Trail Town - Hot Springs

April 17, 2009

Hot Springs is a famous AT landmark - the Trail is the sidewalk here along Bridge Street. Trains cross the street several times a day, passing right next to the campground where I'm staying - midnight and 5 am every night. I know because of the train whistle! It brings back memories of the "old days" by which I mean growing up in the 50s when trains were everywhere.After crossing the French Broad River, the Trail leaves the sidewalk again and climbs up Lovers Leap Ridge. Here's a view back to town. This hike is another excellent bike-hike, 8 miles down down down to the river and then the walk back up to Rich Mountain Fire Tower.

Approaching Hot Springs

April 16, 2009

Coming into Hot Springs I was able to do a great bike-hike. Here's an overlook along NC Route 209 looking back south toward the Max Patch area. The road hugs the cliff top, then plunges down to the French Broad River.

Here's the hike back up to where I started - there's one of the many hikers I met along the way.
In Hot Springs, I'm camping where a CCC camp was located, and here's part of the treadway that they built in the 1930s.

A Perfect Day on Roan

May 13, 2008

This day dawned blue-sky as per the weather report - I planned a long day in the warm sun on the grassy balds of Roan Mountain.

It started with a trek Trail-north from Carvers Gap across the Roan and Jane Balds shown here, then a descent to Yellow Mountain Gap where I "tagged up" with my previous endpoint and ate lunch in a meadow with a hummingbird and a crowd of chestnut-sided warblers.

After returning to the starting point, I hiked an extra 2 miles in the opposite direction over forested Roan High Knob (the distant dark one in the photo) to where I had planted my bicycle to ride downhill to the car at day's end.

The famed rhododendron gardens are not in bloom yet - at this 6000 foot altitude, that won't happen until late June. But as the picture shows, the alders are doing their thing. Alders are here as a relict population - a New England plant that spread south during the Ice Age and has remained in the high altitude spots like this.

Can you see the survey benchmark for the AT, hiding under the alder?

News from Tennessee

May 8, 2008

Greetings from Hampton, Tennessee!

Here is a view from the bike portion of a long but excellent bike-hike on which I circumnavigated Laurel Fork Creek (bike along dirt roads on the north rim, hike along the south rim of its watershed). 

In the front, a Christmas tree farm - they grow Fraser Firs of which the seeds are harvested under supervision of the USFS on a nearby mountain top. In the distance, the Roan massif where I will be going next - the western rim of the Blue Ridge rising up into the 5000-foot plus range.

Where I've been lately is "only" 3-4000 feet, and the trees are just leafing out about half way up the mountains. Today I ran into another couple who I had spent some time with last year camping on Rainbow Lake in the 100-Mile Wilderness of Maine! What a small world the AT is.