July 4th seemed the perfect weekend to take my annual walkabout since I didn't get to go at my usual Memorial Day weekend. I headed out for the GSMNP on the 2nd, spent a couple of nights in a campground by the Pigeon River 
watching the rafters, and headed up the popular but not heavily traveled Big Creek Trail toward Walnut Bottoms (Campsite 37). I would like to have gone a day earlier, but couldn't get reservations at 37 for the night of the 3rd. I also wanted to stay in the Big Creek Campground, but it only has 12 sites--all first-come-first-served--and you have to wait around to get in there on popular weekends. (I went by the campground on Monday morning on my way out and it was completely empty, but it was completely full over the holiday weekend.)
watching the rafters, and headed up the popular but not heavily traveled Big Creek Trail toward Walnut Bottoms (Campsite 37). I would like to have gone a day earlier, but couldn't get reservations at 37 for the night of the 3rd. I also wanted to stay in the Big Creek Campground, but it only has 12 sites--all first-come-first-served--and you have to wait around to get in there on popular weekends. (I went by the campground on Monday morning on my way out and it was completely empty, but it was completely full over the holiday weekend.)On Friday, the 3rd, I took the time to drive over Mt Sterling Road to Cataloochee. The road is gravel and very winding, but beautiful all the way. I think it is about 16 miles from the road into Big Creek Campground. At Mt Sterling Gap it's only a few miles up to campsite #38. I will try to remember that as I get older ... would be nice to park a vehicle there and hike up to the top. Cataloochee was somewhat of a disappointment to me in that I expected to see more restored buildings. The up side is that it is not a convenient area to access, so the crowds were small.
As all of the trail descriptions say, the Big Creek Trail is a former road/railroad grade from the '30s, so it's never a severe elevation change. The 4th was a Chamber of Commerce Day and there were many dayhikers headed up the trail to see Midnight Hole and Mouse Creek Falls. The rhododendrons were in full bloom in the mountains, so it was really an optimum time to hike ...
One of the trail guides described a rock formation that was a perfect house-sized room that, during the 30s, timber workers lived in the room up on the side of the road/tracks ... I never could find it, but I did find the swimming hole and the falls. I talked to a couple ofdayhikers who had spoken to me in the parking lot as they were heading out and I waspacking my pack--they had been to the falls and were heading back down as I was passing Midnight Hole. We chatted about the rock room ... one of the hikers said she knew it was high up on the rocky cliffs, but they hadn't been able to find it either. I saw a clearing where someone (or ones) had scrambled up the incline, but didn't knowwhether or not that led to the room or what ... I wasn't about to find out carrying a 30-lb pack.
One of the trail guides described a rock formation that was a perfect house-sized room that, during the 30s, timber workers lived in the room up on the side of the road/tracks ... I never could find it, but I did find the swimming hole and the falls. I talked to a couple ofdayhikers who had spoken to me in the parking lot as they were heading out and I waspacking my pack--they had been to the falls and were heading back down as I was passing Midnight Hole. We chatted about the rock room ... one of the hikers said she knew it was high up on the rocky cliffs, but they hadn't been able to find it either. I saw a clearing where someone (or ones) had scrambled up the incline, but didn't knowwhether or not that led to the room or what ... I wasn't about to find out carrying a 30-lb pack.The Big Creek Trail is off the last exit in Tennessee (451) on I-40, before going into North Carolina, so it's pretty isolated from the mainstream traffic. I would recommend it to hikers who don't like crowds. It's a trail that my former hiking buddy, Paul, used to say we needed to hike ... and camp at Walnut Bottoms--which is exactly what I planned to do. Only Paul wanted us to go on up the Low Gap Trail to the AT and hike back down to the Big Creek Ranger Station.
That would make a good circuit in my younger days ... but too old to do much of that any more. Six miles carrying a pack is about my limit now -- and that may be getting shorter each trip. I can dayhike all day, but not carrying weight ... too hard on the old metatarsals ...
I hiked slow-but-steady up the road/trail, stopping to take pictures along the way. The Bee Balm was blooming, but always across the stream, so I never got a great closeup of it. I got some nice shots of rhododendron blossoms--always nice, and a hundred different shots of the rocks and stream. The stream colors are always fascinating to me
... and mostly dependent on the sun for shades of blue. Big Creek is a very clear stream, in spite of the suspected pollution of horse poop all up and down the trail. As one of the trail descriptions about the Big Creek Trail says, the only negative thing about the trail is "horse doo-doo." There is a horse camp at campsite #36, beyond #37, at the far
end of Walnut Bottoms, and the trail is wide and gradual, so the horse people just love to ride up and down the trail. Some of the horse people are friendly, but most are not. Their horses are generally spooked by people with backpacks, so some of them act as if backpackers are intruders into their domain. I have learned that the horse people try to get their horses on by without being thrown on the hard ground or without a litigation resulting from someone who has been kicked by a fearful steed. Somehow I felt that the horse people felt as if anyone who would carry their stuff instead of letting a horse carry their stuff must be slightly whacko ... and maybe so .... Anyway, it was hard to see all of the sights along the trail because the hiker cannot take his/her eyes off the trail for very long without stepping in digested hay and oats ... a lot of which has to wash down into Big Creek ...
Midnight Hole--about a mile and a half up the trail--is a truly beautiful swimming hole. There are rocks to jump off of and water so deep that it appears dark blue looking down into it. When I used to do summer camp at Ridgecrest, we would go to Slippery Rock somewhere over near Mt. Pisgah and swim in a hole at the bottom of a long slide down the rock. I got my fill of swimming in icy water. It always looks wonderful until you get into it ... I don't have enough adipose tissue to keep my core warmed. The swimmers I saw at Midnight Hole had more than enough ...
The next site on the trail guide was Mouse Creek Falls. I had to wait for the horse people to get out of the way, but the camera view was worth the wait. The falls aren't on Big Creek itself, but on a creek that comes in opposite the trail. I got some nice camera shots on the way up and on the way
back down.
About three and a half miles up the trail, you cross an old railroad bridge and follow the left side of Big Creek. It's just as beautiful on the other side. The old trail guides say that there is a spring called Brakeshoe Spring somewhere about four miles up ... never saw it. I don't think it's an active spring anymore. Coming down I saw where there is a possibility of a former spring, but didn't ever confirm the spring.
I crossed a concreted stream crossing that the guide book of the early 70s said was usually dry ... and it still is. Not sure why the early people hauled concrete all that way for a stream crossing that is usually dry, but they did ... kinda interesting to think about. Warning signs are there for horse people telling them to walk their horses across ... from the horseshoe skid marks on the concrete, it looks as if some didn't follow the warning ...
Finally there is a bridge across Big Creek and an entrance into Walnut Bottoms campground #37. What a gorgeous place. When I got there, there was one small REI tent and some giggling -- a couple I named as newlyweds. I saw them out of the tent a couple of times and they were obviously deep into romantic love. They were there when I got there and there when I left ... still laughing and giggling and holding on to each other--they even held hands when they went to look for firewood. They were camped in 37-B, so I 
went to 37-D and found a nice place for my tent right next to the bear warning sign. I got my food bag out of my pack and put in my power bars I had been carrying on my belt and raised it on the cable system just in case some critters were lurking while I set up camp.
There was a nice clearing for a tent near the fire ring, but the gound around the fire ring is always so hard-packed, I decided to look for a softer soil to pitch my tent ... found it across a log from the fire ring, under some small fir trees. It was a tight fit for the vestibules of my fly, but I made it work and the floor of my tent was much softer than the regular tent space. After getting my tent set up, I decided to give my tired feet a treat and soak them in Big Creek -- pollution be damned! (I m ean the probable pollution after I stuck my feet in the waters of the Creek.) Good grief, did it feel wonderful. I have a sore spot on the ball of my left foot under the second toe ... it was immediately numbed and soothed by the icy waters of Big Creek. I moved from the side of the creek to some comfortable rocks in the middle in the sun, because it didn't take much foot soaking to bring down the body's temperature--I needed some warmth from the sun. The rocks were hard on my boney butt and I almost took my Trekker chair out, but decided that I might fall a sleep, fall over in the creek, hit my head, and drown ... so I just shifted my weight frequently. People who don't get to the woods much don't realize one of the great pleasures in life of soaking their feet and wading in a mountain stream. Big Creek was a perfect stream to soak and wade ... and I must have stayed out on the rocks for 45 minutes or more.
Usually, when I get to a campsite, I get my SweetWater filter and fill a couple of bottles. I decided to take a different route this time ... since I had a very cold stream very close to my campsite, I decided to designate one of my water bottles as a "dirty" bottle. I would fill it with creek water, boil the water pure, and fill my other "clean" bottles. The boiled water cooled pretty quickly, but I could always stick them in the steam to cool them off faster. I had taken two new cannisters for my Jetboil, so I wasn't worried about running out of fuel.
I sat leaning against a tree in my Trekker chair and waited until about 7:00 or so to start a fire. I didn't spend a lot of time on fire wood, so I only had a couple of hours of wood to burn. By this time of the year, all of the campsites in the Smokies are picked pretty clean of firewood. There were several storm-downed trees, but they were still mostly green. They would burn if necessary, but I found enough small stuff for a couple of hours. I used to sit around staring at the campfire with a group of people and someone would always say, "It's no wonder ancient man worshipped fire." It's something I've always loved to do.
When my woodpile went away and the two big logs began to smoke instead of burn, I decided it was time to turn in. I pulled my Thermarest out of my Trekker chair and added some air before poking it through the zipper of my tent. I dug my toothpaste and toothbrush out of my kit and walked out in the bushes to brush my teeth. Then, after putting everything I could think of in my pack, I went down to the cable system and, after putting my rain cover on my pack, hooked it to the cable and hoisted it up out of the reach of the GSMNP black bears. There were several warning signs tacked up around the campsite--one right on the campsite post next to my tent--warning of "bear activity."
Just as I was about to turn in a lone hiker with a heavy European accent walked into Walnut Bottoms looking for a spot to throw down. Since all of the four campsites were reserved, but I was alone in mine, I suggested he pitch his stuff on the other side of a row of bushes. He asked about the cable system, which I pointed him to. He pulled a roll of visquene out of his pack and put up some kind of shelter to sleep under. He was obviously a budget-minded backpacker ... I thought of him as Russian (although I wouldn't know a Russian accent from a Greek accent). Since I didn't know how long he had been on the trail and didn't want to seem like the KGB, I said something about the weather forecast that I had seen predicting rain during the night.
About 3:00 AM it started raining ... not hard, but steadily ... but it lasted for only an hour or so. Not knowing whether or not the rain would continue, about daylight I got my pack down off the cable (and noticed that the Russian had hoisted his stash up in a couple of Walmart plastic bags) and put it under my vestibule to pack everything out of the rain. My tent has two large vestibules, so putting my pack underneath one is never a problem. When I was getting my pack off of the cable system, I noticed that the Russian had lost some sausages out of his bags that had fallen on the ground underneath the cable system. They looked like Smokies mice had been into them, but no bears. If bears had been around, I would have seen no sausages lying on the ground.
I sat leaning against a tree in my Trekker chair and waited until about 7:00 or so to start a fire. I didn't spend a lot of time on fire wood, so I only had a couple of hours of wood to burn. By this time of the year, all of the campsites in the Smokies are picked pretty clean of firewood. There were several storm-downed trees, but
When my woodpile went away and the two big logs began to smoke instead of burn, I decided it was time to turn in. I pulled my Thermarest out of my Trekker chair and added some air before poking it through the zipper of my tent. I dug my toothpaste and toothbrush out of my kit and walked out in the bushes to brush my teeth. Then, after putting everything I could think of in my pack, I went down to the cable system and, after putting my rain cover on my pack, hooked it to the cable and hoisted it up out of the reach of the GSMNP black bears. There were several warning signs tacked up around the campsite--one right on the campsite post next to my tent--warning of "bear activity."
Just as I was about to turn in a lone hiker with a heavy European accent walked into Walnut Bottoms looking for a spot to throw down. Since all of the four campsites were reserved, but I was alone in mine, I suggested he pitch his stuff on the other side of a row of bushes. He asked about the cable system, which I pointed him to. He pulled a roll of visquene out of his pack and put up some kind of shelter to sleep under. He was obviously a budget-minded backpacker ... I thought of him as Russian (although I wouldn't know a Russian accent from a Greek accent). Since I didn't know how long he had been on the trail and didn't want to seem like the KGB, I said something about the weather forecast that I had seen predicting rain during the night.
About 3:00 AM it started raining ... not hard, but steadily ... but it lasted for only an hour or so. Not knowing whether or not the rain would continue, about daylight I got my pack down off the cable (and noticed that the Russian had hoisted his stash up in a couple of Walmart plastic bags) and put it under my vestibule to pack everything out of the rain. My tent has two large vestibules, so putting my pack underneath one is never a problem. When I was getting my pack off of the cable system, I noticed that the Russian had lost some sausages out of his bags that had fallen on the ground underneath the cable system. They looked like Smokies mice had been into them, but no bears. If bears had been around, I would have seen no sausages lying on the ground.
By the time I started packing it had stopped raining. It was still cloudy and threatening, but not raining. I packed up my stuff, took a parting picture of the dry spot under my tent, and set off down the trail regretting that I had only had time to spend the one night at Walnut Bottoms. I stopped on the bridge and took a final shot of Big Creek in all its beauty as it flows through Walnut Bottoms. What a wonderfully relaxing site.
The trip back down seemed to take longer than the trip up--mainly because my old-man feet were bothering me--but actually was about 30 minutes quicker. There were wide-bodied people swimming at Midnight Hole. There were also a couple of young kids who were freezing after being in the water for a while. Their father was large and well insulated, but the kids weren't ... at least he had them out in the woods, experiencing something they would always remember.
I, too, had one of those memorable experiences. It's difficult for me to think about my own mortality, but at my age, I always tell myself I would love to come back to a place again in a year or two, but know that, as I get older, that is more and more unlikely to happen. Oh, well ... my hiking buddy Paul Baird was right ... Walnut Bottoms is a place that must be experienced however old a person gets. I should have brought my son here ...
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