This weekend's hike was...amazing. I told Ben I'm not really sure what my list of top 3 favorite hikes looks like at this point, but this has to be one of them. The Sugarland Mountain Trail is like a sampler platter for the Smokies. The top is just off Clingman's Dome Road (you hike 0.2 miles on the AT to get to the trailhead, but I didn't count this as an AT hike because I've done those 0.2 miles before and I barely even count 0.2 miles as being on the trail), and the bottom is across from the Laurel Falls trailhead on Little River Road. I highly recommend hiking it from top to bottom. Y'all know I love to climb, and there aren't very many sections of the trail that are very steep, but 12 straight miles of climbing is a bit much, even for me. Plus, it'll be easier to recruit people to go with you if you're walking downhill all day! Ben surprised me by wanting to go on this hike with me (he usually doesn't go on my Smokies hikes because Tigger can't hike with us and he feels bad leaving him at home alone when Tigger loves to hike), but there's no way he would've gone if I had been doing the hike uphill.
There is about 3,700 feet of elevation change from top to bottom, so you start in what I call the "Christmas forest," which is all spruce and fir trees (like you find at the top of LeConte or around Clingman's Dome) and smells amazing (although I'm allergic to firs and will pay this week for enjoying that smell).
Then, as you descend, the forest slowly transitions into a hardwood forest. With that kind of elevation change, you have a chance to see virtually all the types of plants that thrive at different elevations in the Smokies.
And if you do it in the late spring (like we did, although we may have been just a tad early), you also get to see different wildflowers blooming at the different elevations.
Two special treats were the blooming mountain laurel and flame azalea. I didn't think we'd be seeing those for another few weeks! I felt like the biggest dork when I exclaimed, "Oh, my gosh, is that mountain laurel??" And, "Holy crap, that's flame azalea!" I never considered myself a plant lover, yet here we are...
I mean, what's not to love?
One especially special treat were a couple of lady's slippers that I happened to spot alongside the trail. I knew these were around but have never seen one before. The muted pink color is really easy to miss, especially when you're watching your footing to make sure you don't trip over roots or rocks. I just happened to look in the right place at the right time.
While the wildflowers were amazing, the views from this trail, top to bottom, were the real stars of the show. They started out a little obscured by the trees, but then we broke out onto a long ridgeline and had really expansive views for a few miles. Just outstanding.
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| You can see a little bit of Newfound Gap Road down there. |
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| "I wonder what that big knob is up there? Oh, crap; I think that's LeConte!" |
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| Bull Head |
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| Yep, definitely LeConte. And there's Chimney Tops below it! |
I have hiked in a lot of different areas of the Park, and I've hiked pretty extensively in a few areas, so I really should be better at piecing together what features I'm looking at from a certain vantage point, but that's never really been my strong suit. But when I realized that I was looking down on Chimney Tops and up at LeConte from this Sugarland Mountain ridge, my feeble brain managed to piece together that you should be able to see Chimney Tops from Cliff Tops at LeConte, and I didn't remember seeing it when we were up there a few weeks ago. So, I went back to my pictures from Cliff Tops, and sure enough, there it is! Chimney Tops is below (pink arrow), and the ridge we were hiking on this trip is behind it (blue arrow):
I suppose it was too low and close to really catch my eye when we were up there, as I was busy gazing off into Georgia. And also, I haven't hiked Chimney Tops yet, so it didn't occur to me to look for it. But I think it's so fun to find other places I've hiked (even though I'm not particularly good at it) and see them from different vantage points, so this was really cool.
Anyway, back to the views from Sugarland Mountain:
I absolutely love a thin ridgeline that provides almost 360-degree views, and this one was one of the more awesome ones I've hiked:
Views to the right:
Views to the left:
Views looking backwards to LeConte...
...and Bull Head.
The great views continued as we descended the ridge; they just got a little lower.
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| Now we're just about even with Chimney Tops. |
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| Better view of Chimney Tops |
As we got low enough for the mountain laurel to be blooming, we were even treated to some views framed by mountain laurel.
When we got within about a mile and a half of the end of the hike, we came across this velvet buck standing in the trail, munching on some plants:
We stood still for quite a while waiting for him to move on, but clearly he was hungry and wasn't too scared of us, so he showed no signs of moving. Eventually, I sneezed (thanks, Christmas forest), which caused him to head on up the trail a little bit. But every time he would move, we would catch up to him a few minutes later, and the waiting game would start again.
He wouldn't leave the trail (I don't blame him; the slopes on both sides were steep and covered with pretty dense forest and understory, so he was taking the path of least resistance just as we were), but we were afraid that we were eventually going to push him out into the road at Laurel Falls, which we definitely did not want to do. Luckily, in the last quarter-mile of the hike, a couple came up the trail from the road and kind of trapped the deer in between us. Ben and I got off the trail as far as possible so that the couple coming up could maybe push him back up the trail past us, but instead he chose to head down the slope to our right and go around (which, in any event, is better than him going toward the road).
We were thankful for those two people but had pretty much given up hope of anyone coming to push the deer back up the trail, as we had only seen two people on the entire trail before encountering this couple. The one downside (if you can really call it that) of the trail is that it obviously doesn't get much use, and weeds and grasses had already reclaimed the trail with summer growth in several places:
While I don't love having to fight through thorny weeds, the lack of use of this trail is also one of its greatest attributes. I don't mind running into a few people while hiking (and generally like the thought that I'm not out there completely alone), but I do NOT want to run into a hundred people. Hiking with a ton of people is just not my jam. So I love a quiet, peaceful trail; and those can be hard to find in the Smokies in peak season. I cannot believe that a trail in the Smokies with so many amazing features is so empty on a Saturday in late May, but I will take that all day long. It was a shock to the system to reach the Laurel Falls parking lot and see it packed with people, then seeing the Alum Cave and Chimney Tops parking areas on the way to pick up our other car at the top, overflowing with people parked about a mile in each direction along the road. It's a shame that such a great hike has to end with such a frustrating drive (and let's not even talk about heading home through Pigeon Forge), but such is life. For a few hours, though, we were able to pretend we were two of six people in the Smokies, and it was pretty great.
10/10 recommend this hike. If I had a thousand thumbs, I would give it a thousand thumbs up.
Unduplicated Smokies miles: 216.9
Total Smokies miles: 265.5
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