Mountain Hiking

Ellicott Wilderness

Even in these modern times, there is wilderness out there that needs to be explored.  Streams and waterfalls need to be admired.  Mountains need to be climbed.  You might ask why we need to climb them.  Because they're there, as Edmund Hillary once said about Mt. Everest.  Because they smell good and feel good.  Because the views are big and beautiful.  What else are mountains good for?  To leave them unclimbed would be to waste natural resources, to waste opportunities—and to waste needlessly is to sin. Right?

I awoke one Friday morning at 4:00 a.m. and drove down to the Chattooga River.  I parked at a fish hatchery and began walking, in the early morning light, down the E. Fork of the Chattooga.  At this point, the stream is narrow, rocky, and tumbling, maybe 10 - 20 feet across.  It’s certainly not the raging torrent that we saw in the movie.  That’s a good way downstream.  Here the river is intimate, wrapped in rhododendron.  The day was cloudy and cool, but still shirtsleeves weather.  I was heading for Ellicott Rock, which seems to be an old surveyor’s mark from when the states were first laid out.  It marks the point where North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia come together. 

I walked along old contours, worn but steep.  The slope went up 45 degrees on my right and down just as steeply to the left, to the stream.  The trail slabbed along the side of the ridge and then dropped into a shallow draw that extended gently up to a gap.  I crossed over little streams from the north, a beaded trickle of a waterfall curving down a mossy boulder, feeding the Chattooga.  The morning was quiet.  A crow cawed far in the distance.  The soft rush of water lay in the background. 

The clouds were thin and hazy.  The sun rose over a ridge, a little weak and smeared out.  I was walking on an old roadway, maybe from logging activity 100 years ago, to judge from the trees growing up at the edges.  Recent logging roads are sharp and raw and cut out of the land, but this one had softened—rounded edges and worn underfoot.  It was a wide trail but a trail instead of a road.  I dropped to the stream side.  It was swift and churning.  I passed a 30 foot cliff, 100 feet long, dripping all along its surface, with light gray lichen and darker moss.  Rounded mossy boulders lay green in the stream.  Fallen logs were thick with moss along the trail, and a vertical bank was completely carpeted and trickling with dozens of rivulets. 

I came to a wide flat rock extending out into the stream.  I could walk out into the middle of the stream and look upstream, as if from a canoe, to mossy rocks and winding currents, 8–12 inch ledges with white falls pouring over them.  Then downstream, bubble and splash all the way to the main fork of the Chattooga. 

I got to the river about 9:00 a.m. to find flat water, shallow, with gravel beds.  No threat here either.  Looked like good fishing water.  I smelled wood smoke and maybe some cooking in the air.  Upstream, the river got more shallow, with little sandy beaches along the banks, gravel bars out in the current.  It wasn't canoeable today. 

I came to a big boulder in the middle of the river.  Could this be Ellicott Rock?  There was no sign.  Maybe farther on.  I climbed up out of the valley, followed switch backs up into scattered firs, rhododendron, and laurel.  I should have been suspicious, because the river does mark the boundary between South Carolina and Georgia.  The Rock would have to be on the river.  But I somehow got this idle thought that Ellicott Rock might be the name of an actual peak or little mountain or something, and maybe I was climbing it.  I thought, I'll just see what’s on top.  Well, shoot!  I came to a sign that said Ellicott Rock was 1.2 miles back the way I’d come.  I did pass it.  Well, I couldn't make myself go all the way back down to study the rock properly.  I wasn't sure I’d be able to get out before dark as it was.  Ah, well. 

Okay, well obviously I was not going back the way I came.  I would go on as planned.  Down to Bad Creek.  I stopped for lunch and heated up an oriental-chicken-and-veggies-on-rice meal.  Very nice.  I took off my boots and dried things off, put on some moleskin.  On the last long hike I took, I had constructed a huge blister on the ball of my foot.  It had made it hard to dance. 

There was a quiet little riffle murmuring at my feet.  I wondered, am I out here just to escape from my chores?  If I’m just willing to keep walking, then I don’t have to grade papers or weed or paint.  And there are pretty sights and sounds and smells as an added reward.  I get some exercise.  There's a certain amount of challenge: can I go the distance; can I find myself when I get lost?  Guys like a challenge—to pit themselves against an adversary.  We’re combative, aggressive.  It’s the Y-chromosome, right? I hadn't met a single other soul out here today.  What do other guys do to shirk responsibility and seek out a challenge?  Some go fishing.  Some watch football. 

By 1:00 p.m., I was back on the trail, crossing open woodland, in and out of little side valleys, pretty much on a contour.  I descended to Indian Camp Branch and followed that stream for a while.  At 3:30, I arrive at Sloan Bridge Picnic Area, on the highway but still well north of the fish hatchery.  The Foothills Trail comes through here from the NE.  Some years ago, I had hiked that 77-mile trail—spent a week.  Came through this very picnic area on a rainy day and cooked a meal, probably at this table right here.  Today, I sat and ate another candy bar. 

I dropped into thick rhododendron along the East Fork and passed a 40 foot sloping waterfall, white water against black rock.  The trail went south of the hatchery to intersect the hatchery road, and then the road went almost two miles back north to the parking lot.  I studied the map and the terrain.  If I could just identify this point where the trail seemed to be right above the road, I could bushwhack down and save a few miles.  I thought I had found the spot.  Down I went.  Down, down.  Nope.  I came to the stream, but there was no sign of the little pond or the hatchery.  There was no telling how far downstream the road was.  The vegetation was thick.  Back up I went.  Gasp! And finally I got to the hatchery road at 5:30 and the parking lot at 6:10.  It had been a somewhat chaotic day but refreshing.