Mount Mitchell, elevation 6,684 feet, is the highest peak east of the Mississippi River in the United States. It’s located in the Black Mountains near Burnsville, North Carolina, a towering 15-mile-long ridge that’s part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which in turn, is part of the Appalachian Mountains. By comparison, Mount Mansfield, the highest mountain in Vermont and also part of the Appalachians, tops out at 4,395 feet.

The only reason I wanted to climb Mount Mitchell was because it’s the highest. To help ensure an enjoyable and informative day on the trail, I partnered with Jake Blood, a Burnsville local who played an integral part in creating and maintaining the Black Mountains’ 80-mile trail network. He had climbed Mount Mitchell more times than he could remember, including a dozen or so ascents already this year before our climb together in May.

We started at a campground by the South Toe River and quickly entered the rhododendron tunnel for which the Southern Appalachians are renowned. We were too early for the colorful show. Instead, the rhododendrons framed the trail like densely tangled wooden tendrils. There was no question which way to go.

About a quarter mile into the hike, Jake pointed out log steps in the trail made from local locust wood. “Locust wood doesn’t rot, so it’s favored by trail crews here,” he said. The water bars were also made from locust wood as the trail turned upward. We had a 3,500 foot climb ahead. I was grateful for the extensive trail work. Though the rhododendrons were still a month away from blooming, pretty dwarf iris and bluets grew beside the path, a pleasant distraction. We also passed several enormous old-growth oak trees, which had littered the trail with acorns the previous fall.

At 1.5 miles, we came to another monstrous oak tree, measuring about 40 inches in diameter, that had fallen across the trail. According to its rings, it was at least 250 years old. The trail crew had already cleared a corridor through the tree. I paused as I passed through the cut. The left side of the trunk was as high as my shoulder!

As we gained elevation, the few rocks that were embedded in the trail glittered in the sunlight. “They’re full of mica,” said Jake. “Historically, the mines here were for mica, which was used before heat-resistant glass was invented. That ended in the early 1960s, but quartz is still actively mined around here.”

“What’s the main rock in the Black Mountains?” I asked, not seeing much quartz around. “Gneiss,” replied Jake.

Professor Mitchell´s Demise

Jake Blood

We kept going without a break, but Jake was a walking encyclopedia on the region, which distracted me from the climb. There wasn’t much to look at besides rhododendrons and locust wood water bars. “Who is Mount Mitchell named for?” I asked at one point. Then Jake told a story that I will never forget.

Mount Mitchell was named for Elisha Mitchell (1793–1857), a professor and minister at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which was UNC’s only campus back when he began teaching in the early 1800s. He was a geologist who was more an academic than outdoorsy field researcher, but as an expert in his field, he was tasked with surveying the mountains of western North Carolina. Assisted by his students and using barometric measuring devices, he determined that Mount Mitchell, then called Black Dome, was the highest peak not only in North Carolina but of the entire Appalachian Mountain Range.  Thomas Clingman, one of his star students who helped with the survey, vehemently disagreed. Clingman, who became a United States senator, believed another summit to the south along the same ridge, now known as Clingman’s Peak, was higher. Clingman and Mitchell spent the next decade publicly and bitterly disputing the other’s claim.

In 1857, Professor Mitchell decided to settle the score. He set out to climb his namesake mountain alone to remeasure it, but went up the wrong mountain, got lost, fell off a 60-foot waterfall, and was found dead several days later in the pool at the base of the waterfall. Upon learning of Mitchell’s demise, Clingman conceded the argument to Mitchell, stating, “You don’t keep fighting with a dead man.”

Mount Mitchell was, indeed, proved 39 feet higher a year later by Arnold Guyot, a professor of geology at Princeton University. It was Guyot who ultimately named Mount Mitchell after Elisha Mitchell and also Clingman’s Dome, which straddles the North Carolina–Tennessee border in the Great Smokey Mountains and is the highest point on the Appalachian Trail, after Thomas Clingman. The cascade where Professor Mitchell fell to his death is now named Mitchell Falls.

More Intrigue on the Mountain

At 3.2 miles into the hike, as the story of Elisha Mitchell ended, we broke out of the trees where a power line cut a straight swath. We paused to ogle the Blue Ridge Mountains, which spread out before us in their famous blue layers before continuing on our way.

Back in the woods a little farther, Jake called for another break, this time by a flat-topped boulder beside the trail. The boulder was notable because there weren’t many rocks on the trail or in the woods, unlike the mountains in New England that contain many boulders of all sizes. “The continental ice sheets never made it this far south so they didn’t leave behind the scree, talus, and random boulders that you get up north,” explained Jake, then he motioned for me to follow him past the boulder.

We bushwacked a short way to a smaller boulder beside a tree trunk. A rusty old horseshoe stuck out of the tree trunk just above our heads, as if someone had flipped it into the wood. In fact, the tree had grown up around it, lifting it off the ground. “No doubt the survey crew would have used horses,” said Jake, pointing to the horseshoe, then he bent down to scratch lichen off the rock. Under the moss, “April 21, 1935” was faintly etched into its pocked surface.  “I found this working on the trail crew one day,” said Jake. “It must have been carved by another survey or an earlier trail crew. We were just eating lunch by the old eroded trail that used to go right by here, when I saw it.” The writing was barely discernible, but the horseshoe was obvious.

We returned to the trail and continued upward. As we crested about 5,000 feet in elevation, the trees changed to full-sized conifers, especially hemlocks and firs. How different than the Green Mountains where the tops of the 4,000-footers are treeless in the alpine zone!

At little later, we crossed the power line again and paused for another gorgeous view. Mitchell was stingy with its views, but when you got one, it was an eye-popper. As I took some photos, a couple of hikers passed behind us, heading downward. It was the first people we had seen all day, though we were already four miles into our climb. “Only about 25 to 30 people per day use this trail,” said Jake. I loved having the trail to ourselves, especially knowing how busy the highest mountains in the Northern states were, but there would be no solitude at the summit.

The Top

We got another view closer to the top when we crossed an old railroad grade, the former bed of a narrow-gauge train that was used to transport timber from the mountain to nearby mills. According to Jake, much of the mountain was clear cut by the late 1800s, then the governor of North Carolina supported letting nature recover. As a result, in 1916, the top of Mount Mitchell became the state’s first state park. (Its lower flanks are now part of Pisgah National Forest.) The forest was now so dense it was hard to imagine open slopes here 130 years ago. “The wonderful thing about nature is that it perseveres if you give it a chance,” said Jake.

As we neared the top, the route went up some exposed bedrock. Instead of a wooden ladder or steps that you might find on trails in New England, steps were cut into the rock. We also passed a rock cave formed by a few more of the rare boulders along the path. Though it looked similar to caves in the Green Mountains left behind when the last ice age receded, Jake attributed this cave to wind and rain. “Gneiss and quartz are hard and slow to erode,” he explained. “As the softer rock crumbled away, these rocks ended up like this.”

About a quarter-mile from the summit, the footpath ended at a paved sidewalk. The sidewalk started at the top of the auto road up the mountain. From there, everyone had to walk the last quarter mile. It was a gentle climb with a lot more people, passing under ledges dripping with spongy sphagnum moss. We never did clear tree line.

At the top, the first thing I noticed was the tomb of Elisha Mitchell. He was truly interred there, which was a little creepy. A sweeping walkway arced around the raised grave to an observation deck above the spindly conifers. The elevated platform afforded a hazy 360-degree view. At first, I couldn’t stop peering at the gravesite, but it was hard to ignore that heavenly panorama. After a few minutes, the initial shock of seeing the tomb wore off. I forgot about Professor Mitchell and simply enjoyed being on top of his mountain.  There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from reaching a summit, especially one so significant. It’s not every day that I get to climb a prominent peak with such a dramatic backstory. “Mitchell is the highest, but it’s much more than that,” said Jake. How true! Mount Mitchell is a geologic landmark, but it also has a human history that makes standing on its top even more rewarding.

MORE INFO

Specific info on climbing Mount Mitchell

North Carolina High Peaks Trail Association

nchighpeaks.org

For general hiking info plus places to stay and eat and other things to do in the area

Explore Burnsville

exploreburnsville.com