New Things Can Be Found On Old Hikes Around Hot Springs

On Thursday, I returned to the area around Hot Springs for an Appalachian Trail (AT) hike. While I have done the whole AT section from Hot Springs to Allen Gap the two parts I was doing on the Winter Solstice was Tanyard Gap to the Mill Ridge Pond and the Lovers Leap Loop.

I have done the hike out of Tanyard Gap two times and all or part of Lovers Leap three times and talked about them here. There were a number of reasons I decided on these hikes. One was I was finishing my personal AT challenge...to hike this famous footpath in every month of the year. Another I wanted to see what the Mill Ridge section was like in winter. I had hiked this part the previous two times in High Summer, but trails look different from summer to winter, but I was even more surprised by what I found.

First I got an interesting viewpoint of the Tanyard Gap bridge from a spot that is overgrown in summer. Then there is an old home site that I got to see more of and then the had cut the fields which opened the whole area of Mill Ridge up. When here in the past it had been grown up with sunflowers and other foliage, it was now cleared. I guess part of the reason was for hunting because one of the side trips off the AT I took up an old road I found shotgun shells.

 

The other side trip I took was even cooler. When the AT cuts through Mill Ridge it follows a gravel road, but at some point, the AT cuts right, but on the map, it showed a turnaround about two-tenths up the road. With the trail grown up in summer I really couldn't tell what was up to the road, but with the area cut down I could and this turnaround led to an overlook. This made a welcomed surprise.

The next half of the hike took me to Hot Springs and up to Lovers Leap. The only time I did this previously in winter was the longer hike to Pump Gap. The hike I did, the Lovers Leap Loop, I had down in summer and gone northbound on the AT. While I started northbound, I hiked the road to Silvermine and then headed up the Lovers Leap Trail. This would bring me back southbound on the AT which made the hike different, and I also missed the main Lovers Leap.

The other big thing I noticed on this hike was how much the French Broad River was up. The previous times here it looked like I could wade across it but not today. Because of this, I saw more people there to "ride the river" than all of the previous times I had been here combined.  Overall, it made for a different day on hikes I had done before.