Basin Creek - 36 creek crossings

Today's walk was up Basin Creek from Longbottom Road trailhead to Caudill Cabin in the NPS Doughton Park. Roundtrip it is just a 9.6 mile hike along beautiful Basin Creek. It took us a bit under 6 hours to do this, primarily due to the numerous creek crossings. There are 36, that is 18 in one direction. Several required we remove boots in favor of "creek crossing shoes". Too bad we had only one pair. A couple of times we needed to toss the shoes back across the creek so the other could wear them for the wade across.

We only saw four other hikers on the Basin Creek Trail, all with wet shoes. Basin Creek Trail begins at the primitive campground, one and a half miles from the trailhead. There is one creek crossing prior to reaching the campground. It is a ford and looks like vehicles could easily have made a run through it. After passing the campground, which had a slew of tents today, the trail proceeds along the west side of the creek and is a very wide trail having once been a road. There is a millstone in the creek at the site of what appears to have been a dam and mill. This marks the end of the nice wide trail. The trail crosses the creek here and becomes much rougher. We passed a number of chimneys and some rock piles that once were chimneys. The creek crossings start to blur together. Waterfalls, cascades and river chutes punctuate the creek. We see daffodils and other bulb flower plants near the old homesites.

Finally, the trail starts a rough uphill march in the final 1/4 mile to the Caudill Cabin. Situated in a bowl, with Fodderstack and Wildcat Rocks above, you can hear people talking at the lookouts above. The Caudill Family maintains a visitor register and cabin history inside the small one room cabin.

On the return hike we see dozens of kids milling around the slew of tents at the campground. The youth group is dragging wood and building major fires.