On Black Balsam, under the Stars: A View of the Art Loeb Trail and Its Legacy
A hike on the Art Loeb allowed for an appreciation of its autumn beauty and the story of its creation, which might offer lessons for the planned Ecusta Trail.
PISGAH NATIONAL FOREST — I guess the highlight was eating mac and cheese and sipping whiskey as I watched dusk settle on our valley, its narrow strip of lights dwarfed by ridge after ridge of hulking mountains.
But it could have come earlier in the day, hiking the Art Loeb Trail over The Narrows, a granite knife’s edge offering views of brilliant, sunlit fall colors on neighboring hillsides.
Or the next day, on the stretch of the trail heading into the Davidson River valley. This reputedly monotonous “green tunnel” had gone psychedelic, had been transformed into a tunnel of scarlet and gold.
The point is, it was glorious, this hike that started on a whim when, late last week, I looked at the forecast for perfect fall weather and looked out my window at the turning leaves.
I thought about how few such days we are granted each year, or, big picture, each lifetime. I knew that if I wanted to call myself a backpacker, I had to get out on the trail.
And thanks to the foresight and energy of Art Loeb and the Carolina Mountain Club, one the handiest weekend backpacking routes is also, according to National Geographic, one of the country’s absolute best.
With NewsBeat in mind, I wanted the trip to double as research for a story. I thought there could be some news value in just celebrating leaf season, a calling card of the region right up there with waterfalls.
But there could be more to write about, I thought, if I looked at the Art Loeb in the context of my recent conversation about the Ecusta Trail with its one vocal advocate on the Transylvania County Commission, David Guice.
Think of the connectivity it would create, he said. Think of the health and economic benefits. And think of the future legacy of its backers and builders.
“Thirty, 40, 50 years from now,” Guice said, “people are going to look back and say, ‘These people were proactive and thinking outside the box.’ ”
An executive at Ecusta Mill, Loeb spent his free time hiking in Pisgah National Forest and piecing together its then-scattered network of trails, including the ones that sketched out the path of his namesake, 30-mile trail from the Daniel Boone Boy Scout Camp in Haywood County to the Davidson River Campground near Brevard.
After his death in 1968, the U.S. Forest Service and the Carolina Mountain Club carried on his work and completed the trail the following year, according to a 40-year retrospective in a 2009 edition of WNC Magazine.
Yes, the Art Loeb relied and relies heavily on volunteer labor. And, yes, the costs of construction and maintenance — frequently cited obstacles to the Ecusta — are crucial considerations. But the Art Loeb also crosses the mother of all greenway projects and a classic example of the benefits of public funding, the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Does anybody say, as they drive it now, “Wow, I hate to think about the annual upkeep on this dude!” No. If they aren’t too overwhelmed by its beauty to spare a thought for anything else, it’s probably to bless the New Deal crew that planned it out, that realized the enormous boon it would create for visitors and the residents of the then dirt-poor mountain region.
So it was with my weekend hike. Sometimes I thanked the builders. Mostly I just enjoyed the trail, which will always be dear to me for making a hiker out of my older son, Noah.
He was a sullen and sedentary college student when I dragged him off the couch to join me for a hike on the Art Loeb several years ago. He started to come to life surveying the views from the 6,200-foot summit of Black Balsam Knob, looked positively exultant when he found he had the energy to seek a water source after a grueling 18-mile day ending at Deep Gap, on the ridge beneath Cold Mountain.
Heading up to Deep Gap from the Boy Scout camp on Saturday morning, I first walked through the end of summer — a mostly green canopy and trail-side asters holding on to their last few lilac-colored petals.
Further along, fallen leaves formed not the brown, calf-deep, ankle-spraining cover of November, but a single-layered mosaic of reds and yellows. Premier attractions come regularly on the ridgetop stretch of the Art Loeb south of Deep Gap —The Narrows, the quartz slabs of Shining Rock Mountain, the open views that start at Flower Gap and continue, with hardly a break, to Black Balsam.
Because that was my planned destination, and it wasn’t far off, I had time to take in the sights and talk to the few other hikers I met, visitors from Greensboro and Greenville, from Wisconsin and Maine, all of whom raved about the trail.
This being a Saturday evening in peak leaf season, these scattered groups formed a mob at Black Balsam, including one bunch blasting their preferred music (but not mine) from a Bluetooth speaker.
Because I’d never camped there before and really wanted to do it at least once, I found an open, quiet space not far from the summit. And with no sign of rain in either the sky or the forecast, I didn’t bother setting up a shelter.
I was rewarded by the best display of stars I’d seen in years, and then the rising of a moon so bright that I was able to start walking before dawn the next morning, hoping to make it back to town for the last half of the Cincinnati Bengals’ game. Visions of watching it at Dugan’s Pub, a dewy glass of cold beer on the bar, carried me through a spruce forest on a path the Art Loeb shares with the Mountains-to-Sea Trail and then down the dizzying drop to the Parkway, which I reached just in time to catch the sunrise.
It didn’t bother me that I’d fallen behind schedule, because this was the start of the downhill stretch to the campground that some people describe as “easy.”
It’s not. Descents on the Art Loeb are seldom permanent; almost all are followed by climbs, most of them rocky and rooty. But I was rewarded with views from the top of Pilot Mountain and at the granite base of Looking Glass Rock’s little brother, Cedar Rock Mountain.
The trail was flanked by the golden leaves of poor, blight-doomed chestnut saplings, and by alternating patches of wine-colored buckberry and galax so dense, green and glossy that, from a distance, I mistook it for invasive English ivy.
Even the sight of the Belk store from the top of the aptly named High Knob was welcome because it meant I was near the end of the trail.
I missed the game, the results of which I learned from Noah on my first call after leaving the forest. Later, I watched sports commentators call it a “historic” win and describe my hometown team’s stars in heroic terms.
But what was a game compared to a once-in-a-lifetime hike? What was the passing significance of a football score next to the legacy of a great trail? What hero did I need other than Art Loeb?
Just subscribed because I love this, and you keep me up to date on the goings-on in Brevard. Thank you so much. I think Dugans is undergoing an update!
A lovely piece, Dan!