Skookum Traveler: Mount Mitchell (NC)

I somehow ended up in another dive motel in Asheville on the night of October 5th. It was too late to do the town and I’d eaten so many bagels and whatnot, I decided to turn in early and scoot out the door at dawn. Everyone tells me Asheville is a nice place. I’ll have to return and find out. The day’s menu, however, called for an easy jaunt up to the highest summit east of the Mississippi—Mount Mitchell in the Black Mountains. The second highest, Mount Craig, is just up the ridge, and a third, Big Tom, was only a tad farther. Mitchell was named for Dr. Elisha Mitchell, a North Carolina botanist, who in the 1840s determined that the peak was the highest in the range. He estimated the height at 6,672 feet, missing the true elevation (6,684) by only twelve feet. While exploring the area in 1857, his life abruptly ended in a tragic fall at a waterfall. His friends buried him on the summit.

33. Mount Mitchell: Though already aloft in mile-high country, the Blue Ridge Parkway intercepts the scenic road to Mitchell, which climbs a good deal more in a handful of miles into the state park. I seemed to be the first car in the parking lot when I checked in at the ranger station to grab a trail map. From there, I followed the Old Mount Mitchell Trail that preceded today’s modern two-lane highway to the top. It was a good stroll, two miles with about 500 feet of gain. Along the way, the trail skirts another wooded summit, but the scrub forest there was as dense and impenetrable as a hairbrush. I skipped the prospect of an extra summit. I’m not sure I could have found it anyway with the limited visibility. The trail meandered in woods a bit before breaking out at a park restaurant, where I stopped for a cup of joe, then deftly carried it with me up the trail, careful to sip and not trip.

The woodsy trail met a paved walkway near the upper parking lot that took me the final 200 feet to the big overlook above. The peak was only lightly peopled with morning visitors. Views were far and wide and magnanimous, as one might expect. There was definitely a feeling of being up pretty doggone high, though it wasn’t quite the Rockies. Even the Great Smokies sprawl across a larger area than these here Blacks, but the Blacks are higher. It was fun to contemplate the world for a thousand miles in every direction being lower than me.

Morning on the Blue Ridge on the way up to Mitchell.

Hairbrush forest.

Mount Mitchell overlook.

North Carolina. The dot is the high point.

Final resting place.

34. Mount Craig: I skipped off Mount Mitchell, skirted the parking lot on a nature trail, and enjoyed a very pleasant hike on a good path to Mount Craig. There must have been over 200 stone steps leading down (mostly), then up to the second-highest peak in the eastern U.S., which at 6,648 feet is just a few feet shorter than Mitch. A survey monument marked the tallest rock. Another great view was had from this mountain named for a visionary governor, Locke Craig, who was instrumental in securing the area as a state park in 1915.

35. Big Tom: A final short trek along the ridge led to a wooded bump and another marker for Big Tom (6,581 feet). Tom is apparently the fellow who found Mitchell’s body where he had apparently slipped over a waterfall. No view this time, but I’d bagged three new summits for the day. Thirty-five down, twenty-five to go.

Miles (RT): 9.0 miles; elevation gain: 1,200 feet

Cumulative mileage and gain: 141.8 miles / 38,500 feet