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mountain days This page intentionally left blank Mountain Days A Journal of Camping Experiences in the Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, 1914-1938 Paul M. Fink foreword by ken wise hunter library at western carolina university Original manuscript copyright © 1960, Paul M. Fink, Jonesboro, TN. This edition copyright © 2019 Hunter Library at Western Carolina University. All rights reserved. A different version of this work was published in 1975 asBackpacking Was the Only Way: A Chronicle of Camping Experiences in the Southern Appalachian Mountains by East Tennessee State University Press, Johnson City, TN. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons cc by-nc-nd license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Suggested citation: Fink, Paul M. Mountain Days: A Journal of Camping Experiences in the Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, 1914-1938. Cullowee, NC: Hunter Library at Western Carolina University, 2019. doi: https://doi.org/10.5149/9781469651859_Fink isbn 978-1-4696-5184-2 (alk. paper) isbn 978-1-4696-5185-9 (ebook) Cover image: Paul Fink in the Black Mountains, 1920. Table of ConTenTs vii foreword xix preface 1 august, 1914 Big Bald Mountain 11 august 19-22, 1915 Unaka and Roan Mountains 19 may 27-30, 1916 Big Bald Mountain 27 september 22-26, 1916 Le Conte 37 july 14, 1918 Roan Mountain 41 september 19-23, 1918 Clark Creek, Rich Mountain and Roan Mountain 49 june 9-19, 1919 Eastern End of the Great Smokies 73 september 5-7, 1919 Big Falls of Clark Creek 79 june 15-24, 1920 Black Mountains 101 june 2-12, 1921 Le Conte and Vicinity 125 june 10-12, 1922 Roan Mountain 131 a ugust 10-16, 1922 Western End of the Smokies 151 november 4, 1922 Great Smoky Mountains 159 june 14-18, 1923 Rich Mountain, Big Butte and Westward 173 july 13-21, 1924 Balsam Mountains and the Great Smokies 199 a ugust 6-12, 1925 Great Smokies 215 july 20-26, 1927 Central Portion of the Great Smokies 225 a ugust 9-14, 1929 Eastern Portion of the Great Smokies 237 a ugust 11-16, 1930 Eastern Part of the Great Smokies 251 september 17-20, 1938 Roan Mountain 259 watch that axe 263 outfitting 265 clothing 267 shelter 269 sleeping comfort 271 food 275 miscellaneous foreword ne of the foremost documents pertaining to early twentieth century exploration in the Great Smoky Mountains and the Unaka Range Oalong the border of North Carolina and Tennessee is a journal kept by Paul Fink, an inveterate adventurer from Jonesborough, Tennessee with a genuine appreciation for wilderness terrain. In 1960, after nearly a lifetime of exploring the mountains, Fink organized his journal notes into a manuscript, Mountain Days: A Journal of Camping Experiences in the Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, 1914-1938. The manuscript, arguably the most substantive early written account of exploration into the remote recesses of the Smokies backcountry, particularly its eastern end, remained unpublished until 1975 when the Research Advisory Council at East Tennessee State University in collaboration with Fink issued it in a limited edition under the title Backpack- ing Was the Only Way: A Chronicle of Camping Experiences in the Southern Ap- palachian Mountains. In the interim, Fink’s book has become a scarce item. While the image of Paul Fink that emerges from the pages of his manu- script is that of a fearlessly adventurous young man well-liked by his hiking companions with whom he enjoyed light-hearted comradery, its author was nonetheless a serious observer whose knowledge of the interior of the Smok- ies was unmatched by all but a very few contemporaries. As early as 1919, even the noted chronicler of Smoky Mountain life, Horace Kephart, had come to recognize the twenty-seven-year-old Fink as a superior authority on the mountain’s topography as well as a fellow sojourner in the quest to establish a national park in the Smokies. The two began exchanging letters on some of the more arcane landmarks in the Smokies and at one juncture, realizing Fink’s enthusiasm for a park in the Smokies, Kephart off-handedly suggested that he start “a propaganda to have the Government buy up the best forests here before they are destroyed.”1 The remark would prove prophetic. Within a few years, Fink would find himself not only immersed in the mechanisms of the park movement, but also in the efforts to determine the course of the newly proposed Appalachian Trail (AT). Both endeavors would come to rely heavily on his intimate knowledge of the topography of both the Unakas and the Great Smokies. Fink’s involvement in both movements had their origins in his relationship with Harlan Kelsey, president of the Boston-based Appalachian Mountain viii | moun Tain days Club, an organization committed to promoting wilderness conservation. In 1920, Kelsey invited Fink to join the club after having learned that the young backpacker from Tennessee was the foremost authority on the mountains along the North Carolina-Tennessee border. Though the two had yet to make a personal acquaintance, Kelsey was confident in seeking the young Fink’s opinion on the feasibility of an ambitious new proposal. On January 16, 1922, Kelsey forwarded to Fink a copy of “An Appalachian Trail: A Project of Re- gional Planning,” an article published by Benton MacKaye in the October 1921 issue of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects.2 Kelsey was intrigued by MacKaye’s proposal for a recreational trail spanning the length of the Appa- lachian Mountains and began engaging Fink in regular correspondence con- cerning possible routes for such a trail. Later, in a letter to MacKaye, Kelsey, referring to Fink, commented that “there is no better person in the south to give advice regarding the Unaka or Smoky Mountain route.”3 At the same time Kelsey was working to gain traction for MacKaye’s AT proposal, he had also become involved in the most recent movement propos- ing the establishment of a national park in the Southern Appalachians. Kelsey had grown up listening to proposals for a national park practically all of his life, but none had come to fruition. In a letter to Fink on December 2, 1924, Kelsey recalled his childhood in western North Carolina forty years earlier and lis- tening to his father tell stories of those who purported to know the origin of the idea for a national park in the Great Smoky Mountains. “It is one of those things” Kelsey wrote Fink, “which anyone who claims to be the originator of, is either a fake or a fool.”4 Kelsey’s comment to Fink was likely prompted by a flood of unsolicited letters recommending various locations for the national park which Kelsey had been receiving since having been appointed earlier that year by Hubert Work, Secretary of the Interior, to the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee, an ad hoc group charged to “undertake a thorough study of the Southern Appalachian Mountains for the purpose of selecting the most worthy site in that range as a national park.”5 Prior to the authorization of the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee and his own appointment to it, Kelsey intimated in a letter to Harrington Moore, director of the Council on National Parks, Forests, and Wild Life, that Fink would be a good candidate for the proposed committee. “Paul Fink as you have rightly stated has a very clear idea of what is really needed and he would be an excellent member of such Board of Survey. All signs point to the Smoky Mountain Range, yet certainly the matter cannot be Foreword | ix decided without really carefully worked out reports.”6 A year earlier, as interest in a park began gaining momentum, Kelsey had requested Fink’s opinions concerning the necessary criteria for a national park as well as his thoughts on whether the Smokies were a suitable candidate.7 Fink not only confirmed Kelsey’s impressions of the Smokies, but, in a response to Work, assured him that in accordance with the National Park Service’s established criteria for a national park, the Smokies’ “qualifications, both of geological formations, forest coverage and animal life, will fill the needed requirements.”8 Notwithstanding Kelsey’s recommendation, Fink was not considered for membership on the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee. Fink’s lack of prominence and visibility within the greater political realm was likely perceived to offer little reinforcement in lending heft to the committee’s mis- sion. In spite of his superior knowledge of the Southern Appalachian Moun- tains and his tireless efforts in the park movement, Fink’s contributions to the success of establishing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park would always remain in the shadow of others. Fink’s bona fides as an authority on the Southern Appalachians resided in his boots-on-the-ground experience in the mountains. In 1914, at the age of twenty-two, Fink made his first backpacking trip into the Unaka Mountains. Two years later, in the company of a childhood companion from Jonesbor- ough, Walter Diehl, he completed his first extended excursion into the remote backcountry of the Great Smoky Mountains, an exercise that would become a life-long avocation. As Fink and Diehl quickly learned, “those who know the eastern end [of the Smokies] intimately are few and far between. Not many of the natives are familiar with that welter of ridges and ravines, where getting lost is far easier than staying on the right route.”9 Like Kephart, Fink had, from the time of his earliest acquaintance with the mountains, engaged in the practice of recording in a journal the details of his travel experiences in the Smoky backcountry.