Paris Mountain Hike

It’s summer in the South, which means I don’t get to go hiking because it’s so frickin’ humid and hot.  (But my husband and I are going to go on July 4th, so we’ll see how that goes!)  So instead, I’m going to look back at the hike at Paris Mountain State Park that Becky and I went on in late March.  Spring was just about to kick in so it was warm in the sun, but when the wind started blowing, it got pretty chilly.  I must have taken my second layer on and off about four times.

So what and where is Paris Mountain?  Paris Mountain State Park is right outside of Greenville, SC and was founded in 1935 or something like that.  I will just direct you to the Wikipedia entry if you’d like to know more about the history of how the park was founded because I really don’t get into that.  But I do get into the geology of it, so you should know that it is what’s called a monadnock.  (If this bores you, just skip over the next paragraph).  This particular monadnock is part of a chain going all the way up to North Carolina.  From Afoot in the South:  Walks in the Natural Areas of North Carolina by Phillip Manning:

Twenty million years ago, North Carolina and much of the eastern United States was covered by the Schooley peneplain.  As the peneplain formed, the eastern edge of the continental plate tilted downward and thrust the Appalachians high in the air, creating the eastern continental divide.  As the rivers coursed eastward out of the mountains, hard rock was eaten away more slowly than the softer rock, causing the Schooley peneplain to erode unevenly.  The hard erosional remnants – the tops of which were once part of the surface of the old Schooley peneplain – are called monadnocks, and they are found today all through the Appalachians and the Piedmont.

Done with the geology lesson!  Paris Mountain is considered our “hometown” state park, and it gives me a little taste of the mountains within 30 to 40 minutes if I don’t want to drive the hour to get to them.  I mentioned it in my last post about the Spring Big Boy Hike because you can see it from the top.  But here’s a flip shot of Paris Mountain looking toward Big Boy!

On to the hike!

I had hiked a few of the trails before, and I was very interested to see what the the trailside campsites by the reservoir looked like.  Since we had more time, we decided to take a little further of a hike than we normally do.  Here’s a snapshot of the Paris Mountain Trail Map with our route:

Here’s a link to the Trail Map from the official website.  I’d like to make a note to not really pay attention to the difficulty level.  Personally, I’d list them a notch down from what’s listed, so difficult on the trail map would equal moderately difficult in my opinion.  Becky might disagree though. 😉

Since spring hadn’t quite arrived yet, the leaves obviously weren’t out, but this gave us a better view of the surrounding area – which even though we’re not technically in the mountains – you can still get some pretty neat views of Greenville and the view looking toward Travelers Rest (yes, that’s the actual name of a town).  I didn’t take many pictures on this hike.  Paris Mountain isn’t known for its wildflowers – in fact, I don’t think I saw a single one other than the standard aster and daisy-like flowers.  It wasn’t the right time anyway, except for bloodroot, but they were nowhere to be found.

I picked up two HOT Krispy Kreme doughnuts on my way to the park – one for me and one for Becky.  If you’ve never had a HOT Krispy Kreme doughnut then you just haven’t lived.  It was a miracle that I had enough self-control not the eat the second one while I waited on Becky.

We started off at the parking lot at the intersection of the Sulphur Springs and the Brissy Ridge trail.  I recommend that if you’re hiking Brissy Ridge to start with the right side of the trail (the one marked hikers only) because it is STEEP – unless you’re a glutton for punishment and want to climb UP at the end of your hike.  So we started off going DOWN, which is still not easy on the knees.  And then back up to get to the Pipsissewa Trail, which took us over to North Lake/the Reservoir.

What a beautiful lake!

I wanted to check out the trailside tent sites because I thought they’d make for a good backpacking intro trip.   Thumbs up!  I took pictures of one of them.

We skirted the inside of the North Lake trail and made it over to Kanuga which took us to the Fire Tower trail.  We checked our watches and saw that we had plenty of time, so we decided to head up to the top.  Now I had it in my mind that it was the true TOP of Paris Mountain where all of the radio and TV towers are, but that is not the case.  I told Becky that I thought it was neat that we were going to go where the NOAA Weather Radio tower is for our area featuring the robot voice stating it’s transmitting at the top of Paris Mountain at a frequency of 162.55 megahertz.   Becky did not respond which I took to mean that she thought that was a very weird comment, and she would just be nice by ignoring it.

Well, turns out that the radio and TV towers are on a different part of the mountain.  The Fire Tower is actually the old one that burned down or something from the 1940’s.  The remnants are still there.  Also, when you get to the “top,” you’re pretty much in someone’s backyard because the park backs right up to a subdivision of luxury homes built on the other side of the mountain.  So yeah, that was kind of a letdown.

We ate lunch there sitting on the Fire Tower remains and staring at the trampoline in someone’s backyard.  But then it was time to head back!  We double backed on the Fire Tower Trail and cut over to the top half of the Sulphur Springs Trail.  I’ve hiked the whole Sulphur Springs trail, and I like that one too.  It’s got a really steep part, but we were on the pretty flat leg of it.  Here’s the final tally once we got back to the parking area!

This hike wasn’t one of the more spectacular ones, but I had fun, and it felt great to get outside.  And that’s what hiking is all about!