Celia and Tom and trip leader Betsy had a fine 6-mile out-and-back hike on a relatively new piece of the Cumberland Trail on Signal Mountain. The “Hall Road Trailhead” is actually at the end of Old Anderson Road, which branches off Hall Road about 0.7 mile from US 127. It is also known as the Lone Oak Trailhead. The parking area has room for about 4-6 vehicles. The trail is in fine shape. It ambles along the top of the plateau for a while, then gradually descends to North Chickamauga Creek. At the creek, the trail crosses a new bridge and turns downstream. The pleasant trail along the creek is close to flat for quite a distance, then diverts up and around some steep terrain a few times. We three hikers were lucky that the weather was fairly mild, considering that only three days before, the temperature in Chattanooga hit 100 degrees. On our hike, the temperature increased only to the mid-eighties, so that even the climb up and out of the gorge on the way back was not unpleasant. Betsy had her clippers with her, so now there are fewer barbed greenbrier along the trail. The latter has a very nasty tendency to reach out and scratch passing hikers, but on the other hand, it provides sustenance to many animals, especially deer (which seem to have steel-lined mouths).
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