4/11/08 - Hazel Creek Trail to Campsite 82 + Side Trip In-Out Bone Valley Trail - 13 Miles
We spent a restless night at Fontana Village Lodge. The Lodge is terrific, extremely comfortable, but my thoughts were racing ahead to morning, packing again, logistics, etc. We got up and hauled our backpacks into our room to get ready one last time, then headed for our “last good meal” in the Lodge’s restaurant (stuffed French toast, which absolutely stuffed me). We tossed everything back in the car to go check out the rest of Fontana Village and get over to Fontana Marina by 11:30 AM to meet our group and the boat shuttle.
There were northbound Appalachian Trail thru-hikers arriving at the Lodge and more hanging around at the Village store. As much as I have read thru-hiker trail journals online, I found myself too bashful to talk to any of them. They all seemed so young (truthfully, most of them are) and suddenly I felt so old. Where was all my big talk about age just being a number? I have to work on this.
When we arrived at Fontana Marina there were yet more thru-hikers. The AT crosses directly over Fontana Dam, but that portion has been temporarily closed for road work at the dam, so I think the AT is re-routed somehow to the marina where the thru-hikers catch a shuttle over to Eagle Creek Trail and re-connect to the AT. I’ll have to check on how that works. Anyway, more young folk hanging around looking surprisingly relaxed and energized
Our group of backpacking cohorts included Danny and her husband Lenny, Don, Bob, Elliott, Jim and myself. Everyone is a member of Carolina Mountain Club except for Jim, and I just recently joined and only knew Danny and Lenny. Our club status got us a reduced shuttle rate, though. Quick introductions all around, and suddenly I heard someone singing "Happy Birthday". Danny came up with two muffins with lit candles, one for me and one for Lenny, whose birthday would be tomorrow, April 12. What an absolutely wonderful moment! I will always remember that. Then quickly, one last visit to the flush toilets, and onto the boat shuttle we went. It’s about a 20-minute ride across Fontana Lake and up Hazel Creek to the drop-off point. The boat pulled away and we would see it again on Sunday at noon.
About .5 miles up the approach trail is the beginning of Hazel Creek Trail, intersecting with the Lakeshore Trail, and the remains of the town of Proctor. The quickest summary I can make of this area of the Park is that there were many small communities here before the park was created in 1943 and Fontana Lake was formed in 1945. There were logging companies and therefore thriving communities of workers with homes, churches, even a movie theater. No one lives there now, but there are signs of that life if you look hard. Cemeteries are preserved and once a year, Decoration Day, the Park provides transportation to descendants to visit their loved ones’ burial places. Reading about this is fascinating and then being there is chilling.
The trail up Hazel Creek is an old road that is still maintained by the Park. Hazel Creek was beautiful and loud as we followed it up and it would stay besides us for miles. I quickly learned that stopping for photographs at every lovely point would take days and I put the camera away. We walked and chatted and enjoyed the weather, which had been forecast as rain but so far was not, just warm enough for shorts and short sleeves. I would recommend this part of the hike to anyone as an easy hike on a gravel road. I said THIS PART…
After 5.3 miles on Hazel Creek we came to the intersection of the Bone Valley Trail. I wanted to go up this little spur of 1.8 miles because after Sunday I would not be back this way again. (Is that Robert Frost I hear?) Campsite 83 was at the intersection and we hung our packs up on the bear pole system, taking just water bottles for this short jaunt up and back to Bone Valley. Well…“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…”
Bone Valley’s name comes from a farmer’s bad luck at having his cattle still grazing on the mountaintop when early winter came one year in the 1870’s. The cattle had no shelter and all died and their bones remained on the valley floor for many years after. The trail is the old railroad bed built by the logging company, so still pleasant hiking. We were laughing and chatting still, when suddenly around a bend the road was intersected by a creek. Being the experienced hikers that we were, none of us had read the trail description before starting up and our shoes for water crossing were safely back with our packs. So…off came the shoes and socks and we waded barefoot about 25 feet through the CHILLY ankle-deep water. On the other side my wonderful husband produced a bandana and we dried our feet, donned socks and shoes and resumed our trek.
Well, we did this four more times. A couple of times we tried walking barefoot to the next crossing (which we never knew if indeed there was one coming) but the gravel was tough. And remember, five times across going in…five times across coming out!
We spent a restless night at Fontana Village Lodge. The Lodge is terrific, extremely comfortable, but my thoughts were racing ahead to morning, packing again, logistics, etc. We got up and hauled our backpacks into our room to get ready one last time, then headed for our “last good meal” in the Lodge’s restaurant (stuffed French toast, which absolutely stuffed me). We tossed everything back in the car to go check out the rest of Fontana Village and get over to Fontana Marina by 11:30 AM to meet our group and the boat shuttle.
There were northbound Appalachian Trail thru-hikers arriving at the Lodge and more hanging around at the Village store. As much as I have read thru-hiker trail journals online, I found myself too bashful to talk to any of them. They all seemed so young (truthfully, most of them are) and suddenly I felt so old. Where was all my big talk about age just being a number? I have to work on this.
When we arrived at Fontana Marina there were yet more thru-hikers. The AT crosses directly over Fontana Dam, but that portion has been temporarily closed for road work at the dam, so I think the AT is re-routed somehow to the marina where the thru-hikers catch a shuttle over to Eagle Creek Trail and re-connect to the AT. I’ll have to check on how that works. Anyway, more young folk hanging around looking surprisingly relaxed and energized
Our group of backpacking cohorts included Danny and her husband Lenny, Don, Bob, Elliott, Jim and myself. Everyone is a member of Carolina Mountain Club except for Jim, and I just recently joined and only knew Danny and Lenny. Our club status got us a reduced shuttle rate, though. Quick introductions all around, and suddenly I heard someone singing "Happy Birthday". Danny came up with two muffins with lit candles, one for me and one for Lenny, whose birthday would be tomorrow, April 12. What an absolutely wonderful moment! I will always remember that. Then quickly, one last visit to the flush toilets, and onto the boat shuttle we went. It’s about a 20-minute ride across Fontana Lake and up Hazel Creek to the drop-off point. The boat pulled away and we would see it again on Sunday at noon.
About .5 miles up the approach trail is the beginning of Hazel Creek Trail, intersecting with the Lakeshore Trail, and the remains of the town of Proctor. The quickest summary I can make of this area of the Park is that there were many small communities here before the park was created in 1943 and Fontana Lake was formed in 1945. There were logging companies and therefore thriving communities of workers with homes, churches, even a movie theater. No one lives there now, but there are signs of that life if you look hard. Cemeteries are preserved and once a year, Decoration Day, the Park provides transportation to descendants to visit their loved ones’ burial places. Reading about this is fascinating and then being there is chilling.
The trail up Hazel Creek is an old road that is still maintained by the Park. Hazel Creek was beautiful and loud as we followed it up and it would stay besides us for miles. I quickly learned that stopping for photographs at every lovely point would take days and I put the camera away. We walked and chatted and enjoyed the weather, which had been forecast as rain but so far was not, just warm enough for shorts and short sleeves. I would recommend this part of the hike to anyone as an easy hike on a gravel road. I said THIS PART…
After 5.3 miles on Hazel Creek we came to the intersection of the Bone Valley Trail. I wanted to go up this little spur of 1.8 miles because after Sunday I would not be back this way again. (Is that Robert Frost I hear?) Campsite 83 was at the intersection and we hung our packs up on the bear pole system, taking just water bottles for this short jaunt up and back to Bone Valley. Well…“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…”
Bone Valley’s name comes from a farmer’s bad luck at having his cattle still grazing on the mountaintop when early winter came one year in the 1870’s. The cattle had no shelter and all died and their bones remained on the valley floor for many years after. The trail is the old railroad bed built by the logging company, so still pleasant hiking. We were laughing and chatting still, when suddenly around a bend the road was intersected by a creek. Being the experienced hikers that we were, none of us had read the trail description before starting up and our shoes for water crossing were safely back with our packs. So…off came the shoes and socks and we waded barefoot about 25 feet through the CHILLY ankle-deep water. On the other side my wonderful husband produced a bandana and we dried our feet, donned socks and shoes and resumed our trek.
Well, we did this four more times. A couple of times we tried walking barefoot to the next crossing (which we never knew if indeed there was one coming) but the gravel was tough. And remember, five times across going in…five times across coming out!
But at the end of Bone Valley Trail is the Hall Cabin, the most remote historic structure in the park and on the National Register of Historic Places. Near the cabin is the foundation of another home that was built by the Kress family (of Kress Department Stores in New York) as a sports lodge in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Awesome to be standing there in what is such a remote area and imagining such a grand place!
And yet this was not the end of our side trip. Don showed us a narrow path up behind the cabin that took us about a half-mile up the mountain to a cemetery where 19 people are buried. As we slogged up the hill we joked tha
t they must have located it where the first person died, but when we arrived we could see why this wonderful spot was chosen for eternal rest. High up on a knob and with no leaves yet appearing, we could see that the site was surrounded by even higher mountains and was very peaceful. We placed plastic flowers that had been blown over by the wind and set right an American flag on the grave of a World War I veteran. As we looked at the names we saw more than a few infants, including one that was apparently stillborn. I felt very sad, imagining a young woman giving birth in the cabin down at the bottom and carrying her baby up to this place.
The wind picked up and a glance at the sky told us that the nice weather was changing to match the forecast, so we headed back out of Bone Valley. Did I mention that we had five creek crossings to repeat? We were still stubborn about keeping our boots dry so we repeatedly removed/replaced socks and shoes and eventually got back to our packs. Someone apparently had added rocks to the packs because they were much heavier than they were earlier in the day! Our side trip had taken longer than we planned, our leisurely walk was over and now we hoofed it on up Hazel Creek Trail looking for Campsite 82 where the other three members of our group were. I don’t have an exact mileage distance to that point, but felt like about 17 miles (really about 3). All told, mileage for the day was about 13 miles.
We arrived at Campsite 82 at 6:30 PM. Others were cooking/eating their suppers. Jim and I got our tent up by 6:35 PM and at 6:40 PM the thunder arrived and the skies opened. We got inside the tent, got our packs set up in the vestibule, and essentially did not come out again that night. We decided to skip trying to cook, ate some of our packaged snacks, got into dry clothes and into sleeping bags. Our feet were talking to us about what a long day they had had. I found the pages I had copied from “Hiking Trails of the Smokies” about the trails we walked that day, and I read aloud to Jim what we should have read ahead of time. That’s when we found the warning about all the copperhead snakes at the Hall Cabin in Bone Valley. The rain came down all night long.
And yet this was not the end of our side trip. Don showed us a narrow path up behind the cabin that took us about a half-mile up the mountain to a cemetery where 19 people are buried. As we slogged up the hill we joked tha
t they must have located it where the first person died, but when we arrived we could see why this wonderful spot was chosen for eternal rest. High up on a knob and with no leaves yet appearing, we could see that the site was surrounded by even higher mountains and was very peaceful. We placed plastic flowers that had been blown over by the wind and set right an American flag on the grave of a World War I veteran. As we looked at the names we saw more than a few infants, including one that was apparently stillborn. I felt very sad, imagining a young woman giving birth in the cabin down at the bottom and carrying her baby up to this place.The wind picked up and a glance at the sky told us that the nice weather was changing to match the forecast, so we headed back out of Bone Valley. Did I mention that we had five creek crossings to repeat? We were still stubborn about keeping our boots dry so we repeatedly removed/replaced socks and shoes and eventually got back to our packs. Someone apparently had added rocks to the packs because they were much heavier than they were earlier in the day! Our side trip had taken longer than we planned, our leisurely walk was over and now we hoofed it on up Hazel Creek Trail looking for Campsite 82 where the other three members of our group were. I don’t have an exact mileage distance to that point, but felt like about 17 miles (really about 3). All told, mileage for the day was about 13 miles.
We arrived at Campsite 82 at 6:30 PM. Others were cooking/eating their suppers. Jim and I got our tent up by 6:35 PM and at 6:40 PM the thunder arrived and the skies opened. We got inside the tent, got our packs set up in the vestibule, and essentially did not come out again that night. We decided to skip trying to cook, ate some of our packaged snacks, got into dry clothes and into sleeping bags. Our feet were talking to us about what a long day they had had. I found the pages I had copied from “Hiking Trails of the Smokies” about the trails we walked that day, and I read aloud to Jim what we should have read ahead of time. That’s when we found the warning about all the copperhead snakes at the Hall Cabin in Bone Valley. The rain came down all night long.
2 comments:
Sharon, you're an inspiration.
Happy Trails
Trish Crews
I can hardly wait to read the next part of the hike.Just fascinating!
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