The place we can’t go anymore March 30, 2009
Posted by Jenny in Smoky Mountains, bushwhacking.Tags: bushwhacking, Little Duck Hawk, off-trail navigation, Smoky Mountains
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This is why
Before I say anything else, I want to say that I agree that we shouldn’t traverse Little Duck Hawk anymore. That is a place where peregrine falcons live, and it is wrong to invade their homes. This post is partly about how a sense of adventure can collide with environmental responsibility.
The approach to the ridge
The Smoky Mountains Hiking Club used to go up and down, backwards, forwards, and sideways on this ridge. It was a standard hiking club thing to do. Looking through the old SMHC handbooks, I found one from the 1960s that spoke of how the ridge had formerly been the haunt of the peregrines, but because of DDT, they were no longer to be found in that area. This would have been a few years after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. But now, thank goodness, the peregrines are back. And the hikers are gone—at least, the ones who care about these things are gone, or those who obey the current National Park Service restriction that forbids people from climbing the ridge.
For me, Little Duck Hawk was always a test of my ability to master my fear of heights. At its narrowest point, the ridge was little more than a foot wide with sheer dropoffs on both sides. Before I ever climbed it, I saw a picture in a slide show that captured the spectacle of a whole line of maybe 12 or 15 people going up the hand-over-hand section into the thin air, progressing one by one in steady unstoppable fashion, conquering the ridge in something approaching military indomitability. I recognized some of the people in that line. I won’t name any names, but I knew that some of them were real chickens when it came to things like difficult rockhopping. I decided then and there that if they could make it up Little Duck Hawk, I could make it up Little Duck Hawk.
The first time I did it, it was not on an SMHC hike but with my former husband Chris. He was always much less afraid of heights than I was. We dropped down from the trail into the unofficial territory, maneuvering over slabs of Anakeesta shale that were like giant layers of strudel. This was a good warmup. Before long we had completed the initial descent, and we were looking up at the “crux”—a rock staircase with an extreme amount of exposure. I don’t remember who went up first, me or Chris, but after stopping for a moment to focus and take a deep breath, I simply maintained my forward progress and systematically climbed up the staircase, reaching up and grabbing the Anakeesta layers with my hands and stepping up with my feet. I remember that the rock was nice and toasty in the afternoon sun.
Soon we were up on the narrowest part, the section that has the hole underneath that forces of nature have drilled all the way through the rock. The narrowest part of the ridge is about 18″ wide and continues for about six feet. Walking forward was no more difficult than walking across the living room as long as you didn’t think about what would happen if you stubbed your toe or stepped on your shoelace. Before long the ridge had widened and we were working our way down into the dense rhodo that surrounds the ridge.
The interesting thing for me, something I still don’t fully understand, is that my fear of heights has never bothered me in the Smokies anywhere near as much as it has in some other places, like the Rockies or the Sierras. In fact, I have climbed in some pretty preposterous places in the Smokies. There is something about the Smoky Mountains that seems to nourish me and take away any fear that I might have.
Sometime in the mid-1990s I brought Bob down to the Smokies and took him across Little Duck Hawk. Bob said at the time that it was the scariest place he had ever hiked, but he made it.
I have done it by myself, going up and going down, just to see what it felt like to do it alone. It’s easier to do it from the top down. If you start from the bottom, you have to angle through a jungle of rhodo and keep the faith that you’re going to get past all that rubbery vegetation and up onto solid rock. Going from the bottom, it also means that you downclimb the trickiest part. It meets the definition of Class 3 scrambling: you have to face the rock to go down. It would probably meet another definition of Class 3 that I read somewhere: your dog wouldn’t be able to do it.
The hiking club hasn’t done it for a very long time. I don’t know exactly when the Park Service said you couldn’t go there any more. I understand there are signs now on the rough herd path that tell you not to go any further. I suspect that some people will probably criticize me for even writing about this place. But for me, trying to understand and describe experiences is the most important thing that I do in my life, and I’ll take whatever lumps come my way. And I will also say that there are other places you can go that are just as interesting and challenging. You just have to study the maps.
It was nice while it lasted.
Little Duck Hawk seen from Big Duck Hawk
Going down Big Duck Hawk the wrong way December 31, 2008
Posted by Jenny in Smoky Mountains, bushwhacking, hiking, nature.Tags: Alum Cave Trail, Big Duck Hawk, bushwhacking, Little Duck Hawk, Mt. LeConte, off-trail navigation, Smoky Mountains
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Chris on Big Duck Hawk
This is from notes I made not long after the hike, around 1984.
It was an official club hike billed as follows: “Mt. LeConte via Bearpen Hollow, Return by Big Duck Hawk Ridge.” But by the time we got to the turnoff for Big Duck Hawk, only six in the group wanted to descend the ridge rather than following Alum Cave Trail all the way down.
I can’t blame the ones who stayed on the trail. It had poured rain on us as we struggled up Bearpen Hollow. When we finally got up to the Lodge, we all baked in the warmth of the wood-burning stove until our clothes steamed. We wrung out our socks and hung them up to dry. I went over to the glass case in the corner that contains a 3-D model of LeConte, and I admired the steep route we’d come up. In the dim light I squinted at the pictures of notable personages of LeConte.
The sun began to come out after lunch as we marched down Alum Cave. The trail felt so comfortable, so easy to stride along after a morning of climbing over blowdowns, crawling under rhodo, and jumping off boulders, all in a needling silver rain.
And I must say that when Brian Worley, our leader, stopped at an inconspicuous clump of trees and said, “This is the way down,” it did appear unlikely. But I was intrigued. I and four others volunteered to go that way.
When the last of the multicolored string of hikers had tromped by, we stepped off the edge of the trail and found ourselves immediately plunging into another world, steep and overroofed with rhododendron. We skittered downward almost out of control, hanging onto branches, wrapping ourselves around treetrunks. A big bulk of vine-covered rock floated past like a freighter on our left. Down and down, our feet slipping in the rich chocolatey dirt. Overhead, everything green, the sun almost blocked out by the thick waxy leaves.
We rolled, slid, and otherwise progressed down this slope until it narrowed into a ridgecrest. Here the manway leveled off. We found ourselves walking upright, with no need to hang onto anything, through a pleasant wood with the ridge falling away on both sides. This lasted only a few minutes before the ridge suddenly humped up and all the vegetation gave out. All at once we were climbing up a rock staircase with a dropoff on each side. We came out into the brilliant sun.
Big Duck Hawk Ridge
When I found myself stepping up that staircase into nothing but sharp empty air, I felt apprehensive at first, but that gave way to a peculiar sense of exhilaration. At the top of the staircase the manway leveled off again and took us through beds of blooming sand myrtle. The tiny pink and white flowers bordered the path on both sides. Overhead, an enormous bowl of sunny sky. On all sides, green furry mountains with their pelts drying out in the sun. Just to the east of us, we could see Little Duck Hawk, the companion ridge that was even narrower than Big Duck Hawk. Rob, who was next in line behind me, said, “Look! You can see the hole through Little Duck Hawk!” It took me a minute, but when I stood in the right place and looked in the right direction, I could make out the peculiar pothole that wind and rain had drilled through the delicate rock fin.
“I love it up here! I love places like this!” Rob said. Ahead of us, Brian Worley was jaunting along, happily leading the way. A childish joy had engulfed us. The six of us walked rapidly through the warm afternoon air. The ridgetop unrolled under our feet as if it came off a spool.
The manway began to descend over tiled rocks that looked like layered pastries. We scuttled crabwise down these. As we progressed, I noticed that Rob and Bill Neal had fallen behind. But Bill knew the way, so I didn’t worry. After all, wasn’t it a simple matter of following the ridge all the way down?
We left behind the rock outcrops to enter some low, dense, rhododendron. Soon we were crawling on our hands and knees through a jungle that would have been better suited to beings two feet high. “Are you sure this is the right way?” someone asked Brian. He laughed. “Right way? Why, you’re certainly a stickler for detail,” he said. Someone else noted that Rob and Bill were not to be seen behind us any more. It was decided to press on, since Bill had probably stuck to the correct route, while we had gone astray.
So we kept working our way along close to the ground. Going downhill steeply, you could either crawl headfirst, which gives the sensation of diving through the damp green depths, or you could go feetfirst, propping yourself up on your hands. Either way, you got the soft dirt under your fingernails and twigs down the back of your neck.
Before long we came to the head of a draw that formed an open little alley through the jungle. Straightening our bodies in the ample headroom, we walked rapidly down the dry streambed. We were going very fast, and I’m not sure exactly why, except out of sheer momentum. “Where are we going?” we asked Brian. “Never fear!” he said.
Sure enough, in a few minutes we burst out onto the lower end of the Alum Cave Trail, a mile up the road from where we were supposed to come out. A family strolling up the trail was startled to see four mud-covered beings abruptly emerge from the thickets. And then we were out through the parking lot and going down along the road’s grassy shoulder to where our journey had begun. Sure enough, Rob and Bill had found their way back to the road—along the way we were all supposed to take.
Note: Since writing the above, I have learned that the Park Service has banned hiking on both Little Duck Hawk and Big Duck Hawk Ridges. I believe this is due to both the hazardous nature of the travel (more in the case of Little than Big) and for protection of peregrine nesting places.
Bill Neal on Big Duck Hawk
