A geek walked into the woods..

Cooper Road Trail Renamed Critter Road Trail

LyttleBryan May 25th, 2010

This weekend I had the opportunity to venture into the most dangerous section of the park. An area that’s so unnerving, parlous, and ruthless that only the truly hardened adventurer would dare go. So with ice flowing through my veins, I took Julie and we ventured out. That’s right folks, we went into Cades Cove ON A SATURDAY!

In all seriousness though, I now understand why it’s been well over a year since I went to Cades Cove. The traffic, the tourists, and noise is more stress than I want to put up with. Fortunately we got there just as the gate was being opened from it’s standard Saturday morning closure for cyclists. It still took us over an hour to go the 7 miles to Abrams Falls trail head, but at least that’s all it took. Our route consisted of going up Cooper Road Trail, down Hatcher Mountain, and up Little Bottoms to campsite #17. Sunday we would hike out Abrams Falls trail to our car after stopping for some pictures and leisure at the falls themselves.

Cooper Road from Cades Cove was the only portion of the trail that was new to me. I have to say, at this time of year, it was a great trail. The condition of the trail was excellent, it was just physically demanding enough to get a good exercise, and the amount of wild life was unparalleled to anything else I’ve seen in the park. In fact, I want to rename it Critter Road Trail. It may have been the time of year, but there were a lot of animals.

In no particular order we saw:

Bear(s)
Dear
A Blacksnake
A Lizzard
(a TON of) Butterfly

Most of the sightings aside from one young buck, and the snake, were from a safe distance. There was an incident at our campsite involving a bear outside our tent at ~10pm, but a little loud talking and some headlamps and it vamoosed. I think the only thing we were missing of the major animals was bobcat and boar. I’m glad I didn’t see any boar.

The falls were quite enjoyable, and was a nice cap to a wonderful weekend.