Posts Tagged ‘alum cave’

The Mad Backpacker team has taken a trip out of Michigan and visited one of the most beautiful parks ever to be declared such: The Great Smokey Mountains.

While staying in this beautiful  park, we decided to take a short day hike to a beautiful mountain named Mount Le Conte.  While ranked 3^rd highest in the Great Smokey Mountains, Mt. Le Conte is actually the tallest mountain in the eastern United States, when measured from the mountain’s base to it’s summit.

As we only had a short time to climb, we decided to take a trail called the Alum Cave Bluff trail.  The Alum Cave Bluff trail runs from it’s trailhead at 441 and runs roughly 5 miles to the Le Conte Lodge, located at the top of Mt. Le Conte.  During those 5 miles it passes through Alum Cave, which is a man-made cave / bluff made while mining salt for the Epsom Salt Co. as well as the Confederate Army during the civil war.

We started out in 64 degree rain at the base of Mt. Le Conte.  The weather was not very pleasing to most, but we found it acceptable given our task ahead.  We gathered our day pack and hiking poles and set out.  We were instantly greeted with the roaring of water rushing down the mountain.  It had rained hard the night previous and the streams had turned quite quickly into rapids.  Noise aside, it still had a musical beauty behind it.

We crossed several bridges, made simply of a log split in half, and then covered with what appeared to be a form of cement.  They all were structurally sound and I found the concept wonderful.

After a short stint of climbing slippery rocks, we arrived at Arch rock.  It was a beautiful cave-like rock with stairs leading through it, hewn into the rock itself.

Miles passed on, and after a mildly easy stretch we arrived at Alum Cave.  Standing tall and ominous, Alum Cave laid before us as we stared agape at it’s beauty.  This clearly was a  turnaround point for most day hikers, as well as a rest stop for those pressing through.  We sat beneath it’s dark wonderment and regained our senses, refueling our thirst and having a quick snack.  There were several other groups doing the same.

We gathered up our things and set out again, this time newly recharged.  The trail went up for a short time, then dropped back down again, leaving us wondering if we had perhaps taken a wrong turn somewhere.  The views along the side of the mountain are beyond describing with words.  Although at this point we were into the deep mist of the Smokey Mountains, we could look down and see the shadowed silhouettes of other tree lines, far below us.  The temperature had also began to drop.

We continued on, with the trail raising steeper and steeper.  The air was also beginning to thin, and the visibility was low with the fog, clouds, and mist.  We slowed our climb, and took each leg of the trail with careful accuracy and deliberation.  We took several breaks, needless to say.

Eventually the trail leveled out and we found ourselves at the Mt. Le Conte Lodge.  We were greeted by a very friendly and informative park ranger, as well as dozens of other hikers and backpackers.  The lodge has a very long history that I will not get into in this review, but I suggest you take a moment to look it up as it is very interested.  The lodge even today is resupplied via Llamas, even the mail!

We looked through the history of the lodge, as well as purchased a few shirts and patches before wandering over to the dining lodge.  The beautiful wooden lodge was surrounded by oil lamps, as there is no electricity at the mountain’s summit, and the entire place has an air of nostalgia.  We purchased a sack lunch for $9.00, and I am here to tell you, that is the BEST nine bucks I’ve ever spent.  Inside the wondrous sack-lunch-of-holding was a bagel with cream cheese, a small summer sausage, applesauce, cookies, trail mix, and some Gatorade electrolyte mix.  Sweet nectar of the gods.  It also came with bottomless coffee or hot chocolate, which has got to be the BEST coffee I’ve ever had above 6500 ft.  This could also be because the temperature had dropped nearly 20 degrees and we could now see our breath.

With our biblical ambrosia in our stomachs, we set out on our decent back down the mountain with a newfound spring in our step.  The climb down was easy, although slippery with the water still running down the mountainside.  We passed and followed several dozen friendly fellow hikers and eventually made it back to the trailhead without much incident.  We were left with a Greek-like feeling of accomplishment, as if we ourselves were Zeus climbing down from Olympus.  I would suggest this hike to anyone with a few hard hikes under their belt, but the stress is but a minor bump in the mountain of beauty and majesty.

Pictures can be found HERE

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