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Alum Cave Bluffs via Alum Cave Trail
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Alum Cave Bluffs via Alum Cave Trail
If you’re looking for a hike in Great Smoky Mountains National Park that offers solitude—and there actually are many—Alum Cave Trail is not your path. OK, perhaps it could be on a February weekday in a cold, driving rain. Otherwise, be prepared to encounter scores, perhaps hundreds, of fellow hikers on most any given day on what is the shortest route to majestic Mount Le Conte.
On the other hand, if there’s a signature trail in the Great Smokies, Alum Cave likely is it. It’s little wonder, considering the variety of remarkable natural features along its five-mile course, that the trail receives heavy use across the seasons. Although many hikers trek all the way to Mount Le Conte—whether on a long day hike or to stay overnight at LeConte Lodge or at Le Conte backcountry shelter—a trip of fewer than five miles out and back to Alum Cave Bluffs is worth contending with the crowds.
Over the first mile or so, you might question whether the trail really does climb about 1,200 feet from the trailhead to reach Alum Cave. The trail isn’t exactly tabletop flat as it crosses Walker Camp Prong, Alum Cave Creek and Styx Branch on a series of foot bridges and logs, but it also doesn’t gain much elevation initially. That changes soon enough.
The trail meanders through an exceptionally steep watershed that is prone to severe flash flooding. In slightly less than 1½ miles, the path reaches a fascinating geological formation known as Arch Rock. The trail passes through the massive rock outcropping via stone steps with an assist from a cable handrail. The passage has not been created by erosion, as you might expect, but by freeze-thaw rock fracturing. The jagged opening is much higher at its lower end, about 20 feet tall.
Above Arch Rock, as the trail begins to climb sharply toward 5,000 feet elevation, you enter an area favored by enormous red spruce trees. After several hundred yards the path enters a heath bald broken by an opening called Inspiration Point. It comes by its name honestly, offering inspiring views of Sugarlands Valley and two knife-edge ridges known as the Duckhawk Peaks. The closer of the two, Little Duckhawk Peak, features a distinctive large hole known as the Eye of the Needle. Few views in the park are as stunning as those from this point of the trail.
Next the trail swings north and reenters another stand of red spruce before arriving at the heavily trod steps that take you to Alum Cave Bluffs. And no, Alum Cave is not a cave. It’s actually a large overhanging ledge more than 100 feet above the trail itself.
Around the time of the merciless Cherokee removal to the Oklahoma Territory in the late 1830s, Ephraim Mingus and others formed the Epsom Salts Manufacturing Company to mine the minerals found in the “cave.” It proved to be a relatively short-lived venture, apparently operating for only a few years. The dry, dusty soil beneath the bluffs provides an intriguing contrast to the soil elsewhere on the trail.
Of course, there’s much more to see and enjoy on Alum Cave Trail if you’re planning to stay overnight or have the time and energy for a round-trip day hike to Mount Le Conte, considered by many to be the crown jewel of the Southern Appalachians if not quite their highest peak. But an out-and-back hike to Alum Cave Bluffs definitely will not disappoint—unless you’re looking for solitude.
About the author: Ben Anderson is author of Smokies Chronicle: A Year of Hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (blairpub.com).
Go for a hike
- n Trailhead: Alum Cave Trail, 8.6 miles south of Sugarlands Visitor Center on Newfound Gap Road
- n Length: 4.6 miles round trip if hiking to Alum Cave Bluffs and back
- n Difficulty: Moderately strenuous
Note: Visit nps.gov/gsmnp for updated information on closures related to Hurricane Helene.