So we took Kai and his cousin Joseph on a short trip to the Linville Gorge this weekend - a nice “mini-Grand Canyon” that is just a couple hours north of us. Marisa and I have been to the Gorge many times, and have pretty much hiked all of the trails within. It is a rugged place with lots of unmarked trails and leads the Carolinas in the number of lost hikers due to the steepness and ease of getting lost.
Heating up the solar shower…
I was on duty Sunday, so I had to wait until the early afternoon to head up. I arrived just as Marisa was finishing setting up the Super Dome tent (our big one)…
I helped unpack the rest of the stuff…got all our gear situated, and as the sun went down, cracked open a cold Stella…
Our site was on the west rim of the canon, just a few hundred meters south of Wiseman’s View…
Some gourmet burgers cooked over the campfire for dinner…
After the sun went down I told the story of the “Gargantuan of the Gorge”…rumored to still be knocking down trees and causing havoc in the Gorge since the 1900s…those schoolkids should have never thrown their pencils at him I suppose…
Went to bed early and watched stars and the moonrise through the mesh of the tent. It was a crystal clear night with temps down to the 50s…perfect for sleeping. Awoke the next morning and went about getting coffee ready in the coffee press and rustling up omelettes with hashbrowns folded in, pico, and some bacon…mmmm…good hiking fuel!
Our hike for the day would be more ambitious than we realized. Having hiked most of the trails in the Gorge, I was prepared for tough conditions and route finding. The map shows heavy red dashed lines for prominent trails (heavily used) and dashed black lines for “primitive” trails. So we decided to descend via the Sandy Flats primitive trail, T into the Linville Gorge trail southbound, then come up the canyon via the Conley Cove trail. Anyone familiar with contour lines can already imagine the pain…
Heading north along the rim road to reach the Sandy Flats trailhead…which is not marked and barely discernible from the rest of the forest…
Within just a couple dozen meters of dropping into the Gorge, the “trail” became not much more than a barely recognizable depression in the leaves. The only real way to even stay close to being on the trail was to search for some ribbons here and there that might or might not be tied onto some branches. The trail has zero maintenance and is littered with downed trees that completely obscure the path forward. Throw in an exceptional steep gradient and it was really slow going and lots of bushwhacking and route finding. I was really worried we might cliff out at some points but we always managed to reconnect with a portion of the “trail”…
This wouldn’t even be a trail I’d take friends (adult) down…so I was really impressed at the grit and determination shown by Kai (6) and Joseph (8)…they were real troopers in the face of some very tough going…
The trail generally followed the course of a small creek, which was good in that if you stayed in the vicinity, you’d likely come across another trail ribbon to get you near the intended trail…but there were a lot of very rocky areas covered with moss that made the going pretty sketchy. Breaking a leg or hitting your head here would be a really serious deal because getting a rescue in would be a multi-hour affair…and no cell phone coverage…
One of the aforementioned mossy spots with a long slide down to more rocks if you weren’t careful. Managing the foot and hand placements of two kids was pretty stressful…LOL…so much for a relaxing hike…
After a couple hours of hiking, and about 15 minutes of serious bushwhacking at the end, we T’d in on the main Linville River trail that parallels the river at the bottom of the gorge. Finally, a nice trail…!
We headed south along the trail for a bit until the trail dropped down to access the river where we stopped for lunch, some splashing, and some brief dips in the freezing water…
I took my fly rod…but fishing in the river has never been great and I didn’t spend a lot of time trying…
After some rest we headed out and down the trail further south until we T’d in to the Conley Cove trail, which would be a steep climb back up the rim, but on a nice trail that had lots of switchbacks. Heaven compared to the bushwhacking on the Sandy Flats trail…
The boys exploring some of the “Gargantuan of the Gorge’s” shelters…
With the better trail, I let the boys lead a couple times, fortunately they relinquished the lead after a bit though. Sipping some water on the long climb up…
What a nice trail through the woods. Wait…uh…what’s that on the left side…??
Holy Crap…I stopped about a foot short of this guy. Timber Rattler just coiled up on the side of the trail with his head poised to grab a mouse off the trail I guess… Thank God the boys weren’t in front, I don’t know that they’d of seen it in time…
We detoured up off the trail and around the snake…once the boys and Marisa were up the trail I used a very long stick to prod the snake off the trail and get him moving into the woods so that any other hikers wouldn’t get a surprise…
Topping out on the Conley Cove trail…
Then we had a 20 minute hike north on the road back to our campsite. And wouldn’t you know it - the only cloud in the entire Carolinas cropped up over our site and it poured rain for about half an hour. And we made a Rookie mistake (based on the cloudless blue skies and forecast) and left our rain fly off our tent. We arrived to find the gear in our tent swimming in water. We had been planning to spend another night, but with all our sleeping gear wet, we packed up and headed home. On the drive out we noticed that every other area was dry as a bone…we just got unlucky with a little cloudburst…
Running up the road in the rain…
Anyway, as usual, a great time. I was happy we got down and up without injury…it is a really tough hike for any age. The snake was an unexpected surprise…and made me think how lucky we were with all the bushwhacking that we didn’t happen upon one. Always an adventure!
BeachAV8R
