The link above provides you with the Parks description of this trail as hiked as an out and back. We hiked it as a 12 mile loop. The first 3.7 miles are uphill. I can't stress that enough UPHILL. Here's a couple of photos of Archie and I dressed for the hike which was on July 3, 2009. He looks like he is headed for the beach, I on the other hand am dressed for maximum protection from BUGS, sun and anything else that might touch me on a trail. Camelback, camera, binoculars, fannypack for first aid kit, gaiters over hiking boots to keep bugs out, long sleeve shirt over a tank top ( the long sleeve shirt never came off I can tell you) big pocketknife. Just before we went to the trailhead we walked down to look at
Fontana Dam from below the dam. Fontana is the tallest dam East of the MS river and was built during WW2. So on we go with our goal being Shuckstack tower an old firetower that hasn't been used since the 30s maybe 40s. It is not maintained, its about 85 feet tall and on top of Shuckstack mountain. The views were supposed to be amazing. The trail certainly was. I'm not sure you can see just how steep this trail is from the photos. At one point about 2.5 hours or so in Archie said I'm taking a power nap and he did for about 5 minutes on a log like a raccoon or some sort of wild creature. Now for someone like myself who is deathly afraid of ticks, and other bugs, this sort of thing is just not possible. Please note I am having problems with this damn blogspot today as it is not letting me reposition my photos as usual so they appear at freaking random. There were some wildflowers along the trail including lots of trillium and rhodendrum. The only wildlife we saw on the trail were these two toads. The red one is I believe a
Fowler's toad
The paler one is I think an Eastern American toad which is a little more common. Next post will be more on the actual tower.
OK this chimney is from the old tower keeper or fire watchers residence. Obviously there is NO WAY to get up here daily so I suppose some poor &^^%$ard had to live up here. Behind the boys you see in the photo is a cistern. The boys had been hiking the Appalachian Trail for 5 days with their dad and had come up to Shuckstack as a side event. Unfortunately they took one look at how rickety the tower was and were rather taken aback. I finally talked the two teenagers into going up by saying "Hey could you follow an old lady up the tower? That did it and up they climbed behind me. I managed to get one of them to take my picture in the room at the top of the tower.
Otherwise no one might have believed I climbed it as it was so rickety looking.
Here are a couple of views from the top of Fontana lake and the mountains surrounding the tower. My GOD it is worth the climb BUT it is an awful lot of work.
This photo of Archie coming up the tower gives you a bit of a feel for how narrow it is and how steep the steps are as do the two photos at the top of this post (I am still having problems formatting here today). Hiking out of there to make it a loop we went down a hellish trail that was incredibly steep for 2.7 miles banged your toes all to hell because of course you are going straight down, I am much better climbing like a goat than going downhill. Then after that we had around 5 miles on the Lakeshore trail to hike to get back to the trailhead. Lakeshore is VERY MISLEADING. You can't really see the lake to take photos only occasional glimpses of Fontana Lake but you can see lots of old rusted out cars that were abandoned in the thirties when that road was made part of the Park. I don't care for rusted cars no matter what the vintage so I didn't take pictures plus 10 miles into the hike my toes and corn had had it and quite frankly at that point all that kept me going was thinking of a soft bed and hot shower if I kept swinging one leg in front of the other!
