Mountain Beautiful Loop

I didn't have my camera but Brady was looking for some exercise so we parked at the Cravens House and headed up the Cravens Trail for our regular Wednesday night hike. It was a beautiful day and it wasn't long until a huge rock uphill of the trail caught our attention, so we veered off up through the trees to climb it. Once on the summit it didn't make sense to lose all that altitude, so we continued straight up the hill to the Bluff Trail above.

Brady claimed that he had never hiked the Mountain Beautiful Trail, so off we went--right into a barricade across the start of the trail near the old Point Hotel. It seemed obvious that the trail was closed, but as an official VIP (Volunteer in the Park) who maintained this very trail 15 years ago, I figured it was my obligation to investigate...so on we hiked. The trail follows the eastern bluff below Point Park, then begins a descent to cross underneath the Incline (it would be a very intimate experience if one of the Incline cars happens to pass overhead while you are under there). Then the trail switchbacks and climbs back up to the base of the bluffs for almost another mile.

Then it happened: we came upon the reason for the trail closure. At a particularly large gully (mile 0.89 according to my trusty trail guide) we found a stacked pile of bags of cement, lumber, jackhammers, and air hoses running up the bluff. Evidently workers were clearing away all the loose rock and preparing to build what I hope is not a concrete monstrosity of a bridge. The trail was built to high standards by the CCC in the 1930s and deserves to be kept in that kind of high-quality but natural condition. That said, I was pleased to see that this trail, neglected for so long, was getting some attention at last.

Past this point I was puzzled because the trail seemed oddly disturbed and trampled. What was going on? We started to hit muddy patches, and the reason became obvious--hoofprints, postholing the trail! The contractors are using mules to ferry in the concrete and other supplies. I'll bet there hasn't been a mule on the trail since Harriet Whiteside stopped using one to pump the water up from Leonora Spring back in the 1800's. A clever strategy indeed, although someone may later have to repair the damage to the rest of the trail done by repairing that one gully. (I later learned that the purpose of the work was sewer work, not trail work, which makes more sense.)

Just before reaching the end of the trail, past Leonora and Ragon springs, I attempted to find the now quite elusive Alum spring between Scenic Highway and the bluff above. My trail guide describes a "faint trail" leading to the spring from the upper switchback but all traces of that trail were gone today. The guide says it is 100 yards to the spring but it may be further; it was getting dark so I turned back without reaching the spring.

Brady and I walked down the Hardy trail (the wide and graveled remains of the Broad Gauge railroad bed) for a mile back to the Cravens House, pleasantly tired from our small adventure.

Still Making (Slow) Progress

It seems that I can always find some excuse not to stare into the computer when I get home from work...doing laundry, sometimes even cooking dinner. But tonight I managed to consolidate some of the PHP scripts driving the site and feel like I got something useful done. I will never be a great PHP programmer, and it may well be that other techniques such as AJAX (I bought a book called "Ajax in Ten Minutes" but that is clearly fictional for me) may be the better way to go, but such is life in the technology lane.

Google has already indexed some of my pages, but I suppose it's okay to get a head start even if most of the site is still missing in action. I've decided that the mobile devices of the future will likely be of the same ilk as the iPhone, which works for me since I have an iPod Touch. The site looks pretty good there since you can zoom in and to read down just one column, yet slip around pretty easily to see the others. Check it out and let me know what you think: www.hikelookout.org.

Glen Falls Madness

It was an absolutely beautiful day, sunny and 60 degrees, as Brady and I parked along Ochs Highway at the Glen Falls Trailhead just up from Sanders Road on the west side of Lookout Mountain. I wanted to try some photography while the sun was shining on this side of the mountain (we typically hike in the afternoon when the sun is fading fast).

Before visiting Glen Falls proper I climbed down into the gully to examine the cascades below the trail, where we spent a half hour taking photos. In truth, these waterfalls are perhaps more impressive than the main falls, which is mostly hidden from view.

Brady the Mountaineer had brought along a length of his trusty Goldline rope, and in fact we used it for a safety while working around the top of Glen Falls. Looking at the pictures now, the rope makes it even more suggestive that we are in a cave, not outdoors.

We noted a lot of graffiti in the "tunnel" leading up to the top of the falls, done these days with magic markers since today's teenagers don't carry paint. Stupid, idiotic graffiti that reflected the ages of its authors! However, we did note the much older message, "All to the Legion of Honor," on the outer rock. Did a Frenchman visit this place years ago?

I had been to Glen Falls many times (including memorable adventures such as finding a blow-up doll that had been flung over the cliff, and having my rescue pager go off for a rescue at Glen Falls while I sat there at Glen Falls) but had never been to what I now call Picnic Rock, a most comfortable large plateau of a rock just above the lip of the falls on the northern side. It would have been a great place to eat lunch, had Brady or I brought along a lunch to eat.

Rather than retracing our steps back to the truck or walking the road itself, we plunged into the woods on the uphill side of the road and made our way along the steep hillside until the truck appeared below. Unfortunately there was a steep slope and/or cliff between us and the truck. I climbed down while Brady used the goldline to do a body rappel, possibly the first done on Lookout Mountain in several decades.

Once down the road in St. Elmo we headed up Old Mountain Road (which starts right there at Mojo Burrito). This is the old Whiteside Turnpike, the original toll road up the mountain. It passes three times under the modern Incline, the third time becoming just the overgrown remains of a road. Back down by Chattem, we explored up Church Street and found the former Patten Memorial AME Zion Church (1886) is apparently being renovated extensively to become a private residence--and what a place it will be, with the tower, the big glass windows, and all that history. I didn't realize it at the time, but the Incline #1 (of the very same period since it started service in 1887) came down what's now the kudzu-infested slope next door to the church. According to my own trail guide, the lower station was right there at what's now a small basketball court.

Our next stop was the Old Wauhatchie Pike Greenway. A hundred years ago the mountain above St. Elmo up to the broad gauge railroad (now the Guild Trail) was a shanty-town of small homes. You can still see traces of the old roads and driveways, one of which connects to Old Wauhatchie just around the corner from the concrete barricades. Walking down the kudzu-filled greenway (very green indeed in summer but quite brown today) it was difficult to believe this was a public road just 15 years ago, one that I drove almost daily. At Mystery Falls we met a group of cavers from Missouri who had just exited the cave (gated). I was amazed that they had been able (with permission) to drive back to the cave...which makes sense, and helps cavers change out of their muddy clothes.

Our final adventure occured at the railroad overpass on Cummings Highway at the base of the mountain at the Old Wauhatchie intersection. We pulled over and noticed a sign that read, "St. Elmo - Lookout Mountain Greenway & Trail, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce Southside Branch." What, a greenway here? Unfortunately, it was the shortest and sorriest greenway we'd ever seen, not more than 200 feet in length and quite steep and rough! Halfway down the greenway was a tent and shanty where a homeless person was evidently living--laundry was hanging from the trees and pallets were being disassembled to build a wooden structure. On the other side, two identical signs confirmed that this was the official greenway. A great idea for sure, but somehow one that evidently never progressed past the signs. I'd be interested in learning more about this (a Google search turned up nothing).

In all, we had spent five hours on the hill!

Hiking the Point Hotel Railroad Loop

Brady and I spent four hours today making a loop on the northern end of the mountain, most of it off the maintained trails. We parked at the Cravens House and were about to start up the Incline #1 (East Cravens) trail but veered off through the backyard of the old Hardy home to see if we could find any more traces of the mysterious roadbed we'd found a couple of days earlier just above the old railroad bed. Sure enough, we followed the "flat ground" and found stacked rocks lining the downhill side indicating this was more than likely an old road. We think it's a very old one because it seems to go under the Incline #1, which was built in the late 1800's.

We charged directly uphill to the Incline #1 trail, then spent a few minutes photographing the truly massive stonework just past the "90 degree" turn in the old railway. We approached from the bottom because true to our nature we were off the official trail and following the old CCC switchback (when I reopened this trail in the early 1990s I did not follow this route because it was completely washed away at the top, instead following the bed of the incline itself for 75 yards to reach the same spot). The stonework where the trail first meets the incline is long and impressive, but the upper wall is even larger. Here the incline went across a high trestle over a gully, affording a view that must have left some memories on its passengers.

We searched for a piece of the incline cable that I had found 15 years ago (it was right there on the ground on the old railbed) but didn't find it. However, we did come across a very large bolt at the Point Hotel site that I had never noticed before.

From the hotel we continued southward down the bluff trail, which is built on the bed of a narrow gauge railroad. We could hear the a train whistle in Lookout Valley below--very appropriate. After a quarter mile the footpath drops down while the original railway continued on trestles.

Today the trestles are gone, but sewer paths suspended in the air on not-so-sturdy timbers mark the route. The old railway goes very close to the back yards of some posh bluff homes, so we tried to be inconspicuous. Behind

what my notes say are the old Nottingham place, we came to a swinging bridge over the tracks. I remembered steps coming down from above and a place for someone to wait for the train (later a trolley) but despite the fact that it was winter and bitter cold, the entire area was overgrown with greenery. Although the bridge was broken, we could still clamber to the top of the rock for a great view.

The old railroad was getting ever more overgrown and ever close to the houses, so after

photographing a set of trestle bases, we started looking for an escape route. These trestles must have been something, by the way, because the actual tracks were about twenty feet higher than the stonework--lots of timbers, just like in the movies. At any rate, the slopes were steep and we were now about a hundred feet above the Bluff trail, and the trail was living up to its name. For a time we thought we might have to traverse all the way to Sunset Rock, but eventually we found a gully we could climb down.

The sun was setting so there was no time to investigate the "mystery cave" in this area--we needed to boggie on home. At the intersection of the Cravens Trail we noted with a mix of amusement and consternation two adjacent signs that said that Sunset Rock was either one mile or half a mile away. These signs are within ten feet of one another!

Once back below the Point we followed an old trail directly down the nose of the mountain to the Cravens House. This trail is marked on a 1921 map and makes a beeline down the hill, switching back shortly to emerge at the cluster of monuments on the hill behind the Cravens House. Darkness was upon us but we had completed our loop!