A wide variety of early spring woodland flowers and flowering shrubs will be viewed. The trail passes over "bare point," loaded with mountain laurel, Catawba rhododendron, and hillside blueberry along rock outcrops. The trail then descends past shear cliff faces through beach and hemlock to Big Possum creek where we cross one of the three fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) trail bridges of the three gorges segment of the CT. Here we can explore, have our snacks and hydrate before our final push to the bluffs that sustain thousands of the yellow trout lily, shooting star and Carey’s saxifrage. There should be ample blooms and opportunity for wildflower photography. The trail has moderately strenuous sections only during two short duration ascents of about 400-500 feet each which alternate with the same descents at the creek gorge. Other botanical interests include Northern Maidenhair fern, Indian cucumber root, Jack in the pulpit, many violets and sedges, several other ferns, alumroot, hepatica, anemone, wild ginger, Solomon's plume and seal, woodland stonecrop, trailing arbutus, partridgeberry, beach drops, red trillium, painted and red buckeye, ashy and oak leaf hydrangea, and maple leaf viburnum. There remain some old growth and mature specimens of hemlock, basswood, beach, magnolias and sugar maples. |
