Our destination was Middle Prong Trail but we got sidetracked. The Middle Prong Trail starts at the end of Tremont Road in the GSMNP. There is a mishmash of a parking area and immediately you walk across a substantial bridge. At the other side, the Middle Prong trail is a gravel road for several miles. As we crossed the bridge, one of those quiet walkway signs appeared and invited us to walk up the trail for however far we wanted. However, I noticed a side trail here and suspected that the gravel road was once passable by vehicles and thus, the quiet walkway sign was meant for the side trail. The first thing we noticed on the side trail was a sign directing you back to the Middle Prong trail. That didn't convince us, so we started up the side trail. It was along Thunderhead Prong.
Within minutes we came upon the coolest footbridge ever. A 2 foot wide I beam across the creek. I suspect it was a logging railroad bridge 100 years ago.
We followed a very pleasant grade creekside. We had to scramble a bit here and there to get by tributaries.
Despite being a "quiet walkway", it was anything but. Thunderhead Prong was thunderous.
We had lunch by a colony of Searsucker sedge. No reservations needed.
Eventually, we reached a spot at which a tributary stopped our advance. In better weather, we could have gone on but not on this cold day.
We retraced back to the cool bridge and took our hike on Middle Prong as planned.
No comments:
Post a Comment