107 Sugar Gap Road & Stump Mountain Trail

    This morning we’re going to Richland Creek Wilderness with the intention of hiking to Suzy Jimmy Falls.  I had never even heard of Suzy Jimmy until about a year ago when we stopped at the Richland Waterfall Welcome Center located in the school gymnasium at Witts Springs.  In the brochure titled ‘Richland Waterfalls Trail Guide’ is a tiny picture along with coordinates for Suzy Jimmy Falls.

    Today we’ll try to find it, and even though it hasn’t rained much lately, I’m thinking since Suzy Jimmy is on Richland Creek it should have some water flowing.  Where we park all depends on how far we can get on Sugar Gap Road, which is less than a quarter mile north of the Moore Road bridge over Richland Creek.

    Right away once on Sugar Gap Road we cross Meeks Hollow Creek which surprisingly has quite a bit of water today.  Sugar Gap Road is narrow, rocky and a little steep, where it’s not steep it’s muddy, all in all not a very good road.  We keep an eye out for a good spot to turn around (just in case), soon though is a nice campsite on the left at a road intersection so we pull in the campsite which makes a great parking area and begin our hike here.

    The plan is to hike down Sugar Gap Road which according to the maps sort of follows Richland Creek east and north through some private property before ending at the wilderness boundary.  The plan goes awry pretty quick when we reach a rickety locked gate across the road and a bunch of ‘private property’ and ‘no trespassing’ signs.  Not to give up just yet, we bushwhack down the little hill through the woods to Richland Creek only about 100 feet away.

    If we can’t walk down the road maybe we can hike along the creek which is clearly in the National Forest, but this doesn’t work out too well either.  Along Richland Creek is pretty rough going with downed trees and little boulders (round river rock) everywhere, but what’s worse is expecting to be hiking mostly on old roads today we didn’t bring any kind of water shoes.

Richland Creek

    Hiking near the north bank of Richland Creek we soon come to a spot where the bank is very steep forcing us up into the woods away from the creek (it’s either that or get our feet wet).  Up in the woods I check the map just to see if we’re getting anywhere, no we’re not, and on top of that we’re now back in private property.  Farther ahead downstream is thick with greenbrier and saplings, and we’re still on private property so we turn around and head back up to the road deciding to figure out ‘plan B’ back at the truck.

    Back at the campsite we take a short break sitting on the tailgate and discuss our options, we decide that since we're here we should check out the old road we’re parked next to.  This road is FR92147L and according to the map it doesn’t go very far.  All uphill but a gentle grade it’s pretty easy going, soon near the end of the road we come to an intersection with another road, to the left and it looks to be pretty level.

    We stay straight at the intersection and enter a nice deer camp with a pop-up camper, continuing up the old road which soon swings around to the east then levels out and ends.  The woods up here are clean and wide open with a couple faint trails heading off one to the northeast the other southeast.  We turn around here and head back down to the truck, on this aborted Suzy Jimmy hike including the short old road exploration we have only logged in 1.4 miles with 163 feet of elevation gain, not enough we drive on...

    Now out on Moore Road again we head south through Moore and then about a half mile past where the OHT crosses the road we turn east on NC 5052 which has just been graded in fact we pass the road grader up ahead.  Then maybe a mile at a ‘T’ intersection in front of a little farmhouse we turn left (north) on NC 5051 which is also FR1203A, the road soon turns back east and deteriorates from there.

    This road now has lots of nice big mud holes, we keep heading to the north and east then under a power line.  Just before the road and power line head off the mountain top and down the steep hill we pull in and park at a nice big campsite on the south side of the road.  We’ll call this campsite/parking area Stump Mountain Trailhead since we saw a wooden sign ‘Stump Mountain Trail’ back before arriving at the campsite.

    Consulting my map, I see we are right at the edge of Richland Creek Wilderness and Stump Mountain is about 4 miles to the north, well it’s already too late in the day to even think about going that far, but we’d still like to at least hike a little bit of the trail to check it out, so off we go.  From across the road in front of the campsite are a couple little spur trails back through the woods to an old road which is Stump Mountain Trail.

    We decide to only hike a mile (to get a feel for the trail) then turn around and come back, right away we notice fluorescent pink blazes spray-painted on trees to mark the trail.  On the old road, blazes aren’t really necessary, and this is easy hiking with only gentle elevation changes our one mile turn around point comes quick through the open woods.

    Along the trail near the 1-mile mark we notice strange looking bright white fungi (mushrooms) scattered around the woods.  Strange because they aren’t smooth like a mushroom but very rough, bumpy and odd shaped some flat topped some almost square shaped, anyway we have never seen anything like it.

odd white fungi

    Back at the campsite we talk about coming back someday in the afternoon, set up camp then early the next morning head out to Stump Mountain for a leisurely all-day hike, that should be fun.  The 2 mile hike we did here today only had 186 feet of elevation gain.  Even though we didn’t make it to Suzy Jimmy Falls we still had a great time exploring Richland Creek Wilderness, for my next attempt at reaching Suzy Jimmy see: (116 Jack Jones and Rose).