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Backpacking at Savage Gulf
October 2007
Monteagle , TN
posted by The Brandon
A few weeks prior to the trip, I mentioned the idea of a backpacking trip to an old musician friend of mine. I hadn’t actually talked to him face to face since our canoe and cookout trip on the Red River on Memorial Day 2006. He said he would love to go, but because he was taking 18 credit hours of classes in his final semester of college, it would have to wait until his fall break. We were originally thinking about going to the Appalachians of east Tennessee. Sometime during the week beforehand, as we were trying work out all the details, he suggested that we instead go to a canyon called Savage Gulf on Monteagle Mountain because it is a little closer. It was fine with me; it’s more about the experience than the location, I think. I talked to him on the phone the night before I left home to see if he needed to borrow anything from me. He didn’t need anything, but he said I should bring my bass so we could jam a little if we had time.
I had originally planned to drive down to Chattanooga early Saturday morning, but he couldn’t get off work, so I left home around 2:30 pm CST and arrived in Chattanooga just after 6:00 pm EST. I actually beat Tyler there and had to find a place to wait on him. I pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot to give him a call because nearly all the parking lots downtown require a fee. As I was talking to him, some panhandler started asking me for money. Tyler said he was just leaving work and would be there shortly, so I decided to drive around and explore a bit. He called me while I was stopped at a gas station called Mr. Kwik and said he would just meet me there. I filled up and then moved to one of the parking spaces while I waited. There was a bald man, I’m guessing in his late-30s, casually riding a bicycle in a figure eight around the gas pumps. My camera was sitting in the passenger seat. Right then, I had what can only be described as a brilliant idea (to me, anyway). I thought I would put in a really heavy metal CD and record a video of the guy on the bike because that would be so blatantly absurd and mismatched that it would have to be funny, but right when I found the CD I wanted, Tyler pulled up. He stepped out of his truck and said, "What’s up, man?! I haven’t seen you with such short hair in a long time!"
I followed him back to his apartment and unloaded all of my stuff. Neither of us had eaten yet, so we made plans to go out somewhere with his friend Russell, who was supposed to go hiking with us but backed out at the last minute. We decided to go to Mellow Mushroom, and we ate way too much food to be leaving for a long hike the next morning. Afterwards, we went back to Tyler’s apartment and just sat around talking for a while. We went to bed fairly early so we could get up early and head out to the mountain. We got up just after 7:00 and were on the road by 8:00. Tyler hadn’t bought any food yet, so we stopped at Wal-Mart and then ate a quick breakfast at Hardee’s. It took close to an hour to get to our destination.
When we arrived at the Savage Ranger Station around 10:00 am, we first had to plan our route. We chose the second closest campsite, Dinky Line, which was roughly 4 miles in, so we could set up camp early and leave our heavy gear behind while we hike most of the canyon’s northern rim. We decided to take the Savage Day Loop, turn at the North Rim trail and again at the North Plateau trail. We were really surprised to find a chemical toilet at our camp. It’s something I would never expect to find at a place like that. Just beyond our camp, the trail split again. We took the Lick Creek trail to meet the North Rim again and hiked 6.5 miles to Hobbs Cabin. Along the way, there were lots of nice overlooks. We both assumed Hobbs Cabin was probably the remains of an old homestead cabin, but we were surprised to find that it was an actual small cabin that you could stay in, free of charge. Inside, it had a fire place, a table and six wooden bunks. Very primitive, yes, but that would be a great place to go for some winter hiking. The map indicated a spring just southwest of the cabin, so we hiked that way, but the spring was completely dry, as were all the other streams we encountered.
While backtracking along the North Rim trail, we stopped and took a break at this one overlook that had a really great panoramic view. While we were there, we started talking about the apparent growing homelessness problem in Chattanooga. We both decided that if we ever find ourselves in that situation, we’re moving out to the woods where we can squat on government owned land and maybe even eventually build the simplest of cabins in one of the more remote and unseen parts of a park. We made up a story about the Wildman that lives alone in the woods. Tyler mentioned that he’s had a few professors that could pass as wildmen because they look like they’ve just come down out of the mountains. We then started talking about how being a wildman is different from being other things. You can be a weekend biker or a weekend fisherman, and that’s fine. But being the Wildman requires full-time dedication and world-weariness along with the obligatory unkempt, grizzled beard and body odor. It’s not something that generally works well with society and regular employment. After resting our feet and snacking heartily on some raisins and beef jerkey, we started heading back to camp. On our way there, we saw an older, bearded man standing off the trail, looking at a fallen tree, and said "hi" to him as we passed.
We made it back to Dinky Line around 4:00, and that gave us just enough time to take a break, start a fire, and eat before the sun set. It was the first time Tyler had seen my soda can stove; he said he was really skeptical of it but was still curious about it. After cooking with it, he was amazed. He told me his dad just spent $60 on a new propane stove for backpacking, and he has been raving about how lightweight it is. I told him they are really easy to make and offered to make one for him when we got back to his apartment. After the sun went down for the day, I realized I left my harmonica at Tyler’s apartment. He said that a bottle of whiskey would be nice, too. Unfortunately, we didn’t remember to bring either.
It was an unseasonably warm mountain autumn night. I slept for most of the night with my sleeping bag unzipped, as did Tyler. It’s odd, but I slept better that night on the hard ground than I had for weeks in my own bed. Oh, insomnia. There’s something about hiking nearly 17 miles that will make anyone sleep like a newborn baby. The next morning, we ate breakfast, and I gave Tyler some of my water supply since he was running low and I had more than enough for once. We broke camp by 8:30 am and were back on the trail.
We wanted to see the rest of the North Rim trail that we didn’t get to see the previous day. On Lick Creek Trail, we saw the same lone man (who may have even been the mythical Wildman himself) from the day before. He asked if we had seen any water sources. I think he was completely out of water. We would have shared, but by that point, we were almost out, too. Around a mile from where we camped, we came to the Lick Creek/North Rim fork. There were eight more overlooks along our way back, although some had too many trees around that obstructed the view. Two miles into it, a light, misty rain started to fall. We could barely feel it for all the trees. When we came to the final overlook, we waited to see if we could hear the water at Savage Falls. Both of us really wanted to see that, but we also didn’t want to waste the time and effort hiking down into the canyon only to see a dry waterfall. We didn’t hear anything, so we decided not to hike down for a closer look. There was one section of the Savage Day loop that was really enchanting, I thought. It looked so different from the rest of the forest I had seen there. Both the undergrowth and the canopy above were much thicker, and it almost seemed like a tropical rain forest because of all the ferns and broad-leafed plants we saw. The rain stayed at a drizzle until we emerged from the woods. We took a break to sit down on the steps of the ranger station for a while, and then we made brownies. We had planned to make them at camp, but we didn’t want to waste the water since all of the creeks and springs we found were dry. We filled up some of our bottles from the fountain, and mixed up the brownie batter. We proved once again that everything tastes better after a long hike. Through the entire trip, we hiked a total of 23.5 miles. I have to say that this was definitely one of the cleanest parks I've ever visited, and I would really love to go back and see the rest of it.
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