Deep Creek Trail - Slickrock Wilderness
Feb 25th, 2008 by Admin 1
Quite often when we ask friends or family to go hiking with us, I am reminded of a certain point in time when they didn’t like me very much. You see a few years back as we were camping up in the Slickrock Wilderness in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest area I invited them on a short hike. They all agreed to come. Our party consisted of three men, three women two of which were pregnant and three children. One was five and on foot hiking himself and the other two were younger and were being backpacked by the fathers. One of those fathers being me.
For years this place was the Bermuda triangle when it comes to camping and hiking in the southeast for me. By this I mean that I have been up to the area so many times and read the same map over and over but could not seem to remember that one trailhead for the shortest trail leading up to the Hangover which I know now starts from Big Fat Gap. I thought this time I had remembered correctly but was wrong. Not knowing this at the time we packed everyone into a couple vehicles and drove to the trailhead.
The trailhead for the Deep Creek Trail is up 1127 just down a couple hundred feet from the Maple Springs overlook parking lot. From memory for some reason the trailhead for it looked similar to that of the Hangover lead trail trailhead.
The Deep Creek Trail in theory should be about 4 miles give or take up to the hangover and then back down making a nice 8 mile round trip day hike. Difficult, I thought but do-able even with the little ones and the two pregnant women and should take around 4 hours or so. In my defense, we didn’t know one was pregnant at the time :-). sorry about that. The other one was my wife who hikes with me quite a bit pregnant or not.
The trail is certainly understated and can be very difficult to be 100% sure on all the intersections but we did make it after some serious grunting and growling. My wife says it doesn’t help matters much when I am skipping around whistling Dixie while wearing a smile on my face and others are wondering where I am taking them.
After many climbs and descents down to deep creek then back up etc.. we finally made it to the hangover 3 1/2 hours later where they all laid into me pretty good. The view to me is well worth it but I wonder if I will ever get them back up there. Since then I have brought more people up there and my wife and I have been up several times. I think the funniest part is that one of the crew that day was my brother in law who has been fooled by me before in this same area. More than once. The Naked ground trip comes to mind, Bryan! He came on this hike anyway which make me think we will get him up there again, though he says it isn’t so.
After a picnic at the hangover and some relax time we prepared to head back down. We
ended up taking Jenkins Meadows down the mountain because one of the crew members thought it looked shorter on my map. I agreed verbally but in my mind all the while knowing it took us back down but having been on it several times knew it was no short trail either. Didn’t have the heart to say anything at the time.
The trail was nice but I was surprised a bit that we needed to do some bushwhacking during some of the middle saddle sections. The trail gets used but I guess the ground cover grows quicker than hikers can track it down?
Nearing the bottom of the trail I was really looking forward to getting out of my hiking shoes and into some flip flops cause the dogs were barking. My brother in law was first off the trail followed by myself then the my 5 year old nephew. A few minutes later the rest of the crew began piling off the trail and we made our way back to the campsite. All in all, it took us about 8 hours.
I would consider this a moderate to expert trail. A good trail for avid backpackers and hikers looking for a challenge. Advanced hikers should expect a challenging hike but if you are not traveling with children and pregnant women, you should be able to make this a much shorter day hike than we did. I highly recommend camping up at the top between Haoe and Naked Ground or make your way onto Bob Stratton Bald. If you do decide to camp up there be prepared for weather conditions like heavy rain and really heavy wind. It can get pretty brutal when there are high winds in the area.
Let this serve as a public apology to you guys but you know you loved it and the views were worth it.
Directions:
From Robbinsville take US 129 North around to the other side, look for signs for Cheoah Point but do not turn there, go down the hill about 1 mile or so and start to slow down. Look for sign for Joyce Kilmer (sign on right side of road) but you will want to take a left. Take your next right over the bridge and wind around lake until you see Horse Cove. Turn right at SR1127 and wind up the hill to the Maple Springs Overlook parking lot. Then walk down about 100-200 feet to the trailhead.
Cheoah Ranger Station,Route 1, Box 16A, Robbinsville, NC 28771
Last time I hiked this trail was in summer of 1999. The Deep Creek trail, as I remember it, starts out deceptively wide and easy to follow, but becomes remarkably scarce a couple of miles in with several unmarked junctions leading off to branching trails not marked on our map. At one point, after bushwhacking through a section so tough, I was having to convince myself that we were still oriented in the general direction, just by means of staying on the left of the creek bed on the edge of the hollow that must top off at the ridge where the Hangover is perched, when we were surprised suddenly to come to a little waterfall with a perfect hot tub sized swimming hole and nearby a wooden bridge had been constructed over the little branch creek off of the Deep Creek. The spring-fed swimming hole is so deeply shaded you can easily miss it, and the bridge looked like it must have been at least 20 years old. I am still not sure it was a trail feature or if was a one time scouts’ project now abandoned. Do you remember the place? Even in late June, when the good sweat we were working up on the ascent was making a swim an inviting prospect, it was really hard to get up the courage to take a dip on the freezing cold water!
Jonathan,
I thought I paid pretty good attention to detail on the trail but I can’t say that I remember where this swimming hole is. I’ll consider this cause for another trek up there soon! thanks!
Wait, thinking about it I do remember a bit of a waterfall/cascade type thing and it may have even had a bridge but I seem to remember that being in a pretty open area. I pulled out my map just past it. Could that be it? Don’t remember an pool big enough to swim in though I might be way off??
Well, you have to love avid hikers, since this is probably the hardest trail in the Joyce-Kilmer/Slickrock Wilderness. The goal, Sattletree Gap is worth the effort, but it does require a whole day to get there. An easier way is via Big Fat Gap, as the original writer noted, but it you need to plan on spending the night some where on the ridge between Haoe and Bobs Bald, preferably at Naked Ground. Don’t think about the effort. Just remember the experience and cherris the memory.