The Traces trail is described as a short, 1.7 mile loop that surrounds part of the Matthews Arm Campground, with an elevation change that is hardly worth mentioning. The trail clearly passes near sociological and cultural areas of interest – for much of the way, you can see the line of a stone wall here, and cairns of rocks cleared for pastures and gardens there. The Heatwole Guide mentions an interpretive experience with guidebooks available at the trailhead, but I didn’t find the guides or any markers pointing to these features on the day I visited last May.
When my Moto RAZR broke last week, I lost the photos that I was going to share for this hike and for the next one I will review, Byrds Nest Summit and Byrds Nest Shelter Number 4. These are numbers 25 and 26 in the Best Easy Day Hikes book. As usual, I have an Amazon link at the end of the post for reference.
On rereading Heatwole to prepare for this post, there is a mention of an old home site that I vaguely remember seeing off in the woods, but the area is too overgrown to venture far from the well-worn path. This is probably a handy little recreational trail for campers, but in the absence of signs pointing to the items of interest, as there are on the Stonyman trail, I don’t find much to recommend it. In fact, on the Sunday morning of my visit, I was more taken aback by the blooming Turk’s Cap Columbine, and I enjoyed a short adventure to check out the amphitheatre…I actually found myself thinking about the experience of a ranger program here in days gone by, and how entertaining that would have been for all the families out for a summer camping trip.
After the hike I stopped for a bottle of water at the camp store where there was a bunch of NoBo AT thru-hikers stopped there taking a break. I saw more than one well-earned six pack being shared amongst them, and the snatches of conversation I overheard reviewed encounters with their colleagues, who weren’t with this group at the time, but had shared a few miles earlier during the thru-hike.
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