Hike: Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

This past Saturday, I drove a couple of hours northeast to the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park with pretty much no plans other than to not be at home, and maybe hike. The drive up was ok - a lot of it was interstate so at least I got good mileage. :)

To get to the visitor center, you actually have to go through a .9mile long tunnel through a mountain while also passing from Tennessee into Kentucky. The tunnel appears to be fairly new, and quite wide for the lanes they've got running through it.

The visitor center was pretty soon after that, and I asked a nice, old, British park ranger for some advice on hike in the 4-6 mile range. He suggested a nice sounding loop travelling counterclockwise , following the Harlan Road Trail to the Sugar Run Trail to the Ridge Trail. A little over 6 miles, so pretty do-able. See the map here. It was a pretty short 5 minute drive up to trailhead. I didn't explore the fort because I wanted to make sure I got my hiking in before it got dark (I got a late start and didn't make it to the visitor center until 13:00).

First problem: finding the Harlan Road Trailhead involves walking up the road a bit. I even saw the sign, but it seemed to indicate that the trailhead was further up the road. With all the leaves, and angle I was at, I totally missed the path! Suffice it to say, hiking up the road sucked. After a half mile or so of going up the road, I figured out I was totally wrong, and managed to get onto the Ridge Trail and head up to the Pinnacle Overlook.

Second problem: TOO MANY PEOPLE. This is obviously what most park visitors come to see. The overlook provides a view of 3 states: Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. So, cool views, but too many folks. I got out of there pretty quickly, only took a few photos.

Since the original plan was already screwed, I decided to just hike up the Ridge Trail and see what my time looked like before completing the loop backwards. I hiked across two states! There was another overlook fairly soon after the big one, without all the fancy paving and, more importantly, without any people! The views weren't as nice, but totally a worthwhile trade in my mind.

The Ridge Trail was ok, a pretty mild descent for most of the way (the ascent up the road/Ridge Trail sucked so it evened out I think). Nothing really spectacular in the way of foliage, flowers, or critters though. Time was looking OK, so I decided to do the full loop instead of backtracking. At the intersection of Sugar Run and Ridge was the only other time along the hike (once I got away from the Overlook) that I had any sign of other people. I heard a family off in the distance, further down Ridge Trail.

Sugar Run was my favorite trail of the afternoon. It had a lot of interesting rock formations and fallen logs, and had some nice, but odd, little areas where the air was 5-10 degrees cooler than other parts of the trail. It was weird, but it felt like a totally different environment than the other two trails. Might have been the small, mostly dried up stream, or maybe something else. Dunno really, but I liked it.

Sugar Run is almost all downhill, which was a bit hard on the knees, but the ground cover wasn't terrible, and there weren't a lot of hidden rocks. Some areas were loose dirt, which made it tricky.

The last trail, Harlan Road Trail, was not well maintained. There were 3 or 4 places where trees had fallen across the trail a good while ago, and nothing had been done about them. In addition, all the leaf cover created two other problems. Firstly, all the leaves hid the dang acorns that were all over the place. Second, I lost the trail a couple of times, and think I started walking in an old streambed for a little ways. Lamesauce.

It didn't help that this trail was uphill for the most part. It wasn't anything too drastic, but I was in a rush to get back before the visitor closed at 5. I really wanted some nice cold bottled water!

Anyway, that's the not-so-short summary of my trip. There were no critters, so I'll just link you to the GPS track and be done with it.