Rainbow Lake

Today there were only two hikers.  The number of hikers was definitely reduced due to the anticipated rainy weather forecast.  As in the words of our famous hike leader, "The others must have wimped out."  Other than a light misting in the Bi-Lo parking lot, the remainder of the morning on the trail was rainless.

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."

We left from the Rainbow Lake trailhead and deviated from the planned route on the chapter’s hiking calendar.  Instead of staging a vehicle at Rainbow Lake and one at Signal Mtn. Highschool, since there were only the two of us, we decided to just take one vehicle and hike a modified Rainbow Lake Loop utilizing the blue blazes where we crossed a swinging bridge on the North end of the loop.  From there we hiked South where we picked up a portion of the Cumberland trail heading to Edwards Point and then diverted to an atv or spur trail leading away from the ridgeline through the forest on top of the plateau and back around to Edwards Point.  There we had a short lunch and picked up the Cumberland trail again along the ridge where the trail was flowing at times with quite a bit of water.  On the ridge trail there were multiple waterfalls cascading down the ridge to Middle Creek.  We met four young ladies along that portion of the trail which were on their way to Edwards Point but I cautioned them against the upcoming water crossing that faced them in about a quarter mile or less.  They were wearing low cut trail shoes which were no match for the upcoming heavy and fairly deep stream of water.  On all of the trails we experienced multiple water crossings much wider as well as deeper today than normal due to the heavy downpours from the night before.  After descending down the trail to cross Middle Creek for a second time on the longer swinging bridge near the Rainbow Lake Dam we left the CT and picked up the Rainbow Lake Loop where we made it back to the trailhead.  Later we saw the young ladies back at the trailhead and they had made a wise decision not to attempt the water crossing but to return and tackle it another day.  Our hike ended up totaling approx. 6.5 miles and I certainly appreciated George (our hike coordinator) having the tenacity not to call off the hike due to projected poor weather conditions. I would rate the hike as difficult.  If you would like to see a few pictures of the hike, click on the Rainbow Lake tab above.  Thank you Larry for the hike description.