Scott's Gulf Wilderness State Park

The Murfreesboro and Plateau chapters hiked Amber's Glen, a new trail at Scott's Gulf Wilderness State Park. Sheila Miller of the Plateau chapter led the hike with 7 others. After leaving cars at the Virgin Falls trailhead, we drove to Welch's Point to begin the hike. The group photo was taken at Welch's Point and Carol Hill of Spencer joined our group but didn't make it in time for the photo. We hiked the Amber's Glen Trail down to the Caney Fork River. Morgan Brown, an experienced caver knew exactly where the Amber's Den cave was located near the river. We had lunch at Big Laurel Falls and then hiked to the Virgin Falls trailhead on the steep Hemlock Springs Trail. The hike was longer than the map indicated, and the total hike was about 7 miles. Hikers were Jay Brain, Jean Breuer, Morgan Brown, Carol Hill, Mandy Mew,  Sheila Miller, Bob Obohoski, and Sara Pollard.

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Caney Fork and Scott's Gulf - Jenny

Caney Fork and Scott's Gulf are beautiful and challenging...we did the Yellow Bluff Loop which incorporates three or four trails...some of which we had to play hide and seek to find for some time....10 plus miles...lots of wildflowers, newts, gigantic slugs, millipedes and the best part of all....TRAILBLAZING! Gonna do this one again for an overnight backpacking deal in fall....
Hikers included Desmond Bradley, Nabil Wakkid, Roy Duncan, Faith Joy Bennett and Bruce Lee the trail hound....

We started at Yellow Bluff Trailhead....(tried to follow Johnny Molloy's Yellow Bluff Loop in his book Cumberland Plateau Hikes).....there are definitely some sign/marker issues at several spots.....they didn't jive with what Molloy encountered ....Yellow Bluff up to Polly Branch...Polly Branch up and over and down to Caney Fork South....all the way down to the Connector(which was like finding the Golden Egg) up the hill past the Joe Holloway Rockhouse(thoroughly grown up here) and up on top to Scott's Gulf Road and home.....the trails over Gunstockbranch Falls was impassible and grown up on the south side....the round metal signs were squirrel chewed at spots...the dayglo orange tape sometimes helped,,,,look forward to doing it again and would love to do an overnight backpacking... it took us 8 hours and 10 plus miles...Molloy's said 8.1 miles and 4 plus hours...so...

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