A Walk in the Park, Through Snow, Ice and History: The Cumberland Trail

The view from McLean Rock, part of the new ridge-top addition to the Cumberland trail. Photo: Rick Wood

“We started out at ten in the morning and it was really freezing!” recalls Rick Wood, Director of TPL’s Chattanooga office, who recently hiked a stretch of a new addition to the Cumberland Trail with a group that included representatives from Molpus Timberlands, the land’s previous owner, and a reporter from the Knoxville News Sentinel.

The hikers gathered for group shots at McLean Rock, an outcropping with a breathtaking view of Powell Valley below. “This is where it started in ‘65,” explained Wood. It was at McLean Rock that the Great Smokey Hiking Club announced the start of the Cumberland Trail, a grassroots project consisting of “handshake” agreements between hikers and landowners that allowed savvy trekkers access to the spectacular views and scenery along and around the ridge.

“You kind of had to know somebody,” Wood says of the early days. Like any good idea, however, the trail idea took hold and grew, and state acquisition of the property where the trail movement started brings satisfying closure to a spectacular public resource long in the making.

Hikers discover a pillar of snow and ice, sculpted from a steady dribble of near frozen water. Photo: Rick Wood

This new addition adds a critical 19 miles to the Cumberland Trail State Park, a 300-mile corridor stretching across 11 counties. Upon completion-150 miles are currently open-the state’s only linear park will link the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park to Signal Point near Chattanooga.

TPL has its own history with the two parks and the landowner, having worked with Molpus Timberland on additions to the Cumberland Gap National Park (see press release, May 2009).

Wood’s hike took the group off the ridge and down into a cave behind a ledge dripping with icicles and overhanging a pillar of snow and ice, sculpted from a steady dribble of near frozen water that would flow into a swimming hole come spring (see photo).

“We felt like we were the only five guys in the park,” says Wood. “It offers a real wilderness experience-a place where you can really get away.”

Related Links:

Success Story: Cumberland Gap, KY

Article in TPL’s Tennessee Sp. 2007 newsletter (page 3)

The website for the Friends of the Cumberland Trail has many links including audio clips of interviews with local history makers.

You can hear grass roots music from the Cumberland trail each Sunday night on The Cumberland Trail Radio Show (WDVX), hosted by Bob Fulcher, Park Manager of the Cumberland Trail State Park. Since 1976, Fulcher has recorded and presented musicians from the Cumberland Mountains for the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, state agencies and record labels.

Posted 1/2010