Black Balsam-Graveyard Fields Loop, Haywood County (5-27-14)
Read MoreGraveyard Ridge Trail (5,450')
Breaking out of the trees onto a large grassy lawn a the junction of the Graveyard Ridge Trail and the Mountains-to-Sea Trail (MST). The GRT continues straight ahead, which I'd be using on my return hike. I'd instead be turning left here onto the MST for the next 2-miles or so...
Mountains-to-Sea Trail (5,080')
The big kahuna in these parts was this huge hemlock which has somehow even managed to ward off the devastating hemlock woolly adelgid that has killed off so many of its kin. I didn't have a yard-stick but by estimating with my hiking pole this big guy was 32"+ across at chest height!!
Second Falls, Graveyard Fields (4,920')
The most amazing thing about being here wasn't the scenery but that I was alone. Graveyards Fields at this time of the year is typically swarming with visitors (I usually stay away in the summer). To accommodate all these visitors the park service is enlarging the parking area off the Parkway which has closed it to visitors temporarily during construction. So, if you're willing to walk a few extra miles you can enjoy a summer of solitude this year at Graveyard Fields...a rare experience indeed!...
Graveyard Fields Loop Trail (5,000')
Finished with lunch, I headed back up to the loop and passed by a stream crossing area that had previously been terribly torn up by visitors choosing their own way across. A new boardwalk across the wetland area seems to have done the trick solving the problem and the landscape seems to be recovering nicely...
Graveyard Fields Loop Trail (5,040')
The grasses and low shrubs of Graveyard Fields tell of a turbulent past in an area that should be thickly forested. Heavily logged in the early 1900's the valley was reduced to slash piles and bare stumps once the loggers had left (resembling a graveyard, thus its morbid name). Inevitably, fire followed the loggers and the one that sprung up here early last century was so intense that it actually sterilized the soil. With little if any nutrients left to feed them only the hardiest plants have managed to recover and it will be a long, long time before anything resembling a healthy forest will be found here once again...