Madison County Highpoint Trip Report
Crabtree Bald (5,320+ ft) and Sandymush Bald (5,152 ft)
Date: December 23, 2007
Author: Shannon Dillmore
To get to the "trailhead", we took off on I-40 to exit 24, heading north on NC
208, turning right on Upper Crabtree and then taking a left on Bald Creek Road.
I located the old Messer place, with the mailbox (3207) still there, and parked
at a gate on the driveway. The house was abandoned, with the junked car in the
front yard. Peter Barr is trying to arrange permanent access through a new
housing development that is going up here and he secured access for me. He has
requested that anyone wishing to approach this route go through him, as the
issue will become more sensitive once residences are actually built. Edward
Earl's recent report also suggests an alternative approach that I didn't scope out.
We took a gravel road about 2 miles to a col. We took a couple of wrong turns,
first taking a road to the left of one that had a new concrete bridge. This
cost us about 0.6 mile and an additional 300 feet of gain. My advice for anyone
else taking this route is to follow the concrete bridge and then try to follow
what looks to be the most maintained road. The good news was that the weather
was clearing, with no sign of the cold and wet weather we experienced the night
before. By the time we reached the col, it was sunny and about 45 degrees.
To get to Crabtree's summit, we followed an old jeep road, making for fast
travel, except for a steep portion where the mud caused a lot of falling and
losing ground. We got to the top, with a repeater and old shack. The summit
offered gorgeous views. I've heard that one can see all 6000+ foot peaks from
the summit but I don't know the geography well enough to verify this. We spent
about 5 minutes on the summit but knew we had a lot of work ahead of us and were
quickly on our way.
We retraced our steps to the col at the end of the gravel road. Our plan was to
stay on the ridgeline, going over a few 300-foot hills on our way to Sandymush.
A fenced pasture on the north side of the ridge wasn't posted but we wanted to
avoid going on private property so we bushwhacked through a thorny but not too
dense forest along a fence that marked the ridge. We went over the first minor
summit but the ridge was starting to be completely overtaken by the fence and,
seeing no postings, we went under the fence. We found an old jeep road and
followed that for quite a while, making for much faster travel again. We passed
a bench set atop a bald at the second summit along the ridge, the summit just
southwest of Buckeye Gap. As we descended into Buckeye Gap, we saw a gravel
road that crossed the gap with a house well southeast of a gap and a metal gate
on the northwest side. We quickly crossed the gravel road and went up yet
another hill. As we approached the hill crest, we encountered a metal gate that
was posted but in the direction we were coming from. This was the first
indication that we may have been trespassing but, since no name or number was on
the placard, I couldn't tell if this was owned by the contact that had granted
access or not.
We proceeded onward, as the direction we were traveling was not posted and we
soon reached the tri-county junction at 5000 feet. Near the top were nice views
and a fire ring. From here, we traveled down an ATV track through a forest and
crossed a fence that was posted again with no name or number. We made it to
Sandymush, I took a couple of pictures, then hustled back. Some nasty clouds
were coming in from the north, confirming the forecast for bad weather in the
late afternoon.
We retraced our path to the road terminus. The ups and downs of the ridge were
more difficult on the way back, probably due to me not hiking much in the past
few months.
We made it back to our car after the dull walk down the gravel road. With the
wrong turns, our round trip distance was 12.2 miles with about 4,600 feet of
elevation gain. A nice workout that took my dog and me 5 hours and 50 minutes.
I'm pretty sure we were trespassing at the end and, although I was glad I made
it to Sandymush and Crabtree in the same hike, I'd have to recommend the
Sandymush route Patrick Craft describes on his summitpost.org page.