Hiking In The Great Smoky Mountains

Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00] Welcome to PlanetGeo the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works and why it matters to you. 

Chris Bolhuis: Oh my gosh. You are so dumb. 

Jesse Reimink: Uh, you'd think after about a hundred episodes, I would have figured out how to hit record, accurately, but I still don't know, man, pathetic, pathetic, Christopher Bolhuis Good man.

Jesse Reimink: Last week. 

Jesse Reimink: We did the smoky mountain national park. Beautiful, great episode. Really cool geology this week. You're going to walk us through cool places to see the geology, right?

Chris Bolhuis: I think so. I, at least this is, this is from my perspective. Okay. I love the place. I've been there a lot. Um, and so, yeah, I think that, I think I can offer some things to people that maybe haven't been there. I think if you've been there, if you've spent time there, then you're going to know everything I'm going to talk about here.

Jesse Reimink: [00:01:00] Perfect. So we're going, we're talking about some of the popular areas and you're going to give a little how they fit into the geology story, would be an accurate description. Right. So we've 

Chris Bolhuis: Um, this is more about like, what are some cool places to go while you're there and there are certain things that offer like these great views and things like that, but the geology is every. You know that we talked about the defamation of the rocks and you know, that's everywhere. You can see that from the car,

Jesse Reimink: so we've got a list of, uh, what is it, seven places that talking about here, and I'll just kind of, kind of walk you through these right Chris.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, we just Googled like what are must sees? And I looked at that list and I'm like, holy cow. Yeah. I agree with this list. We're looking at a list that was not done by us and we're going to just kind of go through it. And because I actually agree with whoever put this list together. I agree with it. 

Jesse Reimink: Okay, perfect. Let's do it then. So we're going to start with the Charlie. Is that how you say it?

Chris Bolhuis: Charlie's bunny. Did you say Charlie?

Jesse Reimink: Charlise [00:02:00] it looks like Charlise Charlie's Bunyan, which is a funny name. Charlie's

Chris Bolhuis: I, uh, it's yeah. Um, I need a new partner, first of all. So if anybody's out there listening and you want to do a geology podcast, I'm your guy.

Jesse Reimink: Chris is interviewing. Oh man. Charlise it's I think it's Shirley spoon. You own? Yeah, no, Charlie's Bunion. Okay. Charlie's buddy. And that's a, a funnier name, actually. Uh, tell me about it, Chris.

Chris Bolhuis: I think it's a great hike. It's like, I don't know, distances, I might mess this part of what we're going to talk about, but I think it's like a eight ish mile out and back. And it's just, it's a great hike. I don't think it's very difficult. A lot of it is quite flat actually. And it takes you out to the Bunion. that offers a great panoramic view of the Smokies. it's a popular trail, so you're going to definitely run [00:03:00] into some people, but what a great place to pack a light lunch. and go and sit on this just amazing Vista it's it's I love it. Charlie's Bunions awesome.

Jesse Reimink: Okay. And I think it describes here that the, on a Anakista formation, maybe I'm pronouncing that right, is, the rocks under your feet there. And this is part of this. Ocoee basin that we talked about last week in the episode there. So these are some of the older rocks that have been metamorphosed that were formed when Rodinia broke apart and were metamorphose when Pangea kind of came back together.

Chris Bolhuis: Look at you go good call.

Jesse Reimink: I'm just, you know, dropping knowledge. I'm trying to keep my job. That's all I'm trying to do here. All right, chris, 

Chris Bolhuis: is, it is a full of metamorphic rocks. It is. Yeah. And yep.

Jesse Reimink: So, uh, the chimney tops, number two, the chimney.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, a few years ago. And I forget when this was again, but think most people remember it was the site of where the fires began in the great smoky mountain national park [00:04:00] it was not a natural fire. Okay. I don't want to get into it at all. Cause I'll get angry, but um not a natural fire. Anyway, so chimney. Is amazing. I don't think so any more that you can actually get, up to the actual chimney tops anymore. I think they closed that part of it off since the fires. Still it's spectacular. I don't know, again, the distance of it. It's, it's not a long hike. It's quite steep though. The hike to get there is, uh, yeah, I'd call it a rigorous hike. Short but sweet. and it kind of intense. again, just great top of the world kind of views, I highly recommend chimney

Jesse Reimink: Okay. Awesome. Number three, The Alum Cave Bluffs.

Chris Bolhuis: First of all, Jesse, give us a little bit of what is alum

Jesse Reimink: to be honest, had to look this up because there's trade names for alum, and then there's a mineral name for Alum and I'm not entirely sure what this is actually named for, I guess, the trade name, but Alan. Is a aluminum [00:05:00] sulfate salt, basically, but it's been used to back into antiquity for tanning purposes for clarifying dirty water. To help heal small cuts, all sorts of different uses for this stuff, but it basically kind of is an aluminum hydrated, sulfate, salt kind of mineral that occurs in this region. And it usually occurs with things like saltpeter potassium, nitrate, lots of things that, used to be mined a lot.

Chris Bolhuis: It's called alum cave. most people don't say the bluff part of it, but it is actually more of a bluff than it is a cave. 

Jesse Reimink: Okay. Two very different things. 

Chris Bolhuis: seriously. A lot of people get there. They're like, where's the cave. Well, you're, you're looking at it, man. Uh, that's it right there. anyway, I encounter alum cave, on my favorite hike in the park, which is the, uh, one of the next things coming up, actually, these next next things, Jesse, where it goes, number three was alum cave. Number four is Arch Rock. Number five is the Eye [00:06:00] of the Needle. Those are all a part of my favorite hike in the park, and that is going up to the top Mount LeConte.

Jesse Reimink: Okay. Great. 

Chris Bolhuis: So that's all on the same hike. All these things can be seen and done there. Um, and so anyway, let's talk about Mount LeConte.

Chris Bolhuis: Okay. This to me for me, hands down, number one, hike in the

Chris Bolhuis: park. 

Jesse Reimink: the way this is spelled is L E C O N T E lockout.

Chris Bolhuis: Yes. Um, I, I always take there, there are a couple of different ways that you can get to the top of mountain account. I always go via arch rock and Alum Cave. That's the route I take, it's like an 11 ish to maybe 12 mile hike. it is the real deal. you know, cause it's kind of long and there are steep parts, there are flat parts. but it offers to me, the best view. anywhere in the Smokies is on the way up. And when [00:07:00] you get to the top, cause if there's a little side trail, you can take to take you out and this like kind of point at the top of Mount LeConte. It's amazing. When you get to the top, you'll see a little, looks like a village.

Chris Bolhuis: during the summertime they have, these little cottages where people, you can rent them out. I've never. Um, because that's just not my style, but, I think you have to get on this right away. And I think it's hard to get one of these places reserved, you know, but, there's a restaurant up there. It's only open seasonally. There's a caretaker, full-time caretaker. That's there, during the winter. And I've been up to the top of Mount LeConte probably more times than the winter. Than anything else, like middle of February. It's awesome. If you do this during the winter time, you do need to be prepared crampons or at the very least like micro spikes on the bottom of your boots. because the ice and snow is a real thing for sure. but it is absolutely spectacular. I love it. anyway, I'll tell you this. Okay. A little story. Okay. Can I do this and tell a little story? All right. [00:08:00] So. after COVID hit, Jenny and I decided, in may, cause we'd never been there in may before. And we were hoping to see on Mount LeConte, there are these in all over actually in the Smoky Mountain National Park are these rhododendron. we've never been able to see them in bloom. And we're hoping that if we go in this part of may, that, you know, maybe we'll see them. We didn't unfortunately. But, anyway, so we went to the Smokies and we were there for, five days and we did Mount LeConte four days in a row.

Jesse Reimink: Oh, nice.

Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Yeah, it was like, we did Charlie's Bunion and then we're like, well, let's, let's do Mount LeConte. And so, um, we, the first day that we did this, like I said, this was when kind of, when COVID was in the infancy, you know, it was in may and I think COVID hit right. Everything's shut down in March. Right. So they had the, trail closed off. But we talked to a ranger. And, the ranger said, you know, you [00:09:00] can go, you can do the hike, but nobody's coming to get you. So, you know, like you're at your own risk, we're like, yeah, we're totally fine with that. So anyway, we, um, continue on and we get passed by this group of like young 20 something young. college kids. Okay. And they pass us, you know, they're, moving quickly and they all stop on this rock outcrop by Arch Rock. And they ask us to take a picture and we do that and we kind of continue on, they leapfrogged us again and it just kept doing this. And Jenny and I were getting sick of it. And so I said, Jenny, Uh, are you ready to, you ready to lay the hammer down? Let's go, let's put some distance between us and them and she's like, let's go. So we laid the hammer down. We started hiking at a very brisk pace, and it was hilarious. a couple of the kids, then they were not having that. They're like, oh, no, this is not happening. And so they try to keep up and I'm like, okay, Jen, are you ready to take it down another level? She's like, let's go. And so we took it down and. this [00:10:00] one kid actually passed us. He was almost running and we get to this point, it wasn't, we hadn't gotten to any hard parts of the hike yet, you know, so it was easy for him to do that. And so we passed him later on. And he looks exhausted and we just kept on going. And then there was one kid that stuck with us, you know, he was like really, really struggling, but he was trying very hard to stay with Jenny and I, so anyway, we get to the top. And we had, uh, each had a glass of wine up there and we're just sitting there and about 20 minutes later that kid comes straggling up. Right. And he comes over and he fist bumps us and, then he goes off by himself, waiting for his friends to come up. Well, that, kid that had past. That was running, you know, to get past us when we blew by him, he comes up maybe 45 minutes later and he didn't see Jenny and I, and he goes over to his friend. He's like, Hey man, when that old dude went, bias. [00:11:00] I was like, no way, man, that ain't happening. Holy crap. What the hell? And I stood up and I turned around and I said, if I'm that old man, you and I got a problem right here right now. And he's like, oh, it was hilarious. But, um, yeah, that was, that was, uh, that was fun. That

Jesse Reimink: So I was that a story about how much of a bad-ass hiker you and Jenny are,

Chris Bolhuis: Well, no, 

Jesse Reimink: What was the point of that story?

Chris Bolhuis: it was just hilarious, but th the thing is, is why was I the one that got singled out? Why didn't he say when that old lady went past us? He left jenny totally out of it. I go, what the hell? 

Jesse Reimink: we all know why that is. I mean, come on. That's 

Chris Bolhuis: That's not okay. It would have been so much better if he'd have said when that old lady blew by me.

Jesse Reimink: yeah, yeah. 

Jesse Reimink: Uh, 

Jesse Reimink: well, that's, that's funny. So,

Chris Bolhuis: Mount LeConte is amazing.

Jesse Reimink: So let let's talk about the two things that you talked about. There two of the features. You mentioned Arch Rock and the Eye of the Needle. These are really cool features that are [00:12:00] formed by this differential, weathering and erosion that we talked about last week, except on a really small scale. It's not a mountain peak. That's a resistant sandstone in a valley. That's a shale. This is instead small cracks in rocks, getting exploited by freeze-thaw cycles. So when water freezes, it expands. Breaks rock. And then when it thaws melts, and there's a gap that then water can get into, again, freezes, thaws breaks apart rock, and this slow breaking apart is what caused, probably caused this, Arch Rock and the Eye of the Needle, which you mentioned on the way up to Mount LeConte, um, on these different trails. Right? So really cool geology features. You could probably find some high schoolers that you can just kick their ass on the trail too, if you're into that. Right. Um, All right, Chris. So number six here is Sugarland Mountain.

Chris Bolhuis: I love this. there is a hike that goes from the sugar land visitor center, it follows the river. And it's like a [00:13:00] two, maybe two mile walk. It's relatively flat. It's a little bit up and down all along the river. It's absolutely gorgeous. And here's my favorite thing to do then is to park at the visitor. Get on the trail, walk along the river, you walk right into town and then you have, smokey mountain brewery is right near on that part of the town. And so you go there and have a beer and then walk back and it's just absolutely, it's so pretty easy. not a ton of people on it at all. And it's just beautiful. I absolutely love doing that.

Jesse Reimink: So this, description from this list that we're finding talks about a 12 mile Sugarland mountain trail. That is one of the great hiking adventures in the park. Have you done that?

Chris Bolhuis: I have not actually done that.

Jesse Reimink: Okay, well, we can add it to the list to do, but, and the last one Cades Cove, which we almost talked about in the episode last week, but we didn't quite get to which shows, I think one of the really cool geology features or. Big important ones, right?

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, Cades [00:14:00] Cove is a famous spot in the park. I think it's one of the most frequented Bear areas, you know, for black bears and so on. So it is a very, very popular part of the park. You can drive right to it. and so it's, it's quite busy usually, but geologically though, it's pretty cool. There's a great example of what's called a thrust fault in Cades Cove that shoves older rocks up on top of younger rocks, which is backwards from what you usually get in geology. It's usually oldest on bottom and youngest on top. Here it's the opposite because of this thrust fault. And it, what it did is it took limestone. that is younger than the surrounding mountains. 

Jesse Reimink: Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So it kind of takes old deep rocks and pushes them up on top of younger rocks, higher up rocks. You're kind of creating, we call it a thrust fault, which is not really super important for right now. Why we call it thrust fault, but it's this process of thrusting something up on top of another one.[00:15:00] 

Chris Bolhuis: Right. So let me say this again. When, you're at Cades Cove, you see the limestone that is younger than the higher mountains that are around Cades Cove and those mountains were thrust up over top of that limestone. So, 

Jesse Reimink: Makes complete sense. Yeah. And you can picture when you're standing there, you can, look at the limestone, which you know, is young in the mountains around it, which you know, are old and you can picture what it looks like when two continents collide a long time ago. Really 

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I think, I think so. I think it's one of the best places to actually like see that part of the geology. So, Yeah. Anyway. 

Jesse Reimink: Cool, man. Well, that was a good tour. Nice 

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. I hope so. Like I love it. think these mountains are amazing. I think it might be the most visited national park in the United State 

Jesse Reimink: yeah, pretty sure that's right. Yep. And the geology is extremely cool there and much like a lot of the Appalachians. And we're going to get to a few of the other national parks, [00:16:00] hopefully pretty soon on PlanetGeo as we work our way. Some of the other famous locations in the Appalachians, 

Chris Bolhuis: Well, this is going to be a part of a little series that we're doing here in the start. We started with the Smokies and we're going to talk about red river Gorge in Kentucky, which is related to this mountain building event that we talked about here. Um, and then also we're going to mention a little bit of geology on Shenandoah national park. 

Jesse Reimink: Very cool. Alright. That's a wrap. Follow us on social medias. Reach out with any questions you have. We love hearing those and we like learning about them and 

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. And, and, and don't refer to me as an old man. If you see me on the trail. 

Jesse Reimink: see Chris on the trail. Yeah. Just, you know, put them in the dust, put them in the rear view mirror and, uh, you can, you know, talk shit to them when you see them at the top. 

Chris Bolhuis: A little piece of my soul dies every time somebody calls me an old man. Like it's, it's 

Jesse Reimink: Uh that's great. All right, [00:17:00] man, that's a wrap. Uh, send us an email. Follow us. Follow subscribe, leave us a review. Helps the algorithm.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. And share this with somebody that you think would like it.

Jesse Reimink: Perfect. Take care.