Accidental Peakbagging

This past weekend I went for my last hike of summer break. My daughter & I decided to explore the Mount Mitchell area & hike "The Mount Mitchell Circuit" listed in the book pictured below. The book said the hike would take us up & down 5 peaks, & through several microclimates of the Mt Mitchell area. It was rated as an all day (10.5 mile) strenuous hike- just what we were looking for to end the summer & recharge for the coming academic year.

I love this book- all the hikes I've tried have been excellent- written by Jennifer Pharr-Davis who lives in the area & hold the speed record for a supported AT hike. Her trail descriptions are very accurate & detailed. She includes GPS coordinates & details on how to find the trail heads & rates all the trails for solitude, scenery, wildlife & appropriateness for children. A really great book for someone (like me) exploring hikes in an area. The one thing I wish had been included are the blaze colors for the trails. For us on this hike, it turned out we explored a different circuit then was described because we didn't know which blaze colors to look for. It was a great hike, just not the one planned.

Mount Mitchell (highest point in NC) was covered in fog Saturday & this made for a very cool hike in many ways. It didn't let us get a lot of great pictures, but that just means we need to go back later. We started out walking up the sidewalk to the Mount Mitchell viewing platform. A ranger had told us that was where the trail started. We ended up backtracking down a little ways & started on the Old Mt Mitchell trail. The terrain was wet & fairly steep down for quite a ways. We ended up crossing a stream & hiking a flatter section (the Commissary trail) to a couple of large primitive campsites. Just beyond this, we came to another trail intersection & I choose to go left instead of right; my daughter wisely chose to go right but unfortunately we went my way. Her way would have put us on the right trail, but from the wrong end. Part of our issue was a section of the trail was on the Mountain-to-Sea trail. At some point, we had to get off the MST or end up a long way from Mt Mitchell. Going left took us back up to the Mt Mitchell viewing platform- so we were back where we started from.

As we walked back down the sidewalk, trying to figure out where the real trail was, we came to the interpretative center. The friendly ranger there gave us very clear directions on how to find the trail we were looking for. See, at Mt Mitchell, there are trails that go off from at least 3 locations- the lower ranger station, the summit parking lot & the picnic area. The trail we wanted- which climbed over 5 peaks- went off from the picnic area. So, heading off in the right direction, we climbed over Craig Mountain

& Big Tom.

Shortly after descending from the peak we decided to beat the rain by heading back to the car. By this time, we'd been hiking about 5 hours & were muddy enough. We stopped at the picnic area to eat & called it a day. We had great hike- challenging terrain with beautiful scenery & plenty of solitude- just a different hike. I definitely plan to go back & hike the actual Mt Mitchell Circuit now that I know where it is. If you go- the trail starts out with orange triangle blazes. You'll find them by going through the picnic area.

Happy Hiking!