A weekend is a horrible thing to waste! Having a free one pop up unexpectedly, I decided to make a run down to Three Forks of Raven Fork in one of the wildest drainages in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For those of us who enjoy busting through the thick stuff in the Great Smokies backcountry, the Three Forks of Raven Fork is as good as it gets. I first went down to Three Forks several decades ago on a sweltering 4th of July. We used the Breakneck Ridge manway, which at that time was one of only two routes that I knew of that led to Three Forks. Three Forks is named for the 3 streams that come together at a point known as Big Pool - Left Fork, Middle Fork, and Right Fork. Left Fork and Right Fork are fair-sized streams that enable passage up their respective watersheds by hikers that don't mind getting their feet wet - and that don't mind climbing over log jams, wading deep pools of always frigid water, and tight-rope walking slick boulder fields. They all come together at Big Pool to form the main stream of Raven Fork. It's a spectacularly beautiful place, swathed in deep forest with an incredibly dense understory of rhododendron lining the edges of all 3 of the streams that feed into Big Pool at Three Forks, as well as along the main stream of Raven Fork.

Something that I'll never forget about my first trip down into Three Forks decades ago was an encounter with a peacock just before we dropped off of Breakneck Ridge. We didn't believe our eyes at first, but then the peacock hopped up on a log in front of us for a moment or two, allowing a closer look and giving my buddy a chance to fire off a couple of photos of the exotic ridgerunner. How the birds manage to survive in the wilds of the Great Smokies, I'll never know, but they are there. Another friend spotted one two years ago in full colorful plumage further west near Charlies Bunion. I suppose that they wander into the mountains from down in the Cherokee region. I can't imagine that they would survive the bitter winter weather in the backcountry of the Smokies, but it's amazing that they survive at all. My friends Gretchen and Paul had one visit their camp in the high country of the Slickrock Creek region of the Nantahalas during a heavy rainstorm. It took shelter beneath a Hennessey Hammock and hung around until the weather moderated, with little fear of the amazed campers that were huddled beneath a tarp by the fire.

Back to the present... It snowed the night before I headed in, leaving a carpet of white on the steep climb up to Hyatt Ridge from the trailhead at Round Bottom on the Straight Fork road. During the weekend, I met only one other person, a backpacker heading down from Campsite 44 at McGee Springs. He mentioned the very high winds that he had encountered the night before, saying that at times it was really scary and that he expected to have a tree fall on his tent at any moment. The wind was still screaming and on my climb up the ridge, I heard several large trees bite the dust.

Below, a surprise spring snowstorm dumped over a foot of snow on the high ridgeline near McGee Springs on a planned trip to Three Forks via Heartbreak Ridge. Discretion won out over valor on that cold snowy day and we retreated back to the warmer dryer climes of the Straight Fork Road. That's Peter Barr in the photo, wondering where all this stuff came from.

Below, the McGee Springs campsite. It's early spring and the snow on the ground is as common here at this time of the season as the spring flowers that were just beginning to peep up through the snow. I'm not certain, but I think that the springs are named for Ira McGee, who farmed fields down in Round Bottom and who also operated a grist mill over on nearby Ledge Creek. The fields in Round Bottom were known as McGee Fields. Today, McGee Springs is one of the official park backcountry campsites, and is located at the terminus of the Hyatt Ridge trail. At one time, the Hyatt Ridge trail followed Hyatt Ridge out past Roses Gap to climb up on Dashoga Ridge and hence to the Tricorner Knob region. Today, the former trail becomes a gauntlet of tangled rhododendron beyond Roses Gap that rarely sees human passage.

The McGee Springs site is beautiful, especially in early spring. It lacks flat tent sites though and once the horse groups start arriving with warm weather, it's often crowded and trashy. Still though, in my mind it's one of the prettiest sites in the park. This has always been one of my favorite regions to explore off-trail and the site makes a good basecamp for my explorations down into Straight Fork and out along the old trail across Hyatt Ridge.

Spring has sprung - ignore the snow!
Most people that head down into the Three Forks of Raven Fork do so by descending Breakneck Ridge on an old manway. I've went in that way before, but today I'm planning to head down from the McGee Springs campsite to Straight Fork and then wade down Straight Fork to Three Forks. I enjoy creek walking and in some parts of the Great Smoky Mountains, creeks offer the best passage through the tangled jungles of rhododendron and fallen trees.
Here at McGee Springs (some of the best water in the Great Smokies!) you'll find a high mountain bog that is loaded with wild flowers in early spring. In a couple of weeks, the area will be carpeted with another blanket of white, but it will be the snowy blossoms of white-fringed phacelia.

I believe that the wide-leaved green plants popping up through the snow in this photo are False Hellebore.

Bushwhacking down the McGee Springs Branch, I passed this interesting old tree near the tiny stream.

Looking down McGee Springs Branch towards Straight Fork on a snowy spring morning.

It gets steeper and slicker as you near Straight Fork.