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Along the great (Jackson County) divide
If anyone ever asks, you can tell them that it is possible to walk up Rich Mountain from Sugar Creek Gap to Wet Camp Gap – it’s possible, but it’s not easy.
You can also add that seeing this county from atop the ridge that bisects its widest part is worth every briar scratch and sore muscle acquired along the way.
The group of tall peaks first caught my eye after a Jackson County Airport Authority meeting almost a year ago.
“What are those mountains?” I asked Capt. Chip Hall of the Sheriff’s Office, who happened to be standing next to me as we came out of the airport hangar.
“That’s the divide between Caney Fork and Canada,” he said.
Upon looking at a map and asking my in-house expert, I realized Chip was talking about the Rich Mountain ridge, which includes a cluster of 5,500-foot balds and knobs – Rich Mountain Bald, Buck Knob, Charley Bald, Charley Knob and Gage Bald – near its Blue Ridge Parkway terminus at Rough Butt Bald on the Jackson/Haywood line.
Richard and I had already been to Gage Bald several times, both by the relatively easy route from the Parkway via Wet Camp Gap and by a more strenuous route through the Roy Taylor National Forest. We’d also walked to Sugar Creek Gap, a thousand feet lower than Rich Mountain Bald but on the same ridge, and last winter we managed to struggle up Charley Bald, the most overgrown of the five.
A couple of months ago it occurred to us to connect the dots.
The two-week-ago Sunday we picked was a perfect day, weatherwise, with none of that familiar haze that gives our neighboring Smoky Mountains their name. From Sugar Creek Gap we could see Whiteside Mountain in one direction and the Plott Balsams in the other. And it was the last weekend of winter, which meant the undergrowth was easier to navigate because their leaves weren’t out yet.
Once we left Sugar Creek Gap, it was just us, the blackberry briars and the laurel bushes, which made it hard to see much. As we struggled up the steep slope toward Rich Mountain Bald, we wondered if we had taken leave of our senses. We even considered turning back.
Our arrival at the first top convinced us of the wisdom of our perseverance. On our left were the hills and valleys that combine to form the vast Caney Fork watershed; on our right were the steeper slopes and dividing ridges that give rise to Charley, Gage and Wolf creeks.
The trip turned almost magical as we navigated our way among the high peaks, occasionally finding ourselves on a ridge only a foot or two wide. It was then we realized that if it rained, the drops hitting our left shoulders would make their way to Caney Fork, and those that fell on our right would become part of the Tuckaseigee’s East Fork. We also knew all of them would come back together at the river’s confluence at East LaPorte – and that we were walking along with one foot in Canada and the other in Caney Fork.
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