It's been about a month since I've hiked, so I was simultaneously looking forward to and dreading my return to the trail. Further exacerbating my dread was the fact that the last hike I did was all downhill, so I knew I needed to get back climbing. It's amazing how quickly your legs can go from great climbing shape to "needs a little conditioning." I picked an out-and-back on the Chimney Tops and Road Prong trails because it was relatively short (8-ish miles, as opposed to my 12-mile "sweet spot" when I'm in normal hiking shape) and because it had some steep climbing, which I thought I could use for the conditioning (I was right).
I started very early in an attempt to avoid all the crowds on Chimney Tops. I was the only car in the trailhead parking area when I got there! The downside of that was that it was still dark (sunrise would be in about 20 minutes) and I had to use my headlamp. I get a little creeped out hiking in the dark, not knowing what animals I might not be seeing.
I was disappointed to see that all the trail signs have been changed to essentially reflect that the Chimney Tops trail ends at the newly-constructed overlook instead of continuing out onto the Chimney Tops themselves. I knew there were some issues with ground stabilization after the 2016 fires and that a portion of the trail was closed, but I guess I didn't expect it to be so permanent. I'm disappointed that I never made it out there when I had the chance. I really, really hope we're able to get it reopened at some point.
Anyway, the Chimney Tops trail is very nice and well-maintained. There are beautiful footbridges spanning the river on a few crossings in the early part of the trail.
Trails Forever also did an extensive rehab project on this trail a few years ago and constructed a ton of stairs. Although the climbing was a lot (the trail gains something like 960 feet of elevation in the last mile), not having to scramble on uneven eroded terrain was nice.
The reward for all of the stair-climbing was...not as great as if I could've gotten out to Chimney Tops, but the views from the overlook (and the views of Chimney Tops and Mt. LeConte just past the overlook) are pretty nice.
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| Sunrise was about 30 minutes before this, but it hasn't made its way to this side of the mountain yet. |
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| Our fair lady was socked in this morning (as is common, being in the Smoky Mountains and all). |
While the climbing was unpleasant on my atrophied climbing muscles, the downhill was worse. My knees were screaming by the time we got back to the junction with the Road Prong trail. I could have given up and just headed the 0.9 miles back down to the parking lot, but instead I decided that I'd rather go up than down and headed up Road Prong according to the plan (I'm a big proponent of "Plan the Hike; Hike the Plan," even if my legs are begging for me to do something else). I'll worry about the coming down part later.
After starting up the Road Prong trail, I was even more thankful for the beautiful stairs on the Chimney Tops trail. Road Prong is steep and rocky, and trying to climb on rocks that move under your feet had my ankles crying in short order.
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| This was an especially fun part where you basically had to grab the poor rhodie on the right and hoist yourself up over this rock. Coming back down was even better. |
I didn't know how much of it I could take, but I told myself that if it got too bad I could just turn around and go back to the car and do the upper part of the trail some other time (the Road Prong trailhead is on Clingman's Dome Road, so you could start from either end). But just about every time I would start to think that my climbing muscles were dead, the trail would throw me a little flat spot that made me think it wasn't so bad. Between that, my "Plan the Hike; Hike the Plan" tendencies, and the fact that I really don't want to fight through all the Smokies traffic for just a 5-mile hike, I pushed my weak butt (literally, my butt) to the top.
There are no mountain views on the Road Prong trail, even though it climbs quite high. It does, however, run alongside the Road Prong creek for the great majority of the hike, so there are lots of water views.
In fact, there's one place where there are six creek crossings in the span of less than half a mile. I have no idea why the trail kept going back and forth across the creek, but the Brown Book warned me about it and said you might just want to take your shoes off (or wear water shoes) and walk straight up the creek until the trail made up its mind. However, it has been dry for a week or so, so the water was low; and there were several trees that had fallen across the creek, so I opted to just do the six rock-hops instead. Which was actually 12 rock hops because I had to do them again on the way back down, but who's counting?
There's also this cool huge rock just hanging out near the water. The Brown Book says it's called Standing Rock. Whatever it's called, it's just an enigma to me. How did it get there? Why are there no other rocks near it? Did it land on the Wicked Witch and kill her?
The Road Prong trail also climbs high enough to get into the moss-covered forest, and then the "Christmas forest" as it approaches Clingman's Dome Road.
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| Transition zone with hardwoods and evergreens |
As I expected (but delayed because I'm just a little bit stubborn), when I reached the top and turned around to head back down, my downhill muscles protested quite a bit. Legs were shaky; it was slow-going; and I got a great upper-body workout putting more weight on my hiking poles than I probably should. About halfway down, they seemed to accept the fact that, yes, we were planning on returning all the way down to the car, and it seemed to get a little easier. Or maybe we just got back to the Chimney Tops trail with its well-maintained path and beautifully-constructed stairs. Either way, we made it.
I also dreaded this hike a little bit because of the crowds that usually frequent the Chimney Tops trail. I knew I wouldn't see very many people at 6AM, but I figured the trail would be packed by the time I went up both trails and made it back down to the last 0.9 miles of Chimney Tops. As expected, I only saw one family of four coming up Chimney Tops while I was on my way back down to Road Prong. I didn't really know what to expect on Road Prong but knew it was lesser-used than Chimney Tops. I did see one guy coming down Road Prong when I was going up, and it turns out that he was hiking in to do some fishing in the creek because I saw him again on my way back down. After I joined back with the Chimney Tops trail on the way down, I'd say I saw 20 people in the last mile, which is a lot but not really as many as I expected, so I'll call it a win. If you want a relatively pleasant and peaceful experience on the Chimney Tops trail, I highly recommend hiking it early in the morning. Of course, you run the risk that there's fog and you don't get any views from the overlook, but I got lucky this weekend on that front.
Now, I'm headed to Florida next weekend and already fear my return to the trail the following weekend (assuming no rain). Hopefully I'll get back on my regular hiking schedule soon and get these glutes back in order.
Unduplicated Smokies miles: 221.05
Total Smokies miles: 273.8
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