This week I had a rare opportunity to (1) hike mid-week; and (2) stay overnight at LeConte Lodge. It's extremely difficult to get reservations at the Lodge, but my friend Latisha got one through their lottery system for the 2020 season. Due to Covid, the 2020 season was canceled, but they honored her reservation this year. It's easiest to get a reservation in the lottery if you don't specify dates that you want to come to the Lodge, and when you get a reservation for a Tuesday night, you just GO! I'm very grateful to Latisha for including me on her guest list for this trip AND for entertaining my requests for trail choices so I could knock out some new Smokies mileage.
I met Latisha, Stacy, and Kristy at the Trillium Gap trailhead (the "real" trailhead at the junction with the Rainbow Falls trail, not the Grotto Falls trailhead that cuts about two miles off the trail) Tuesday morning, and we got on the trail at about 8:45. I was amazed at how full the parking lot was at that point on a Tuesday (obviously, I never get the chance to hike mid-week), but I guess tourism in the Smokies never stops. Plus, the weather was supposed to be beautiful (and it was - we got really lucky with the LeConte reservation, as last weekend's guests were treated to snow and 7-degree overnight temps).
Anyway, the trail wasn't crowded because we were only on the Rainbow Falls trail for a couple of minutes and then turned onto Trillium Gap (while the rest of the traffic continued up Rainbow Falls to the falls themselves). The portion of the Trillium Gap trail between the Rainbow Falls trail and the Grotto Falls parking area probably doesn't get much use because it's easier for people to just park at the Grotto Falls lot and walk a mile and a half or so to those falls (as long as it's not winter - the road to the Grotto Falls parking area is closed in winter). So between the Rainbow Falls trail junction and the Grotto Falls parking area, the trail was very pleasant. We even saw a bear!
We also saw a tourist stop their car on the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail road below us, possibly because they thought we were bears. But I digress.
Trail traffic definitely picked up a little bit (but nothing like we would see on the Rainbow Falls trail the next day) between the Grotto Falls parking area and the falls, but for the most part we were able to avoid a ton of other people. And of course, once we got past the falls (where the great majority of people turn around and go back to the parking lot) and headed on up towards LeConte, we met very few people.
The Trillium Gap trail is the longest trail to the top of Mt. LeConte, so it's not as unforgiving in elevation change as Rainbow Falls, Bull Head, and Alum Cave, which are all shorter, but necessarily steeper, routes to get there. There aren't a ton of super-steep areas, and there are actually some pleasant flat stretches on the way up. I personally think the Boulevard Trail is the easiest route in because you start at Newfound Gap, which gives you a bunch of elevation before you even hit the trail (although the trail does rise and fall a bit as it goes across the ridge). But I've hiked Boulevard before, so...
One downside of Trillium (compared with Alum Cave and Boulevard, which were the two LeConte trails I've previously done for comparison) is that it doesn't have a ton of mountain vistas that aren't obscured by trees, but we did find a few.
What it lacks in vistas, however, it makes up for in other cool fetures. There are several nice water views.
The coolest is Grotto Falls, and the trail actually goes behind the water.
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| This is my Sasquatch pose. If Sasquatch grins like an idiot when walking behind a waterfall. |
Another nice feature of the Trillium Gap trail is the pretty wildflowers, including, well, Trillium. There were a couple of places that had big fields of it.
Also lots of these cool purplish flowers that I've seen a lot on the trails for the past few weeks, but I have no clue what they are. I'm wondering if it's some kind of phlox. Anyone know?
And also this white ground carpet flower (don't know what it is, either, obviously), which in this case comes with a picture of a deer that we saw at the junction with the Brushy Mountain trail (which is at the actual "Trillium Gap").
The trail gets considerably steeper when you continue past Trillium Gap. Not too far up the trail, we came across another deer that was walking on the trail. She stayed pretty far ahead of us but never left the trail for at least a mile or so. I think she's a llama-in-training and was showing us the way to LeConte.
Anyway, that last 3.6 miles was kind of brutal. The GPS on my fitbit is always a little overzealous, and I know that on a 10-ish mile hike, it'll usually read distance of 11-12 miles. On this hike, which was supposed to be 8.8 miles, I was expecting it to read about 10 miles by the time we got to the top. The other girls kept asking me how far we had gone, and I always prefaced my response with, "Well, the GPS says..." It was about a mile off by the time we got to Trillium Gap, so the sign telling us there were 3.6 miles to the top was a little disheartening. Further disheartening was the fact that those were 3.6 tough miles, and they seemed to take forever. I felt bad for the non-frequent-hikers in our group (I wondered several times whether a shorter trail would've been a good idea, considering how steep they are), but to tell the truth, I think all of us were ready to be done climbing by the time we got to the top.
At one point when we were taking a snack break, a lady coming down from the top told us, "You're almost there. When you see the water running down, you know you're close." Then the Brown Book said something about "after a particularly rocky section of trail, the lower buildings of the LeConte Lodge will be looming ahead of you." Immediately after our break, we started up what appeared to be a particularly rocky section of the trail, and there was water running down it. Alright! We're close! But no, nothing started looming ahead of us.
We finally made it to this little stretch, which I think may be what the lady was talking about when she was talking about water (it was running off these rocks).
That stretch wasn't particularly rocky, though, and there was still nothing looming. Lies. All lies. You know how you really know you're close when going up Trillium Gap? There are some makeshift horse stalls and a sign that says, "No horses beyond this point." THEN stuff will start looming.
Ultimately, we made it and settled in to our cabin in time to rest for a couple of hours before dinner. And, of course, in time to take advantage of some photo opportunities.
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| Our humble abode |
We learned that the squirrels around the Lodge are very savvy to the fact that there is food around, and they are not at all scared of people. Here's our little Sammy the Squirrel on our neighbors' porch:
You'll see a Sammy montage in the next blog, but for now, let's talk dinner. Dinner was what I would call "chuck wagon food," and it was pretty good. Also good was the wine (you can pay $12 per person for "unlimited" wine during the dinner hour - that gets you about 4 paper cups as they make the rounds).
They're still not serving dinner in the dining hall due to Covid, so they bring the meals to your cabin and you can eat them inside, or on your porch, or on the picnic tables outside the dining hall. We ate on our porch with Sammy. No, we did not feed him. For those in the back, feeding wildlife is never a good idea, and besides, all the stuff at the Lodge said, "DO NOT FEED THE SQUIRRELS." They were very brazen and not scared of us, so obviously it's been a problem.
Anyway, after dinner, we hiked about a quarter mile up to Cliff Tops to watch the sunset. The views off the south side of the mountain are straight-up spectacular. I really can't put words with these pictures, because neither the words nor the pictures can tell you how amazing it was to look out at a sea of mountains stretching all the way into Georgia (knowing I've been ON some of those far peaks was mind-blowing). Just trust me that, if you're able, you should not miss seeing this in person someday. I may or may not have choked up a little bit because it was so freakin' amazing.
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| It's not often that I'm the short one in the group. |
There's not much that can follow all that, so I'll just say that after the sunset, we hiked back down and went to bed early so we could get up for what would hopefully be an equally amazing experience for the sunrise at Myrtle Point the next morning. Stay tuned for the rest of the story.
Unduplicated Smokies miles: 198.5
Total Smokies miles: 246.7
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