– Big South Fork
Ryan and I headed out to Big South Fork National Recreation Area on Saturday, anxious to avoid what we were sure would be horrendous crowds at GSMNP considering it was a 3-day holiday weekend and 2-day weekends are bad enough.
We have been out to Big South Fork several times before, but not in nearly two years. The park is up high on the Cumberland Plateau and is not only divided between Tennessee and Kentucky, but also has other state parks and national forests within its perimeter and adjoining its boundaries.
Since I am focused on prepping my body for our upcoming multi-day trek in Patagonia, I found an aggressive 2-day 23-mile route, which afforded us a great luxury – back country camping wherever you want – unlike GSMNP where you have to only camp at designated sites, most of which require a reservation.
However, what I wasn’t prepared for was the several dozen stream crossings the route took us on within the first 5 miles. I tried to balance and leap my way across several, but ended up with multiple sock changes early on after I determined balancing with a 30-pound pack wasn’t as easy as it seemed, and couldn’t risk getting my final pair of socks wet. So I had to take my shoes off for every stream crossing, which meant a major slowdown to our quick pace.
The low ground of the stream valley was full of stagnant water and, even more pleasantly, mosquitoes, which had no problem biting through our Patagonia Capilene 1 shirts. As we grew weary of the constant stream crossings we headed into a thicket of beautiful flowers filled with hummingbirds drinking from thousands of brilliant orange flowers – which grew on bushes covered in thorns. The trail through the thicket was practically non-existent, and the wet ground was full of gaping holes.
After making it halfway through I suggested we hitchhike back from our turnaround point instead of making the horrible return trek on Sunday. Ryan one-upped me and suggested that he wouldn’t mind turning around now. So, that’s what we did. On the way back I was sloppier with my stream crossings and despite the fact that my Merrell’s are made with GORE-TEX, it can’t keep them dry when I totally fell in and had them under water, so I ended up wrapping my last pair of dry socks in Ziploc bags and then stuffing them into my shoes so I wouldn’t end up with trenchfoot.
Somehow, the number of stream crossings seemed fewer on the return. Funny how that happens. When we made it back to the car I proposed we walk out to Angel Falls, one of the most scenic parts of the park where the river is littered with gigantic boulders that you can scamper around on. A 2-mile hike took us to the falls where we sat on the rocks and listened to the rushing water.
Big South Fork is a great little-known treasure in Tennessee, overshadowed by GSMNP, but is full of plenty of beauty in its own right and is blissfully free of the hordes of people – and traffic – that plague GSMNP. I highly recommend a visit to Big South Fork for anyone that hasn’t been, and can recommend some really great trails to take – and some to avoid now as well!
