Ramsay Prong & Lester Prong, GSMNP, TN   Jess Riddle   Jul 03, 2006 11:24 PDT  Ents, Over the weekend, my dad and I hiked up both Ramsay Prong and Lester Prong on the Tennessee side of the Smokies. The two streams in the Greenbrier district flow down Mount Guyot (6621') and Mount Kephart (6217'), respectively. The high elevation streams represent opposite ends of the topographic spectrum; Ramsay Prong requires 1.75 miles to drop from 5800' to 5000' elevation; contrastingly, the slope at the top of Lester Prong loses 1300' of elevation over a horizontal distance of only 1300'. A popular hiking trail follows the Middle Prong Little Pigeon River and Ramsay Prong for four miles, all but the first quarter mile through old-growth forest. Rapid drainage allows oaks to dominate and thrive on the gentle slopes the lower part of the trail traverses, but hemlocks and cove hardwoods line the moister section along Ramsay Prong. The trail terminates at Ramsay Cascades where the stream crashes over a massive rock wall. Immediately above the cascades on Ramsay Prong, red spruce is a major canopy component although hemlock is still common up to approximately 4700'. Among hardwoods, yellow birch is by far the most abundant, but yellow buckeye and pin cherry also reach the canopy. Rosebay rhododendron covers the slopes except for a few boulderfields where witch hobble and mountain maple fill the understory. Moss and bluebead lily covered the boulders. Between the main cascades and 5000' elevation, the stream tumbles down five more cascades over twenty feet high, but above that point, the stream's gradient drops dramatically. Several flats half an acre to an acre in size, some with sedge filled boggy areas, occur scattered along the stream. Red spruce still dominates the overstory, but forms a much more open canopy than just a short distance down stream. Consequently, most of the stream flows in full sun. Yellow birch still frequently reaches the overstory, especially on the north facing slopes. That slope has a well-developed understory of witch hobble and mountain maple; two of the later reached 2.4' cbh. A thick tangle of rhododendron, rosebay with scattered catawba, covers most of the south aspect slope. However, an extremely dense understory of 30 to 40' tall red spruce and fraser fir excludes all other vascular plants from some sections of the slope. Areas without a dense evergreen understory typically have continuous herb cover dominated by a wood fern (?), mountain wood sorrel, shinning club moss, and a few other species. Lester Prong hosts ostensibly similar forests, but the watershed has a much different character. Steep slopes flank the stream for its entire length, yet the lower half of the stream maintains a low gradient and has occasional flats along the sides. Two and a half to three foot diameter hemlock and spruce logs lying across the stream produce an abundance of debris dams along that lower section of stream. Flat gravel bars of dark, angular Anakeesta slate pile up behind the dams. The slate underlies much of the higher elevations in the Smokies, and produces a rugged topography of steep slopes and knife-edge ridges. Intense thunderstorms have left landslide scars on many of the steep slopes, and the weathering of the slate's pyrite leaves the remaining thin soils highly acidic. Hemlocks dominate the slopes along lower Lester Prong while yellow buckeye and yellow birch form the canopy over the flats. Moving upstream, yellow birch becomes the only large hardwood, and the red spruce stand like sentinels on the narrow rock ridges and straight and vertically out of the steep slopes. Some of the lower flats have sparse understories of only scattered mountain maple and witch hobble, but tangles of rosebay rhododendron completely cover the slopes under the hemlock and spruce. Logs and wet rock faces also support minnie bush and thick layers of moss. The density of the rhododendron precludes an herb layer on most of the slopes, but thickets of blackberry and some species of Eupatorium grow in sunny, gravely areas near the stream. The effects of abundant moister are evident at both locations in where trees will root; nurse longs, epiphytic plants, and adventitious roots are common in the moist forests. Mountain maples hanging over the streams have sprouted fine roots from their twigs, and multiple yellow birches have epicormic branches and roots originating from a common point of their trunks. One nurse long on Ramsay Prong supports over a hundred red spruce seedlings while another nurse long on Porters Creek, which Lester Prong flows into, supports nine species of tree seedlings (beech, white ash, red maple, sugar maple, hemlock, serviceberry, fraser magnolia, silverbell, and yellow birch). A yellow birch snag on Lester Prong has a row of rhododendron growing out of a crack while a living yellow birch on Ramsay Prong has two red spruce over 20' tall growing out of its trunk. Jess Riddle RE: Ramsay Prong & Lester Prong, GSMNP, TN   Joshua Kelly   Jul 04, 2006 15:25 PDT  Jess, I read a piece about Ramsay Prong above the cascades once that described open understory spruce. It sounds like you saw similar stuff on your trip. Measure any whoppers? Maybe we can visit Buck Fork later in the summer. I spent the weekend in the Deep Creek area. There are some awesome hemlocks there, and Noland Divide and Fork Ridge have great spruce - but you probably know that. I was suprised to find a 19+ gbh poplar (measured with arm lengths) near where the Fork Ridge Trail meets Deep Creek. It seems like upper Deep Creek and tributaries (Pole Road Creek surprised me in a good way) were only lightly logged for cherry and the biggest poplar. Thanks for the description, Josh   Home