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Cove Mountain hike-Mike Howitz 10/09/08

On October 9th I started out on my hike-the weather cool and good visibility. I walked from Fairfield Inn in Gatlinburg and walked thru town to the Gatlinburg Trail to Sugarlands Visitor Center.  From there I found out there was a shuttle that would take me the 3.6 miles to Laurel Falls trailhead for 50 cents. I have hiked this trail half a dozen times but this was the first time I continued on. After the falls the trail ascends moderately for half a mile and then levels off.  There are no spectacular views on this trail but there are some huge trees-oaks and poplar mostly.  This trail meets up with Little Greenbrier Trail at 3.1 miles. I went on to Cove Mountain which is.9 miles.  along the way I saw a black bear about 30 feet off the trail.  I just kept walking and keeping it in sight the whole time until I lost sight of him.  Believe it or not he doing # 2 the whole time I walked by-you know how the old saying goes.  That is the third bear in 2 years I have seen on the trail and I have been hiking here for twenty years. I reached Cove Mountain shortly after seeing the bear and visited the fire tower-you can no longer climb it due to some air quality equipment mounted half way up.  I did see a lot of wears valley from a clearing just below the tower. From this point I had 8 miles of Cove Mountain Trail between me and the ranger station. The trail was very wide for the first few miles and there are dirt roads that parallels it-one is the vehicle access for the equipment on the tower and others are on private property-this trail is on the park boundary. After 3 or 4 miles I got glimpses of Clingmans Dome and the Appalachian Trail ridges just west of it-also Mt LeConte.  For the next few miles I hiked past a ski resort and several houses and I could hear music which I found out later was a band playing atop Ober Gatlinburg.  I only saw one other person on the entire hike which is one good thing about hiking certain trails-turns out he has hike almost every trail in the park and has a cool website-Your Smokies News.com.  At the end of the trail there was a small waterfall that was barely dripping. I ended up hiking the trail back into town and I think my total distance hiked was about 17 miles

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