't a bad climb. There were lots of great views off the side of the trail, too, which were made better by the morning sun shining on the bright fall leaves.
Even in places where the sun wasn't yet hitting the leaves, the colors were just beautiful.
This loop hike took me across Huskey Gap (staying on the Huskey Gap trail) and back down the mountain to the Little River trail. There were a couple of nice views coming back down the mountain as well.
I also ran into some wildlife on the back side of Huskey Gap. Coming up from the trailhead, I saw a few turkeys, but coming back down, a couple of deer ran across the trail right in front of me. Can you spot the deer?
Now?
Pretty much all the time while I'm hiking, I play a little game I like to call "stump, rock, or bear." This is mainly because I'm a little bit paranoid (I prefer "respectfully careful") about bears, so anytime I see a black stump or rock covered in dark moss, my brain automatically thinks it's a bear. But on this hike, one of them actually did turn out to be a bear! Can you see her?
How about after I zoom in?
As usual, I just stood on the trail and talked to her for a few minutes, and then she rustled up her two cubs (who I couldn't even see for the trees until they started moving) and headed to the top of the ridge, at which point I continued down the trail towards the river.
The Little River trail is a really nice walk along - you guessed it - the Little River. The water views were really pretty.
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I'm always amazed at how clear the water is.
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As I approached the junction with the Rough Creek trail, there were a couple of highly questionable water crossings. I knew that there were water crossings, of course, but nothing in either of my books mentioned that a couple of them really had no good rock-hopping options and that you had a really good chance of getting your feet wet. Typically I save trails like that for summer hiking, because who wants to put their feet in freezing cold water in the winter? But here I was, about 8 miles into my hike (so I wasn't just going to turn around), so I pulled out my trekking poles and made the best of it. At one crossing, I had to "rock hop" using rocks that were totally submerged. Zero rocks sticking above the water. So you can't really "hop" because those rocks are dang slippery. At one point there were no rocks close enough to the top of the water, and I did get a little water over the top of one boot, but it wasn't a huge deal.
At the last crossing before the Rough Creek trail junction, I actually lost the trail for a little bit. There was a campsite on the opposite side of the river from me, but I didn't think the trail actually crossed the river (I thought you just crossed if you wanted to go to the campsite). So I ended up backtracking (doing one of the river crossings a second time) to try to find where I went wrong, but then realized I was actually in the right place, so I did that crossing again and then did the crossing by the campsite to continue on. Honestly, it's a miracle that in all of this I only got one foot slightly damp.
Anyway, I made it to the trail junction and continued up Rough Creek. As the name implies, the trail is a little rough. It's pretty narrow, and much of its landscape was burned in the relatively recent fires. A friend of mine told me that, back in the summer, the trail was really overgrown with the undergrowth (that seems like a paradox, right?) that has been allowed to flourish since the fire, but I think the cooler temperatures recently have scaled back some of the overgrowth because I didn't find it to be too unpleasant. There were some taller weedy bushes encroaching on the trail near the top, but I've definitely hiked through worse.
The worst part for me was all the littered broken tree parts cause by the fires weakening or killing the trees. This would be a pretty dangerous area in high winds. I actually saw a sign when I was coming back down Sugarland Mountain and almost to the Huskey Gap Trail Junction (so, if I had turned up Sugarland Mountain from Huskey Gap, I would've seen it earlier) saying that this was a burn area and to avoid it in high winds, etc. A nice warning, for sure, but if you're looking at trees that look like this, I think you probably don't need the sign.
So, there were lots of branches, limbs, etc., on or near the trail, but it definitely could've been worse. My friend said that there were several blow-downs across the trail a few months ago, but apparently someone has cleaned those up, because I didn't come across any that I couldn't easily step over. There was one large limb in the middle of the trail that I had to move because there was no way over or around it, but that was a 5-minute distraction at worst.
The upside of all the dead trees on this ridge was that there were some amazing views from this trail, and they just kept getting better the closer I got to the Sugarland Mountain trail junction.
There were also some really nice views off both sides of the ridge as I came back down Sugarland Mountain.
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That's Gatlinburg way down there.
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And then, of course, coming back down Huskey Gap to the car, I got to enjoy the views I had coming up the trail in the morning light from the other direction in the afternoon light.
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This is one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken on a hike. I mean, holy cow. It's like walking in a painting.
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I highly, highly recommend this hike for a great fall hike (but be mindful of the high wind warning and the water crossing situation if it's really cold outside - the weather this weekend was pretty perfect at mid-70s). I saw very few people on any of these trails, so I assume they're lesser-used trails in the Smokies, and that's really hard to find in the fall. And I have no idea why they're lesser-used, because they're beautiful and the trailhead is relatively quick and easy to get to. Whatever the reason, I'll take it, because the beauty and solitude of this hike was a winning combo in my book. I'm definitely putting this one on the repeat list.
Unduplicated Smokies Miles: 115.5
Total Smokies Miles: 133.1
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