Appalachian Trail Near Brown Mountain Creek/Pedlar Lake May 11, 2013

Reported (mostly) by Dan Ralston

This hike was advertised as a magical hike at the peak of wildflower season in a woodland hollow with a gorgeous flowing stream—an accurate description, and in terms of natural beauty, magical it was.

Iva Gillet led the hike assisted by Dan Ralston as co-lead on his first leader-in-training hike. The location for today’s adventure was west of Amherst and past the Forks of Buffalo (how’s that for an intriguing name?), starting at Long Mountain Wayside. The hiking route went like this: south along the Appalachian Trail (AT) from the Wayside, descending about 700' along Brown Mountain Creek, passing the Brown Mountain Creek AT Shelter (lunch stop), traversing two creek crossings on footbridges to the intersection of the AT and Forest Road 38, returning to the Wayside along the forest road.



Wildflower enthusiasts, a phrase that describes all the women in the group, hit the jackpot on this hike. Iva spotted a lovely showy orchis early on, and soon we were seeing lots of them. Wild azalea, wild geraniums, squawroot, lush ferns, and lots of flowers that we admired but did not identify (Michael Seth, where are you?) grew in the area.



Yellow lady's slippers

Barbara Martin photographing flowers

The most exciting flower-find of the day: the rare yellow lady’s slipper. Shortly before reaching the forest road in the afternoon, Marian Styles and Barbara Martin saw two of them growing right beside the trail, and we spotted a handful more on the opposite side of the trail. The faster hikers didn’t completely miss out because we later saw a few more of the spectacular flowers off the road and beside the stream.

As if the wildflower bonanza weren’t enough, history buffs were rewarded with seeing a site along Brown Mountain Creek of an old settlement where freed slaves once lived.

In the wildlife department, we admired several Red Efts, which were really more orange with colorful spots on their backs. Bill Holman rescued one from the forest road.

Speaking of Bill, both he and Dan are new members of the PATC Rangers Division. During today’s hike, they surveyed the hiking loop with GPS’s and pictorial landmarks for accuracy confirmation, and the results will be used for the revision of PATC Map 13 in a couple of years.

Lunch at Brown Mt Shelter

Removing some blowdowns with
bare hands and clippers

But let’s not forget about the most important part of the hike: lunch!
 While having lunch at the Brown Mountain Creek AT Shelter, we were joined by a through hiker who started in February from Springer Mountain. He was hiking with his girlfriend, who joined him for a section of the VA AT.  She was having tuna for lunch, which Iva proclaimed as “cat food.” We also passed several through hikers on the trail heading north to Katahdin in Maine.

In the trail maintenance department, some of us cleared a couple of blowdowns along the route, with bare hands, no less.

Just as Dan had predicted before the hike, the forecast rain never came. We capped off a lovely day with a stop for ice cream, and some folks continued the good times at the Timberwood Grill.



Another group of yellow
lady's slippers



Red eft

In addition to those already named, also hiking were John Shannon, John Brandt, Rich Bard, Page Williams (Iva's cousin), Brian Muszynski, and Ken Moss. We covered 7.4 to 8.4 miles, depending on whose GPS we used (Bill’s, Dan's, Ken's or John Shannon's)—although Ken's and John's did match to around 8 miles because they were using the same model.