Hazel Creek - Part 1

By Spring of this year I had read my third or fourth article about Hazel Creek and the solitude and remoteness it offered. It looked like a great place to me. Being that it is in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, it is relatively close by. I started to loosely pull a trip together, wondering if I'd ever go on it. I have a bad habit of coming up with great trips or projects and never following through with it.

In July my wife and I let go of one of the greatest Greyhounds I've ever known. One of the things I learned from this experience is that life can and will pass you by if you let it. From that point on I've made a more determined effort to see my ideas develop into reality. The trip was on!

I contacted a close friend of mine (Smith) to see if he was interested in going. Absolutely was his response. We finalized the trip. We estimated the trip would take between three to four days. The following covers the first two days of the trip.

Sunday, September 28th, Smith and I met at Fontana Village Lodge to get our gear situated and to make sure we had everything we needed.

Monday morning, we drove down to the marina which would be our launch point for the first part of the trip.

This is Smith with our boats and gear. Notice the partially submerged police boat. It was recovered from the bottom of Fontana Lake two days earlier.

We paddled out of the marina cove and went east across Fontana Lake to Hazel Creek and then up Hazel Creek to a point where the park service had placed a barricade across the creek preventing further upstream travel.

I had read that this particular part of GSMNP had higher concentrations of black bears than in other areas of the park. I had seen one drinking at the lakeshore as we paddled up Hazel Creek. When we got out of our boats on Hazel Creek, we saw this:

Guess they were right! Within an hour of that picture we encountered our second black bear as he came onto the trail from the creek. He was about 30-40 feet in front of us. With the sound of the creek and us being down wind, he never knew we were there until he made it on the trail. Sorry, but I thought safety before photo-op and yelled "Hey Bear!". He promptly sprinted up the hill and out of sight. The rest of the day was scenic, but not as eventful.

Here are some buildings from what used to be a community (I believe it was Proctor)

We continually gained elevation as we headed for a the last campsite on Hazel Creek. We covered almost 9 miles that day, arriving to camp a couple hours before dark.