Endless streams and forests

The place we can’t go anymore March 30, 2009

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