It's been a while since I've written a hiking blog! It's been a while since I've hiked! I actually hiked on St. John when we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago (I will eventually get around to blogging about that), but hiking on St. John and hiking in the Smokies are two different things. Anyway, it was painfully obvious that I have been neglecting my physical conditioning over the past few months of house building, moving, vacationing, and life in general. I mean, I know I've been lazy and need to get my butt back in gear, but today was really a kick in the teeth, for both me and Dara (who also hasn't been as active recently as she usually is).
I picked what I thought would be a relatively easy 7.6 miles with about 4 miles of moderate climbing. We were going to hike the Old Sugarlands Trail and then the Twin Creeks Trail, but I totally screwed up the logistics. I mean, I guess I didn't screw them up because I did them exactly like the instructions in my day hike book told me to, but for some reason I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that we were supposed to do the Twin Creeks Trail as an out-and-back instead of just an extension of our hike on Old Sugarlands.
We parked one car at the Bud Ogle parking area on Cherokee Orchard Road and then shuttled another to the Park HQ building, which is close to the Old Sugarlands trailhead. We then hiked the 3.9-mile Old Sugarlands trail, which was, but should not have been, exhausting. The trail is a wide roadbed 90% of the time, and only the second half has any real elevation change. The climbs are moderately steep, but Dara and I have definitely done steeper for longer (looking at you, Alum Cave) without rest stops. Both of us were dragging on this hike, though, and we stopped several times. We still kept a respectable 2MPH pace even with the stops, but it felt like we were crawling. My calves were killing me. My calves! They're the strongest muscle in my body! They never cause any trouble, but apparently they are unhappy with my more sedentary lifestyle as of late. And I could definitely tell that my heart was pumping harder than it did "back in the day" when, you know, I used to hike...and work out in general...regularly. I am so mad at myself for being lazy.
Anyway, we saw some cool stuff as we suffered along the trail. There was a little rafter of turkeys at the beginning of the trail that included a white turkey. I've never seen one of those before.
Then there was a huge (according to the Brown Book, 70 feet tall) rock face just past the trailhead. Again, according to the Brown Book, this was a quarry from which rock was mined (quarried?) to build the first road across the mountains (a good bit of this trail follows that old road).
There was a lot of settlement in this area, and also a couple of CCC camps, so there were rock walls, foundations, and other signs of human life throughout.
We also had some nice water views, including this view of a really nice horse ford from a footlog crossing the creek (the "people ford," as I like to call it).
Ultimately, we did enough climbing that some views opened up, which was good because I really needed some motivation at that point.
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| This view and the one in the next photo were actually from a little horse trail, but it was less than 15 yards off the main trail. |
The instructions in the day hike book said that, when we got to the end of the Old Sugarlands Trail at Cherokee Orchard Road, we should turn left and walk down the road "to the Bud Ogle Cabin." It then said to find the Twin Creeks trail to the right of the cabin and hike it and then, "When you get to Cherokee Orchard Road, hike the Twin Creeks trail back to the Ogle Cabin." In hindsight, I should've realized that both ends of the Twin Creeks Trail are essentially on Cherokee Orchard Road and that we were supposed to do an out-and-back on Twin Creeks from the Ogle Cabin. How I read the directions (at least 3 times), though, was that we would be hiking down Cherokee Orchard Road from the end of the Old Sugarlands Trail toward the Ogle Cabin and that we'd find the Twin Creeks trailhead and hike Twin Creeks to the Ogle cabin. Again, in hindsight, I'm an idiot.
Anyway, we came upon the Bud Ogle Cabin (which Dara thought I was calling the "Butthole Cabin," and now I can't stop saying that) and realized that our car is parked right here. We were frustrated from being so out of shape for this hike, and I was further frustrated by my inability to understand where exactly I was parking my car in relation to the trails we were hiking (seriously, so dumb), so we just decided to take the bone God had thrown us, get in the car, and save the Twin Creeks trail for another day. But not before we explored the cabin and took some photos.
So, basically, we drove 45 minutes to Gatlinburg to hike for 2 hours and then took an hour and a half to get home because tourism. This goes against everything I stand for. Dara jokes that I won't leave the driveway for less than a 10-mile hike, and that's generally true. Given the drive time and the traffic, I want to make a good day of it. Yesterday was not a good day of it. So, excuse me while I go walk my butt back into shape for the next one.
Unduplicated Smokies miles: 270.55
Total Smokies miles: 342.5
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