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Smokies Chronicle

A Year of Hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

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Chasing Fall Color

The towering Balsam Mountain Range stretches from south of the park to the Great Smokies’ crest at Tricorner Knob. Although the Blue Ridge Parkway follows the muscular Balsams outside the park, the trailhead for Balsam Mountain Trail is one of the remotest in the Smokies. A one-way gravel road, departing from Heintooga Picnic Area, leads to the trailhead at Pin Oak Gap, Balsam Mountain’s lowest point inside the park at an elevation just above forty-four hundred feet. From the gap, the trail runs for about ten miles before reaching its Tricorner Knob terminus at approximately six thousand feet in elevation. Today I plan to hike to the vicinity of another corner—Balsam Corner—where I intend to take a right onto the western end of Mount Sterling Trail and follow that path for a few miles. This excursion coincides with what will likely be close to the height of fall color in the park’s upper elevations.

If all goes as planned, today’s outing will bring me to more than three hundred fifty miles of hiking in the Smokies for the year. It may be my last hike of 2016 that exceeds five thousand feet in elevation, because as cooler weather approaches, I’ll begin to aim for lower-elevation routes. This year’s crazily dry and warm weather overall has certainly worked to my advantage while I’ve explored the spectacular Smokies’ high country. 

•••

Along the drive out Heintooga Ridge Road toward the park boundary at Black Camp Gap, I come upon a convention of elk in and along the road—or more specifically, about  a dozen cows, though I don’t spot a bull for the apparent harem. I stop to allow the crowd to clear the road safely. On the other side of the gap, an almost equal number of wild turkeys scatter along the road. But I see the morning’s most surprising sight several miles later, after I’ve parked to walk out to Heintooga Overlook: three young women camping at the picnic area. I learn that the trio, on fall break from a college in Tennessee, had apparently planned to spend the night at nearby Balsam Mountain Campground, only to find it closed for the season. But they assure me they have a backcountry camping permit for tonight at the Caldwell Fork site in Cataloochee Valley. When they ask where they can find water—the picnic ground’s restrooms and spigots are also shut down—I tell them that Flat Creek about a mile away is likely the best bet unless they can find someone at the ranger residence near the campground entrance. But they cheerfully say they have enough water to make it to Caldwell Fork. I hope they’re right, because they’ll be traveling about 8½ miles on foot on a warm October day. 

After walking out to enjoy the slightly murky morning views from Heintooga Overlook, I return to the car and start the serpentine drive to the Balsam Mountain trailhead at Pin Oak Gap. A sign for the one-way road notes that it’s twenty-eight miles to Cherokee, but the route makes it seem several times that because more than half that distance is on a narrow gravel surface. From here, I’ll have about 8½ miles and a half-hour of driving to the trailhead, but fine views and fall color compensate for the somewhat grueling drive. 

•••

Is it really mid-October? Upon my arrival at the trailhead, my thermometer reads sixty-one degrees here at more than forty-four hundred feet in elevation. Surely that temperature at 9:15 a.m. already exceeds the average high reading at this altitude for October 17. Still, it’s hard to complain about another balmy day for a long hike in the Smokies. But even if I were hiking in a cold, driving rain, I doubt I would grumble about my latest backcountry escape from the coarseness of an R-rated, celebrity-driven presidential campaign that mercifully will end in about three weeks—I think.

Just past a former gate, I begin ascending on the trail, which soon levels on a good tread, mostly free of rocks and roots. It’s pleasant hiking while I enjoy the fine weather and some nice autumn color—mostly yellows and golds at this elevation. In an area with stands of stately red spruce, I see evidence of extensive rooting by wild boar on either side of the trail. Several wild turkeys scatter while I make my way up the trail. The path does a dance with Swain and Haywood Counties, as Balsam Mountain separates the two inside the park before running into Tennessee around Tricorner Knob. After 1½ miles or so, the trail gets serious about climbing as it begins a rather stiff ascent to 5,184-foot Ledge Bald, which is now forested like nearly all the peaks in the Smokies named balds. From here, I start hiking the short distance down to Beech Gap, which lies about one hundred feet lower than Ledge Bald.

Beech Gap, once known as Big Swag, was an expansive grazing area for livestock into the 1930s. Now populated by beech and other northern hardwoods, as well as a scattering of red spruce, the broad area has the feel of a leafy urban park. Old rail grades, vestiges of the timber companies, are located on either side of the gap. These days, Beech Gap provides an excellent way station of sorts, complete with resting logs, before Balsam Mountain Trail begins a stiff climb that skirts the summit of Balsam High Top, which tops out at about fifty-seven hundred feet. 

As I continue on the trail at around fifty-five hundred feet in elevation, I start to notice some Fraser firs mixing with red spruce. Clouds, one of Balsam Mountain’s calling cards, begin to build, but today they’re not going to produce any rain. I walk across a series of planks, which are laid on the trail through here to provide boardwalks over typically muddy areas chewed up by horses. Today the planked areas are dry, until I reach a quagmire near Laurel Gap backcountry shelter, after a sharp descent from the shoulder of Balsam High Top.

Laurel Gap shelter is situated in an attractive glade, where there’s a horse hitching post in addition to the usual food cables and metal fire ring; water is available nearby. Built by the Youth Conservation Corps in the late 1960s, the shelter was renovated several years ago and remains in good, clean condition. In this quiet setting, with predictably no one around at midday, I eat one of the two sandwiches I’ve packed, before rejoining Balsam Mountain Trail for a short distance. 

At a junction a few minutes up the trail, I turn right onto Mount Sterling Ridge Trail. From here for about three miles, the Sterling path is about as flat as a trail in the floodplain of Congaree National Park south of Columbia, South Carolina, despite being roughly fifty-five hundred feet higher in elevation than any trail in Congaree. Rather than following the ridgeline, which includes 6,155-foot Big Cataloochee Mountain, Mount Sterling Ridge Trail runs on a remarkably level course, below the crest on this three-mile stretch. The trail traverses the headwaters of Lost Bottom and Cooks Creeks, as well as pockets of evergreen among the high-elevation northern hardwoods. Some adventurous hikers might dismiss the section as too easy or even boring. But I find it anything but dull; perhaps I’m easily amused. As the trail finally starts to descend toward Pretty Hollow Gap, I realize that I’m about as far from a road—paved or unpaved—as I’ve been all year. It would take about three hours on foot to reach any road. Especially without reliable cell service, blowing out a knee or ankle this far back in the woods would not produce a good chain of events. 

I turn back toward Balsam Mountain Trail. I reach it in about an hour, soon after taking in one particularly distant view at a break in the trees to my left. The trail sign at the junction notes the distance to Laural [sic] Gap shelter as three-tenths mile, but it’s actually only about three hundred yards. When I arrive back at the shelter, I notice that a thermometer on one of its rock walls has a reading of seventy-five degrees. The one time I camped here, in early October 1985, overnight temperatures dipped below freezing. After hiking back up to the slopes of Balsam High Top, I enjoy the descent to Beech Gap, where mid-afternoon sunlight is pouring through the forest. Typical Balsam Mountain breezes freshen during the slightly more than two miles from here back to the car. These breezes are nothing like the fierce winds that will whip across the mountain when the first real cold front of the season blows in from the Dakotas or someplace. Once again, I’ve not seen any other hikers on the trail today.

Driving down toward Cherokee on the remaining five miles or so of the one-way gravel road, I’m stunned to see something I’ve previously not seen on Balsam Mountain Road: someone driving in the opposite direction. And in a massive SUV, no less. I lean outside my window to tell the driver he’s driving the wrong way on a one-way road, and that there’s another vehicle not far behind me. I maneuver around the SUV and assume the driver soon got turned around without incident. Wrong-way driving, illegal camping—ah, just another October day in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

This is the fifth in a series of hikes from the 2017 book Smokies Chronicle: A Year of Hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park by Ben Anderson. Anderson, a trail patroller and Adopt-a-Campsite volunteer for Great Smokies Mountain National Park, lives in Asheville. “The book provides a fresh look at the Smokies wilderness as witnessed during its four distinct seasons” in 40 individual hikes and personal narratives.

From Smokies Chronicle: A Year of Hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park by Ben Anderson. Reprinted with permission of Blair Publisher. You can purchase a copy of Smokies Chronicle: A Year of Hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park at blairpub.com.

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