Black Mountains, NC - 8/24/03 - Trip Rep ort

“Black Mountains, NC
Deep Gap Trail & Colberts Ridge Trail Dayhike
Trip Report
Sunday, August 24, 2003
SCJack, Gemini, CrosscutHiker, Litefoot

After parking our cars at the Carolina Hemlocks Campground (near the end of the Colberts Ridge Trail) we rode with Gemini to the Mt. Mitchell Parking Area. I must say that riding with Gemini on the Blue Ridge Parkway through dense fog is quite a "Carolina Adventure". The mixture of screeching tires around the curves, Gemini's horn blaring through the tunnels, and Crosscut Jamming to the Rap Music made for an interesting drive.

As usual, at close to 6700ft, Mt. Mitchell was completely fogged over giving us visibility of about 20ft as we started our hike on the Deep Gap Trail. Even mid-day in the summer time, you can count on needing a jacket here. The temperature when we started our hike was a cool 58 degrees, which in my opinion is perfect hiking temperature.

The Deep Gap trail takes you from Mt. Mitchell to Deep Gap, hitting all the Black Mountain peaks along the way. I am sure that on a clear day the views from this trail would be fabulous! But, even with the fog, it is still an excellent trail.

There is nothing flat about this trail as it hits all the peaks:

Mt. Mitchell - 6684ft (Note: the trail starts at the parking area, which is slightly below the peak)
Mt. Craig - 6648 ft
Big Tom Peak - 6581ft
Balsam Cone - 6596ft
Cattail Peak - 6584ft
Potato Hill - 6475ft

Between these (6) peaks are steep descents and climbs of several hundred ft each.

Since Gemini is starting her attempt at the "Southern Sixers", we took a quick break at the top of each peak to take photos of the signs and/or Geological Survey Marker.

Click here for info on the Southern Sixers:
http://www.carolinamtnclub.com/SB6K/SB6K%20Index.htm

After Potato Hill, the trail descends about 700ft to Deep Gap where it comes to a junction with the Colberts Ridge Trail (to the East) and the Black Mountain Crest Trail (to the North). At this point after about 4.5 miles of hiking we finally broke out of the fog. We took the Colberts Ridge Trail back down to the Carolina Hemlocks Campground, saving the three additional peaks along the Black Mountain Crest Trail for another hike.

The Colberts Ridge Trail is descends just about the whole way from 5700ft at Deep Gap to 2750ft at the South Toe River. An interesting trail with lots of rocks to climb over and around for much of the way. The trail seemed very lightly traveled with some sections being pretty overgrown.

About half ways down there are two nice bald rock areas, which offered us our first real views of the day. Looking to the Southwest we could see that the peaks we passed over earlier were still covered with clouds.

From the Bald Rock areas, the trail becomes wider and less interesting as we continued downhill to the Colberts Ridge Trailhead. There is actually a small parking area (3-4 cars) at this trailhead on Colbert Creek Road (SR1158) that we didn't know about.

From the trailhead we had to get across the South Toe River to the Carolina Hemlocks Campground. We could either turn left and walk Colbert Creek Road and Hwy 80 back to the campground, or wade across the South Toe River. Check out the pictures from our hike to see what we decided to do!

Except for around Mt. Mitchell there are generally not a whole lot of people on these trails. We saw 2 or 3 groups of backpackers and a stray dog on the Deep Gap Trail and four dayhikers on the Colberts ridge trail. Other than that we had the trails to ourselves.

Overall, another excellent dayhike! It was great to finally get a hike in with Gemini, Crosscut, and Litefoot.

Even with the fog, I am giving the Deep Gap Trail a trail quality/enjoyment rating of 9.0/10 and the Colberts Ridge Trail a 7.0/10. Both trails were challenging, but not too strenuous due to the fact that the hike was mostly downhill. Starting at Mt. Mitchell, I give the hike a difficulty rating of 7.0/10.

I would definitely do this hike again (hopefully with clear skies), but next time I will do it in reverse. I figure starting from the Campground and going up hill all the way, the hike would be at least a 9.0/10 on my difficulty scale.

Pictures from our hike are posted here:
http://community.webshots.com/album/87226446Ruhtls

SCJack”

“Correct link is:

http://community.webshots.com/album/87226446RUhtls

scjack33's pics”

“Nice trip report, BTW.”

“Nice one. Trip reports like this are what decides my future trips. Hope to see some of y'all this weekend.”

“Yes, the trail was fun but I would've preferred to start at the other end. Get the heart rate going, ya know!!”

“Hey bitpusher,

I’m blaming the mistake on Bill Gates. I was the victim of MSWord’s Autocorrect feature, which change some capital letters into lower case, thereby screwing up the link.



Gemini,

I agree, we should have done it in reverse - Not only to get the heart rate up, but the fog might have cleared up later in the day giving us better views from up top. But, before we do that, we have to hit Winter Star Mountain, Gibbs Mountain, and Celo Knob.

SCJack”

“Yah, what a "feature"!”