Backpacking the Great Smoky Mountains: 8 Day Hazel Creek/Bone Valley Adventure

all right i've made it to eagle creek and that is pinnacle creek coming in there on the right and i can't cross it gets over my waist and the rocks underneath are very slippery and you can see how swift that water is i finally reached something cool looks like an old cabin hazel creek look at how fast that water's moving today is october 25th 2020 i'm in the great smoky mountains national park and i'm gonna go do an eight day backpacking trip and i've drawn up my route or at least my intended route on my whiteboard to kind of show what my plan is this is a closer look at my route and this map is not to scale if you see this green line right here this is the appalachian trail and it also is the state boundary between tennessee and north carolina everything on this side is going to be tennessee everything down in here is going to be north carolina i'm starting off in tennessee at the little river trailhead i'll start and end here and today i'm going to come in about seven miles i'm going to follow the little river up to the goshen prong camp which is camp 23 and i'll stay there for my first night tomorrow i'm going to climb up a bunch of elevation probably about 3000 feet get up on the at and then i'll head over towards clingmans dome which is a lookout tower and i should have some good views in here and if i have time to climb the tower i'll have good views up there after that i'll drop down the forney creek trail and stay at camp site 70 for my second night now on day three i'm going to have some options i'm basically going to try to get over to this campsite 83 but i can go several different ways one way is to come up and over to hazel creek and if i go down this way i'm gonna have a bunch of river crossings and actually just found out a black bear ate somebody three weeks ago at camp site 82 which was one of the camps i wanted to stay at but they have it closed right now and i'll talk a little bit more about that later on in the trip but that'll be one way to go i also can try to get up on this welch ridge which supposedly is a little bit more rockier and harder to follow but it's up higher and has some great views in here and i was also warned if i go this way i'm gonna have a very swift creek crossing one of the harder ones in the park according to the backcountry office however i go when i get to camp 83 i'm gonna spend two nights there and on my day off i'm gonna be coming up this bone valley trail and look for some old settlements that are supposedly in there it's i think like the most remote old settlement in the park and actually this entire area i'm in between the appalachian trail and lake fontana is the most remote place in the park and sees the least amount of hiker traffic which is kind of why i'm going in there on day five when i leave camp 83 i'm going to be trying to get over to this camp 96 which is on an island along eagle creek and i'll have a couple options i can go up over some ridges to get there or i can also come down to the lake and go that way and then on day six i'm just gonna go up eagle creek i'll again be climbing up a bunch of elevation to get onto the at and i'm gonna stay at one of those famous at shelters uh the spins field shelter and that'll be night six day seven the plan is just to go along the at probably going to be a bunch of up and down and then i'll drop down to camp 28 which i think is called the lynn camp prong and that'll be my last camp of the trip and then i'll head back to the trailhead over here i put up some things kind of why i'm doing this trip to start with fall colors are great right now it's going to be a bunch of waterfalls a lot of mountain streams and most of them are going to have a lot of crossings i'm expecting anywhere from 30 to 40 unbridged river crossings on this trip i mentioned how remote it is i'm expecting a lot of solitude once i get into this area the at shelter the old settlements and have a lot of views every time i'm up high should have a bunch of views and on any of these ridge trails i'll have views it's an adventure that's why i'm doing it and hopefully lots of wildlife already mentioned the black bear uh have a good chance to see some black bears i'll most likely see some deer there are elk here don't know if i'll see any mountain lions probably won't see any but maybe i'll get lucky i've been seeing a bunch of turkeys just driving around the park and there are hogs here as well so this is my plan now it's time to go see what actually happens day one the little river trail and i'm getting a late start it's already after 3 p.m we've got about 7 miles to hike in here's an old chimney right here at the trail head this is part of the old elk mott settlement see i'm already getting some color and that's my first look at the little river i've come about four miles and i'm at a trail junction treadle left goes up the little river and i'm going to start going up the gaussian prong it's about three and a half camp all right i've made it to campsite number 23 and how this works is there are multiple spots firings at these camps other people can stay in them doesn't look like anyone's here so they want to pick this spot this is camp one i'm using a nemo hornet two-person tint which i'm really starting to love and you can see my food hanging right over in there and there's several other sites around me i'm scattered in the trees there's one back in there one over in there but it doesn't look like anyone's here and the gaussian prong which you can hear but can't see it it's running out in there that's my water source right now i am here camp site number 23 and first thing i'm gonna do this morning is start hiking up to the at the girl in the backcountry office when she gave me the permit said this is a pretty steep up i think i'm going up about 3000 feet when i get on the 8t i'm going to head over to the clingmans dome area which is this guy right here you can see i'll be passing close to a road so i might see some people in there and then i'll start dropping down forney creek and i am permitted to stay in campsite number 70. this guy right here i think it's about 14 miles from where i'm at right now day two is underway i'm starting off by heading up to the at about four and a half miles of uphill look at all the leaves falling i'm still following the gaussian prong i haven't had too many views of it you can see how brushy it is in here all right i've climbed up a bunch and i see a trail junction sign in front of me so i believe i've hit the at trail and you can see how foggy it is in here i think i'm in a cloud everything is wet and damp let's go see what this sign says appalachian trail i've got 2.2 miles to go to get to klingman's dome see the white blaze up on the tree there that is what marks the at so this section of the at trail that i'm on it kind of goes across the crest of the smokies the high point through the park and it's mostly been in the trees kind of popping out of them now but i can't really see anything because it's all socked in clouds are starting to open up just a little bit and i've got my first view this is looking towards the tennessee side i think i started from somewhere way out there i think this is all part of the little river valley so i must have started way back in there all right so i'm almost up to klingman's dome and for one thing can't see anything but also there is literally a paved trail coming right up to it with hundreds of people on it so i'm gonna skip it and uh just head down to the forney creek trail start dropping in doesn't do me any good to climb up to a lookout tower if i can't see anything reach the trail junction and i'm going to be taking the forney creek trail and this sign says it's only 6.1 miles to jonas creek six miles to go then i'll be at camp i've reached forney creek which isn't very big yet but i have a feeling it's going to get bigger as i head downstream look at how pretty those leaves are above me i've reached campsite number 68 which is a pretty sweet spot right out on the creek it's like a little cascade right next to it see there's a firing tint pads food cables i think all the sights here have food cables to hang your food on i haven't had to get my feet wet so far but this is uh so i just saw a bear right up here on the trail and actually looked like there could have been two of them i kind of ran out this way and i don't see them anymore all right i've reached my first crossing where i'm gonna have to get my feet wet probably just gonna cross right here it could almost rock hop across but those rocks are too slick that's really the problem in here is all these rocks are wet and slick it's just hard to stabilize on them all right i've made it to camp number 70 and this is going to be night number two got a really neat tent spot right underneath some rhododendron and the creek's running to the right can't really see it can never really see the creeks out here but got plenty of firewood and i'm kind of on the edge of a big open field there's more spots out there food cables out there really kind of down in a deep hole ridge above me and the jonas creek trail runs up that way and that's most likely the direction i'm starting tomorrow and jonas creek is actually running right out there i'll walk over there for a view of that but this is camp 70. more fire rings down there and that's actually the direction forney creek runs so forney creek is coming in over here and then jonas creek is coming in over here i'm right on the v all right i'm all snug inside my sleeping bag and this is what i'm gonna go to sleep to tonight sound of the river right now i am here at camp number 70 and my objective for today is to get over to here camp number 83 and i've got several ways i could go i have already ruled out this option to come down this way and around just because it's a little bit longer and less attractive so i know for sure i'm going to be headed up the jonas creek trail which is going to be a lot like yesterday when i left camp going up to goshen prong it's four miles up to this welch ridge and about 2000 feet of gain it's probably going to look very similar to what i did yesterday and then when i get up here this is where i don't know what i'm going to do yet one way i could go and probably the way i'm leaning the way i plan to begin with is to go down into hazel creek and follow this all the way down and this is one of the more wild and remote streams in great smoky mountains national park and also a guy just got ate by a bear three weeks ago right here campsite 82 not really sure how i feel about hiking past that especially since the girl in the backcountry office said supposedly they killed the bear and anytime someone in the park service says supposedly i don't know what to think but that's option a and then the other option i could at this junction stay on welch ridge and go this way looks like there'd be several peaks i'd be going over and these ridges and the smokies you never really know with them sometimes they're open and there's great views but could also be very wooded up here and i wouldn't have many views at all but this high rocks area looks pretty cool and then from there i would drop down the cold spring gap trail and the girl in the backcountry office also told me that this trail is a little hard to follow very rocky and this stream crossing is very swift and in high water it can be almost uncrossable it's not high water right now but you did say it was very wide and that the rocks are very slippery so i guess i get to pick my poison do i want to have to uh cross a big stream or go right by where somebody got eight just a few days ago not really sure what i'm going to do yet it's either way i go it's going to be in the neighborhood of 14 miles to get to this campsite number 83. good look at jonas creek this morning the biggest obstacle i think i've had on this trip so far has been these guys spiders there's spider webs everywhere right on the trail and a handful of times have walked right into these guys i have climbed up quite a bit of elevation and i'm now getting my first look at welch ridge which this is really hard to see you can see it before it's basically right up there and i'll raise this up i believe that is the welch ridge trail running on that ridge line out there looks pretty wooded that's gonna be one of my options starting to get a little bit of a view it's kind of hard to get a totally open view here trees everywhere but this is the most open i've seen it in the day looking out over jonas creek in the forney creek valley got trail junction sign right here which means i've made it up to welch ridge or at least the welch ridge trail and uh you can kind of see welch ridge here through the trees looks pretty wooded it's way out there and honestly i could go either way right now on which one of these trails i want to hike they both sound awesome however i think i'm going to go with the hazel creek trail simply because i've been looking at it on a map since 1996 and finally 24 years later i am right here and i've always wanted to see it so i'm gonna go check it out now you can't see it because it's too in the shadows but 0.7 miles 0.7 miles on the welch ridge trail and i'll hit hazel creek start dropping down i don't know what's making this noise some sort of bird or maybe it's an insect like a cricket but listen we've been listening to for the last hour i've made it to the hazel creek trail and i'm now beginning my descent down into the hazel creek valley it's really hard to see anything because of all the trees but you can kind of see there's a big valley below me and there's a ridge way out there the at is actually running on part of that ridge kind of runs out that way so this tiny little stream is hazel creek the beginning of it pretty small to start but sure just like forney creek by the time i get to camp tonight it's gonna be pretty big or at least big in the sense of i'll have to get my feet wet crossing it anyways i'm down in the valley and i'm just gonna be following the creek down for a while this might be one of the waterfalls on the map here's another little waterfall i brought my bear spray on this trip i think this is the first time i've ever done that in the smokies and i actually had decided to do it before i even found out about the black bear attack just because of people and everything else just good self-defense against anything and then once i heard about the black bear eating a person kind of seemed like a good idea honestly and i've had it out since i saw that black bear yesterday i don't know i don't think i'm really worried about getting charged out here as much as having what just happened having kind of one of those rogue bears see me as prey kind of feels like a jungle in here with all this rhododendron so hazel creek has been a completely different story than forney creek was yesterday i've had about a dozen crossings so far just like this and they're not very big or very deep it's just that i can't cross them without getting my feet wet which isn't a really bad thing since it's kind of hot outside but check out this waterfall it's on a much better trail now it's actually an old road bed and just following the creek down i'm coming up on campsite number 82. when you see there's a sign here notice this campsite is closed due to aggressive bear activity now somewhere in this general vicinity there was a guy who was camping here that was eaten by a bear three weeks ago and they really don't know what happened yet they don't know if a bear killed him and ate them or if the guy died and the bear just fed on them after the fact which would have been a normal thing for bear to do and so seeing this tint here first i just thought someone was camped here but i don't see anything going on i don't see any other sign of someone being here no one's popped out of it yet so i'm almost wondering if they set that tent up there just to see if another bear's gonna show up and mess with it it's kind of interesting if they got the if they got the bear that did it why do they still have a tin up and why is the site still closed anyways i've got about two miles to go to get to camp trying to beat darkness here's a good look down at hazel creek and somewhere in here is where the welch ridge trail would have taken me and i would have had that crossing i don't know this is the exact spot but as you can see the river's getting a little bigger keeps getting bigger all right it's getting pretty dark you can hear how loud it is in here about the river and i'm probably maybe only a half a mile from camp all right i made it to campsite 83 and there's a nice little warning sign here bears are active in this area all right doesn't look like anyone's here i'm gonna find a place to set up a good morning day four it has been raining for the past hour here is a good look at campsite number 83 and i'm gonna be staying here for two nights and that creek you see on the other side of my tent that is bone valley creek not hazel creek and it runs down into hazel creek just around the corner and there's a bunch of other sites over there i'll walk that way and show you this is a pretty big site i can tell it gets a lot of use and there's at least six or seven more fire rings over here uh kind of right on hazel creek actually i almost took this spot last night could even move here tonight but there's orange peels everywhere so i kind of need to clean that up i don't know who would leave them out here like that but this is the rest of camp 83 and it runs a good ways back that way in fact you can't even see it but way down there in the trees there's like a hitching post for horses and a horse camp but i'll walk out to get a better look at hazel creek so this is right where bone valley creek joins hazel creek which is coming in on the right here starting to rain on me again rain was not in the forecast at all for this trip but starting to remember how wet the smokies are and that is looking down hazel creek i'm leaving camp set up and headed up the bone valley trail it's like 1.8 miles one way and supposedly there's an old settlement up there that dates back 100 plus years looks like i'm going to be doing some creek crossings in the rain today some three rocks i finally reached something cool looks like an old cabin it's actually in pretty good shape and actually that's pretty nice because i can go get out of the rain it's really starting to rain now the hall crest cabin built about 1880 pretty big two stories look at that rain and wow that's pretty cool there's the back door this is the cabin pretty cozy pretty big actually you can see there's a chimney over there so that's probably where they used to cook they would always cook away from the house so they didn't burn it down here's a closer look at that fireplace and chimney it's still standing 150 years later here's one last look this is the back side it's continuing to rain it's rained all day basically i decided to hike up the trail just a little bit farther and have come to a cemetery there's a lot of tombstones read some of them william hall was born in 1896 died in 1921. creighton hall born in 1849 died in 1903. he must have been a pretty cool dude this is what they said about him although he sleeps his memory doth live cheering comfort to his mourners give this guy live to be over a hundred years old and how about a little memory to root hall i don't even know if that was a male or female all i know is it was born 1904 died in 1908. root never had a chance to get to experience what all of us have so here's to the memory of root hall i'm back at the hall cabin and it just continues to dump rain training harder now than it was before and i've been under the shelter for probably close to two hours i took one little break to go up to the cemetery and it just started dumping on me up there came back here and i'm trying to dry out for a second all right i'm back to camp and this really is a pretty spot this might be my favorite camp of the trip so far you can see my tin over there really starting to get misty in here now you can see the fog right over the river and then even up there it's really starting to build up you can really see it right there that's why they call it the smoky mountains they've just been socked in here it has rained all day it's still been a great day good morning day five this is bone valley creek right in front of camp and it is just roaring right now it's 9 00 am it rained all night long storm and the water levels come up over a foot almost two feet this would be uncrossable so right now i am here camp 83 and all i did yesterday was come up this bone valley trail to that cabin which was up in here and then backtrack now today what i'm going to do i want to get over to this campsite number 96 on eagle creek it's actually on an island in eagle creek and i'm going to start by going down hazel creek eight tenths of a mile and i'll get to a trail junction and this is one of those spots where i have two different ways to go but i already know which way i'm gonna go i'm gonna go up the jenkins ridge trail and it doesn't really look like it climbs up that much goes through something called pickens gap at 2 900 feet so i'm about 2 200 feet above sea level right now so not a big gain and really the only question mark about today is this trail doesn't even have a name looks like it goes down pinnacle creek according to the map this trail is not maintained so that might not be a big deal at all or it could suck i'm not going to know until i get there but that's the way i'm going to go and then when i get down to eagle creek i'm just gonna go up a few miles to 96. it's probably maybe nine miles total so not a big day and my other option would be to come down this way follow hazel creek down to fontana lake can go around but there's no really reason to do an extra few miles not to mention hazel creek is probably uncrossable right now it's looking down on hazel creek it's pretty jacked too and this is just one half of it's going around an island this is the smaller channel coming up on campsite number 84 which is the other camp pretty close to mine here's a closer look at camp number 84. this is a really really nice spot right on hazel creek nice firing there's a few firings in here but this is the sweet spot here's a close look at hazel creek and this is definitely what i would call high water and it's uncrossable right now at least right here there are actually some pretty nice looking rapids out there just look at how fast the water's moving right here i think this is called the sugar fork and i'm at my trail junction with the jonas or something ridge trail jenkins ridge and basically my trail's like right over there it's just gonna follow this up for a little bit fog starting to show up again this is kind of my view this is the jenkins ridge trail it's about two miles to get up to i think it's called pickens gap so this is pickens gap and see my trail junction sign right there so that is the jenkins ridge trail going up the hill right here and that goes up to the at i'm not going that way that's looking through pickens gap i came in from right there actually you can almost see the sun right there that's awesome i wasn't expecting that there it is so this trail junction sign doesn't even show my trail it just says jenkins ridge trail goes that way and then hazel creek trail where i came from that's the direction i'm gonna be headed and there's a sign up here so this trail doesn't even have a name on the map and it doesn't even have a name here on any of the signs sign says unmaintained trail no horses awesome all right headed down pinnacle creek see how this goes this is an unmaintained trail in the smokies i've reached pinnacle creek and then you can see the cut in the hillside right here i'm basically just following an old road bed it doesn't really look like this trail has ever been maintained but it was obviously built at some point the biggest obstacle has been trees down across the trail kind of like that guy right there getting a lot harder to follow now as i'm getting down into the brushier sections not going to be making a two mile an hour pace but i'm still moving trail's starting to suck a little bit now this is getting really overgrown all right it's getting very hard to follow now and actually don't know where the trail is it's going to keep going turn turned out to be not so good this is my first view had a pinnacle creek in a while starting to get a little bigger you can see how thick it is though actually this is kind of more open than it's been so at this point i have no idea where the trail's at and so i'm just kind of following the creek taking the path of least resistance which isn't always so clear cut but kind of have an idea of where the trail is going to be so i'm just actually on the other side now i'm just going to hug the left side might even be back on it who knows i don't know what's going on here but it's definitely it's definitely not really a trail that should be on a map i think i'm back on the trail now oh yeah right through there they weren't kidding and they said it's not maintained this is pretty much worst case scenario the exact opposite of what i was hoping for when i started i mean it could be worse could be no trail in here at all but uh still it's just yeah it's not i thought i was hoping for but it works all right i have made it to eagle creek that is pinnacle creek coming in there on the right and i can't cross right now it's uh over my waist and the rocks are too slippery i can actually see the trail junction right over there there's a trail sign so what i think i'm gonna do is i'm gonna probably just set up camp and then wait till the morning as long as i get no rain this should come down a foot and i'll be able to cross eagle creek where i'm standing taking this shot i mean this is the water is already almost up to my waist here's a look at what's gonna be camp number five i'm right alongside pinnacle creek which is already starting to go down you can kind of see eagle creek running out that way it's going down too but it'll definitely be lower in the morning good morning day six rained quite a bit last night but the water levels come down in eagle creek i'm gonna be able to cross it good morning day number seven this is the spence field shelter this is where i stayed last night and i'll go show you the inside here in a second but first looking out that way is eagle creek and that's where i came up from and this is the view right in front of the shelter and here's a look at the inside there are two bunks an upper and lower bunk that's my setup up there got a fireplace a really good fire going and here is the view right from the bunks a different angle of the shelter and you see i've got stuff out drying everywhere it's like the first sunshine i've had in four days turns out there was a hurricane that came through here i guess it wasn't a hurricane it was more of like the aftermath that was what all the rain was from all the flooding and you see there are food cables over here to the right and the trail goes over to the at maybe five minutes up that hill so the first six miles today are on the at and i'm expecting to have some pretty good views uh this is what it looks like and i'm headed up to something called rocky top which is gotta be one of those ridge tops up there should have a really good view when i get there so this is rocky top 5 41 feet above sea level and you can actually see cades cove way out there and then my camp the shelter was somewhere out there and eagle creek is this valley right in front of me you can actually see fontana lake way out there and this is all north carolina side and so the at is basically running on this divide all the way out there by far the best view i've had on this trip totally different and actually i think hazel creek's got to be out there somewhere and you can kind of see this way i am just going to be following the ridgeline that way here's a good look to the north on the tennessee side of things and that is all cades cove out there it's point of reference rocky top you can't even see it somewhere over there i don't know if i'm gonna get a better view than this it's pretty much what most of the trail looks like up here i have reached the derricks knob shelter which is pretty much the same design as the shelter i stayed in last night kind of a similar view except it's looking out to the north coming up on a trail junction sign and this is where i'm going to leave the at which continues on the ridge that way and now i'm at the greenbrier ridge trail and i'm going to take this down to the middle prong and i think it's about six miles total to get down to camp number 28. good news is it's all downhill from here one thing different about my hike today it's been quiet all the other days i've been hiking right by a stream and it's always just been loud but today it's been all quiet you can see this trail is right on top of greenbriar ridge got a valley to the right valley to the left it is now day eight and this is a good look at camp number 26 my last camp for this trip pretty simple camp you can see my food bag hanging up there and there's actually a bunch of better sights over on that side of the creek i'll walk over there in a second to show that but rained on me again all of last night and it's finally starting to clear up a little bit there's the creek that runs through camp and see there's a really good spot right there and there's a bunch other spots down there you can actually see some tarps from some other campers look through there camp number 28. i've got about eight miles of hiking to do total today to get back to the car this is what my trail looks like to start open forest a lot of the trees in here have lost their leaves and first thing i'm doing is climbing up about a thousand feet to get to the murray ridge trail i'm on the murray ridge trail now and i think i'm gonna go ahead and end this video with this shot one of the best views i think i've had this entire trip

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Length: 54min 33sec (3273 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020