5.13.14 Tuesday’s Hike for the TTA’s Soddy Daisy Chapter was being held at the TVA Little Cedar Mountain Trail at Nickajack Reservoir. George Bonneau was our capable hike leader and we met in Red Bank at 8:00 a.m. and carpooled down I-24 just over the bridge on the Tennessee River. If I remember correctly we had hiked this trail early last summer. The best part about the hike this year is that Tony Hook and others were hired by TVA to rework the trail and make it much more interesting to hike on. Tony’s trail building expertise was evident as soon as we hit the new section of trail, it seemed to wind through the forest better than before and had much better flow thru the elevation changes. Everyone was impressed with the improvements that were made to the trail since last year. Now it seems to have better proximity to the water along with better water visibility along the trail than there was before. To my knowledge the trail hasn’t been wheeled yet to determine the exact distances for our chosen route but the way we looped between the Outer Loop trail and the Pond trail we believe we hiked approx. 5.5 miles based on someone’s GPS readings. After a little under three hours we completed our hike and headed back to the other vehicles parked in Red Bank. I didn’t pick up one tick while on the trail and the weather was hot, humid and dry but who’s complaining, we all enjoyed ourselves and I would recommend this hike to anyone looking for an easy to moderate hike in the five mile range and if you carried a pole and some bait you may want to stop along the trail and throw in a line at the river and set a spell. The map at the Kiosk in the parking lot is out dated based on the latest trail routings and I would recommend going to the TVA Trail Map page for this trail and print off a new map before trying out this hike. The new map, dated 4/15/2014, can be found at http://www.tva.gov/river/recreation/dispersed/trail_maps/LCM_8.5x11.pdf - Happy Hiking! I would rate the trail as moderate. For a couple of pictures I would click here or on the Cedar Mountain tab above.
Larry