Max Patch

What's a perfect day on a trail and highlight? When something is really different.

So like, I think one of the earliest highlights was Max Patch was like just such a fun day and it's just so beautiful and we didn't have a ton of miles to do.

So we were able to just relax and enjoy it.

Another highlight, Grease and Highlands.

Read more in the Asheville Watchdog.

And plans are moving forward for bathrooms and more parking at Max Patch in Madison County.

The project would pave and line the current lot, create 27 designated spaces, and provide room for nearly 40 vehicles off the road.

It's expected to cost at least $1 million, with a final estimate due by January.

So I finished Buzzard Roost.

Kids say, hey, we're close to Max Patch.

I would like to see that.

So, yeah, we drove up to Max Patch.

Got up there just before sunset.

Didn't plan it that way.

It's just the way it happened.

And let me tell you, Max Patch is a beautiful mountaintop.

And I've got a cigar box full of missing hiker posters that I never once thought to set down next to it.

i'll get to all of that i'm old and i tell things in order i'm going to tell you exactly where i live because i'm too old to care anymore who believes me lemon gap is a low notch in the ridge right on the line between north carolina and tennessee where the appalachian trail crosses max patch road it's forest service gravel up there and it washes out every spring There's a little pullout, a trail sign on a post, and not much else.

About five miles south of the Gap is Max Patch, the big grassy bald you've probably seen pictures of on the internet.

A couple of days' walk north is Hot Springs, where the trail runs right down the main street.

My house sits a quarter mile down the mountain from the Gap, on the Tennessee side, in Cockee County.

She passed in 2015, and since then I've written them out by hand.

Five rules.

I started handing them out in 1984, the year they moved the trail up over the top of Max Patch.

[laughs] And I was like, "Sure, it'll be fine.

Everything will be fine." And we went to Max Patch Bald, and that is the first mountain I ever summited, and also got lost on the way down, which is a feat 'cause it's a loop trail, but that's fine.

I'm good at getting lost on loop trails, which is why I carry an InReach.

[laughs] We'll talk about that in a minute, 'cause those are handy dandy things.

She is crying on the top of a mountain."

[laughs]

But I just remember we had a perfectly clear day, and if you've ever been at the top of Max Patch Bald on a clear day, it is stunning.

It's one of the most beautiful views.

It, it was fun, yeah.

And, and that, so that road is, um, part of it's called Harmon Den and part of it's called Max Patch.

Both of those are really, really well-maintained dirt roads.

Mm-hmm.