BETTER WITH ICE

The CMLC (Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy, www.carolinamountain.org ) is developing a network of trails in the Upper Hickory Nut Gorge. Trails were built in the Florence Nature Preserve and from Bearwallow Gap to Bearwallow Mountain a few years ago. More recently, trails were constructed from the “stone chimney” trailhead on highway 74A to Little Bearwallow Falls and from Bearwallow Gap to Blue Ridge Pastures. Eventually these trails and additional trails still being developed will link together to form a circuit connecting most of the major peaks in the upper part of the gorge.

A few years ago I hiked with the CMLC from Bearwallow Gap over Bearwallow Mountain and down to Little Bearwallow Falls and the stone chimney trailhead. Afterwards, I joined Peter Barr, CMLC’s trails coordinator, on a hike from Hickory Nut Gap to Ferguson Peak and Blue Ridge Pastures. Both of those hikes included trails that are currently being developed.

On Saturday, Brenda, Bob, Aaron, and the dogs joined me for a hike that incorporated most of these trails. We left Brenda’s car at Hickory Nut Gap and started our hike from the stone chimney trailhead. Our plan was to hike the new trail to Little Bearwallow Falls. From there, we’d follow the proposed route to Bearwallow Mountain. Established trail would take us to Bearwallow Gap and on to Blue Ridge Pastures. From there, we’d follow a trail under development (consisting of old roads and footpaths) to Ferguson Peak and Hickory Nut Gap.

A map with Brenda’s GPS track can be found here:

http://brendajwiley.com/gps/hickory_nut_gorge.html

And the elevation profile is here:

http://nc-hiker.smugmug.com/HikingTrips-6/Hickory-Nut-Gorge/n-4CVVs/i-3N3Fmmc/A

We all met at Hickory Nut Gap and made the 2.5 mile shuttle down to the stone chimney trailhead. There were quite a few cars here, but the large group of hikers I’d seen when I’d passed earlier was gone. However, we didn’t know if they were hiking to Little Bearwallow Falls or into the Florence Nature Preserve.

We started our hike around 9:30 by crossing the road and descending to an apple orchard. We hiked around the orchard, enjoying the view of icy cliffs on Little Bearwallow Mountain above us. We crossed a bridge over Hickory Creek, and picked up the new trail to the falls. The trail is nicely graded and well-built. After just more than a mile we arrived at the base of the falls. The waterfall features a low-volume stream sliding down a steep, 100’ cliff. Normally it isn’t terribly photogenic, but on our visit, it was mostly frozen. That changed everything! The photographic possibilities were nearly endless. The icy cliffs were impressive, but the more subtle beauty really caught my eye. There were icicles, ice sculptures, and even balls of ice everywhere I looked. We ended up spending quite a bit of time there before pushing on.

The hike got interesting after leaving the falls. We followed a flagged route uphill, generally along the base of more frozen cliffs. Some of them were as scenic as Little Bearwallow Falls. The going was rough in some places, with awkward footing, rocky stretches, and lots of ice. Still, that was to be expected, since the trail is still being developed. We eventually reached a sign for the spur trail up to Wildcat Rock. A bit of mild scrambling was needed to reach the overlook. The cliff offered us the first of many views of the upper portion of Hickory Nut Gorge.

From there were resumed the climb. My intention was to hike the same route I’d followed a few years earlier on the CMLC hike. On that day, we descended from the gap between Bearwallow and Little Bearwallow Mountains directly to Wildcat Rock. On this hike, we continued following the flagged route. It led to a small overhanging cliff with the best icicles of the day. Shortly after that, the flagged route disappeared into a rhododendron thicket. We bashed our way through, until we reached more open forest. From here we had a nice through-the-trees view of Rumbling Bald and Lake Lure. That struck me as odd – it didn’t seem like we should be able to see Lake Lure from the northeast slope of Bearwallow Mountain.

All sign of the flagged route or any sort of trail had disappeared. We bushwhacked ahead, heading up at an angle similar to what we’d followed earlier. This actually worked, as we stumbled upon the remains of an old road. We followed it uphill, first gradually, then steeply. Finally we reached the summit of what was definitely not Bearwallow Mountain. I’d begun to suspect that we were off-course earlier, and now this was verified. That was the bad news. The good news is that I knew where we were – the summit of Little Bearwallow Mountain. Oops. We’d climbed the wrong mountain. This wasn’t really a big deal – we would just have to descend to the gap between them and then climb up to Bearwallow Mountain.

It was already 1:30 though, thanks to a slow pace and extensive picture-taking at Little Bearwallow Falls and the many caverns of icicles we’d passed along the way. We had a quick lunch break on Little Bearwallow Mountain before resuming the hike. We followed the faint remains of the old road, which are sporadically blazed, through the woods and into open meadows above the gap. We descended through cow pastures to the gap, where we were treated to a fantastic view to the southeast. This vista included Lake Lure, Rumbling Bald, and Chimney Rock. We climbed the far side, first in meadows and then mostly open forest. This climb was steep, but fairly short. We finally popped out into the meadows of Bearwallow Mountain a few minutes later.

We passed a couple dozen towers (cell, radio, tv, microwave, alien-signaling, computer-hacking, and even one actual fire tower) as we headed down grassy slopes. The wind was vicious up here, reminding us that it was January. It had been chilly in the shade of the north-facing cliffs that morning, but the steady climb had kept us warm. Now we were ready to get down and out of the wind!

We hadn’t seen anyone all day until we reached the gap between Bearwallow and Little Bearwallow Mountains. There we ran into two hikers that were planning to hike over Little Bearwallow and descend the route we had ascended. I hope they were able to find their way down! The next portion of the hike was extremely busy. There were a ton of hikers on their way up to Bearwallow Mountain from Bearwallow Gap. This included four infants in carriers. That must be some kind of record! They weren’t all together, either. The four were scattered among three different groups of hikers.

Bearwallow Gap looked like a used car lot. We paused there to consider our options. It was 3pm. I guessed that we had 5 miles to go. I was pretty confident that we could make it before dark, which was still 3 hours away. Everyone else was uncertain, but nobody wanted to walk the road all the way back to the cars. We probably could’ve bummed a ride from someone leaving Bearwallow Gap, but I managed to talk everyone into finishing the hike.

We crossed the road and started down the brand-new Trombatore Trail. This trail descends into the headwaters of Brush Creek before climbing to Blue Ridge Pastures. The word must be out about this trail, as it was extremely busy, too! Brush Creek provided water for the dogs, but the real highlight was Blue Ridge Pastures. There we were treated to a great view of Bearwallow Mountain, Little Pisgah Mountain, and Rumbling Bald. We took a short break there before resuming the hike.

I made another navigational error leaving Blue Ridge Pastures. There are two old roads leaving the meadow. I picked the upper one, since we needed to follow the ridge. It quickly faded into mild bushwhacking. Luckily, the correct route was just below us. We dropped down to the old road, and followed it down to a fork. We had a bit of a debate about the route there, but my instincts were undeniable – the route went left. We went that way on a fainter road which gradually morphed into more of a footpath. We reached Strawberry Gap, and climbed to a ridge crest and a 4-way junction. All four of the trails here are blazed, but I had regained confidence in my navigational skills. We turned right, following the ridge out to Ferguson Peak. There we took one more break and enjoyed a lovely view over farmland to the northwest.

From there we descended trails and old roads. There were several switchbacks, but a few stretches were steep. We hit one more fork, and I took a minute to explore the route to the right. It leads out a ridge, and appears to eventually end in Gerton. We stayed left on the main road, which brought us down to the Hickory Nut Gap at 5:30. It had been a tough hike, with about 3,000’ of elevation gain over 9.5 miles.

We had a fun little adventure, and it was great to see how many people were out enjoying CMLC’s new trails. I’m looking forward to the official completion of the entire trail network!

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