Tag: TripReport

The Description

Today we hiked out in one of our favorite hiking areas, the Savage Gulf State Natural Area. Because we hike out in this area a lot, we decided to hike a little different route than normal. We started in the Greeter Falls parking area and hiked the Greeter Falls Trail –> Alum campground –> Big Creek Rim Trail –> Stone Door –> Big Creek Gulf trail –> Ranger Falls and then back to Greeter Falls trailhead.

• Distance: 12.30 miles
• Elevation: 2,465ft
• Difficulty: Strenuous
• Rating: 4 (Really liked it)
• Strava Track
• Alltrails Track
• Photos

The Hike

Rain was falling as we put boots on trail at 7:30am central time. The Greeter Falls trail is a rolling, 1.5 mile trail from Greeter Falls parking lot to Alum campground. There are a couple nice overlooks right on the trail so it’s pretty easy to check them out.

After Alum campground, Big Creek Rim trail is ~3.5 miles of gently rolling trail. There are 3 (?) overlooks with the best ones coming first after leaving Alum campground. This section of the trail is probably the most boring section so the decision to hike our hike in the direction and order we did it was to get this section of the trail out of the way at the beginning of the hike so we’d have interesting stuff to look forward to at the end of our hike. We made good time from Alum campground to the bluffs at the top of Stone Door.

After a quick break at the bluffs, we started our descent along Big Creek Gulf trail down to the bottom of the mountain to the old river bed. We made good time down even though there are some rock fields and they were wet; nobody fell and only a few slips!

I was trying a new load out with my gear this trip. Normally, I hike with my 2 liter water bladder but this time, I decided to hike with only a 1 liter bottle and my Sawyer Squeeze water filter. The idea being, I’d just filter water once we hit some water sources. It was really hot and muggy and we were making haste to Ranger Falls so I could filter water because I ran out! As we’re hiking along the old riverbed, we heard some flowing/falling water. Meredith volunteered to scamper over and fill up my new CNON water container so I could filter some water. Yay for Meredith aka, Spooky Raccoon!

Ranger Falls was amazing as usual. A difference on this trip than the last two we’ve done here is that we saw a lot more people. We’ve never saw any other people at Ranger Falls but this time we ended up seeing three.

Once you leave Ranger Falls and hike back out to Big Creek Gulf trail, there are some climbs that I always seem to forget about and I remembered thinking that this was more elevation than I remembered previously! Another mile down the trail takes you to another interesting place to take a break if you’re so inclined and we’re always inclined to relax near water when hiking.

After leaving the second spot, we hiked along next to the river with Meredith making happy noises behind me. As we hiked up and away from the river, the happy noises ceased and the groaning started from the both of us because it was getting hotter and more muggy. Eventually, the trail and river meet back up for just a few minutes before making a hard right and kicking up the side of the mountain for the final climb back up to to Alum campground.

The climb was difficult as we were doing it during the hottest part of the day – around 2:30pm. Additionally, we’re making our ascent after hiking over 10 miles already. We paused frequently but ended up doing the climb in 22 minutes – only 3 minutes slower than our previous effort. I’ll take it for a super hot day.

Once we climbed back up to Greeter Falls Trail and started our way back to the Greeter Falls parking lot, we were pretty exhausted. We had originally planned to go down and check out Greeter Falls, and maybe go for a dip but we were too tired and just wanted to finish and go eat some burritos. Anyhoo, below are some of my favorite photos. 🙂

Edit 07/28/2019 8:49pm: Meredith wanted me to edit this and let everyone know chiggers are bad here 😆

Distance: 12.97 miles
Elevation: 2,177 feet
Difficulty: Strenuous
Strava Track: https://www.strava.com/activities/2568385320
Full Route Name: Cumberland Trail Laurel-Snow SNA Section: Laurel Falls, Dunn Overlook, Snow Falls, Buzzard Point.

This section of the Cumberland Trail is really one of my favorite hikes and certainly ranks up there with Stone Door for me so I was pleased when Meredith suggested we do this hike again and we decided to hike every bit of the trail for this section.

The trailhead for this hike is located in Dayton, TN. Both Waze and Google Maps will take you straight there without any issues if you search for Laurel Snow State Natural Area. It’s about 150 miles from Nashville so we tried to get on the road by 5:30am. We managed to get boots on trail by 8am.

The first mile or so of the hike is lovely as it parallels Richland Creek which makes for a pleasant experience. The water flows fast and heavy enough that there’s a nice river sound and the temp is pleasant as you’re hiking along the trail.

The trail turns away from Richland Creek, climbs a little and then crosses Laurel Creek as you’re making your way through the holler over to Laurel Falls. As we turned away from the river, the humidity started to come on so we were glistening by the time we crossed Laurel Creek to negotiate this weird little natural feature that I’m negotiating below.

There’s some elevation after crossing Laurel Creek and I always seem to forget about this part but we made decent time and was pleasantly surprised by nice water flow at the falls. I really expected the water level to be low since it’s the end of July.

Meredith played in the water while I had a snack and relaxed with the view of the waterfall. After our break at the falls, we headed back down, through the holler and to Laurel Creek bridge. We took the other fork to make our way towards Dunn Overlook, Snow Falls and Buzzard Point. Before taking the other fork, we both struck a pose with a little waterfall; Meredith nailed it.

After the fork you make your way by the camp site area and come to a big ole metal bridge to cross over what has now turned into Henderson Creek before beginning your assault on the mountain. And by assault, I mean walking slowly up the side of a mountain, in the humidity while trying not to have a heart attack or heat stroke. Isn’t this fun? I like to say assault because it makes me feel more badass.

After the Henderson Creek bridge, you start the climb. Strava has a segment labeled as Rogers Road Climb for this part of the trail. As we started our ascent up the mountain, I was feeling pretty good and wanted to see if we could improve on our time from when we did this on May 31. We made great time and only paused once for a quick fiver. We did this climb on May 31st in 1 hour 29 minutes. On this trip, we did it in 46 minutes. We’re definitely not going to break any land speed records but we got a lot better and faster and that feels nice. 🙂

At the top of the climb we took the right fork to head to Dunn Overlook. This section isn’t hiked very much it seems and it’s definitely spider web season. Normally, I’m ok just plowing through the webs but I get a little more jumpy when there are spiders in them *shivers*! This section of the trail, all the way to Snow Falls, is more overgrown than the rest of the trail and there’s a fair amount of brambles, stickers and briars so that’s not super fun. From Dunn Overlook you can see the top of Laurel Falls and Buzzard Point. There are some power lines here but I thought it was still pretty cool.

After a quick break, we ambled our way in the general direction of Snow Falls, fighting spider webs the entire way. On the way to Snow Falls, you have to cross over Morgan Creek. The last time we did this, the water level was low enough that we could hop along on the rocks without getting wet but today the water was too high for that so we got our feet wet! When this happens, I like to tell everyone we had to ford a river! Again, this makes me feel more badass.

We took lunch at Snow Falls because it was so much more pleasant than the last time we were here. There was lots of flowing water and the levels were pretty high. The only minor bummer about this falls is that the trail takes you to the top of the falls and this lazy, tired hiker couldn’t find a way to the bottom.

We ate food and Meredith ran around to play in the water like usual. I filtered some water for the first time and it worked great! This was such a pleasant break and it was hard to get back up and head out but by this time we were starting to talk a lot about eating Mexican food and Ubereats doesn’t deliver to Snow Falls in Dayton, TN last time I checked.

After leaving Snow Falls and crossing back over Morgan Creek, we backtracked to the access road that goes to Buzzard Point and took that all the way to the point. This was a nice section and is flat and we made good time over to the point.

I did want to take a moment to point something out. Both on AllTrails and on Strava (I presume they use the same underlaying map data), they show there being a trail going from Snow Falls to the access road but that trail just doesn’t exist. In the screenshot below, the left screenshot is the real actual map from the CT website. The screenshot on the right is the incorrect data from AllTrails, Strava etc. The arrow points to the non-existent trail. Please plan accordingly.

We hustled to Buzzard Point and talked with a couple who had hiked up to the top. After snapping a few photos, we started back down the mountain with burritos on our minds.

This next part of our hike is the worst part of every hike because now we’re just walking back to the car so we can get food. We made pretty good time and no doubt, the idea of eating food was driving us. We found a local Mexican place in Dayton and both ate burritos as big as our heads. It was heavenly.

This was a super great hike and I do recommend this to others. It’s a long hike but also pretty rewarding. I do think it’s strenuous because of the climb and because of the length. Anywho, below are some more photos.