Jan and Kathy planned a hike up Big Frog Mountain on a beautiful sunny day. I met them at Thunder Rock Campground by the Ocoee River. A crew was there sawing trees that were down in the parking lot and campground area. The bathroom floor had been painted too. Spring cleaning I guess.
Another hiker Jan from Nashville met us and we carpooled up the forest service road to the trail. The ladies were telling us about their last time being here, that their directions took them on a scenic drive the wrong way on the forest service road. They had better directions this time and got us to the trailhead without any issues.
We didn't have any trouble finding parking space, we were the only car. Yay, we have the forest to ourselves!
Big Frog trail # 64 starts at 2,160 feet elevation. The top of the mountain is 4,220 feet. We climbed. There are lots of views as you climb, winter time views. No big open views, but so much beauty thru the trees. And the climb is a nice one, easy to moderate, and so many different forest types. The top is tree covered so no big views at the top.
A couple of campsites at the trail junctions, and one at the top and end of the ridge. At that campsite I saw a little glass jar tucked into an opening in the bottom of a tree. Looked like tissue it it, so not knowing if the tissue was used or not, I didn't touch it. May have been a geocache, but who knows. After seeing the abandoned sleeping bag/bivy and gas canister at the trail sign, you never know...
Big Frog Trail has a lot of trail junctions, all of them were signed. The trail descriptions say there's an excellent spring wildflower display here, but we didn't find any. May have to come back later this spring. I did find an old growth tree to hug.
Pictures:
No comments:
Post a Comment