Rattlesnake Lodge

Rattlesnake Lodge
Blue Ridge Parkway, Buncombe County, NC
Saturday, June 22, 2019 10:15am
Regional Director: Rita Zollinger
Co-hosts: Mary Garland Douglass, Tom Jones

For this walk, we will be using part of the Mountains to the Sea Trail, which closely follows the Blue Ridge Parkway. Our destination is the site of the early 20th century private lodge of Asheville physician Dr. Chase Ambler. The house burned down in 1926, but stone foundations remain from the lodge itself and many of its outbuildings. The lodge was situated in a beautiful little cove, now filled with second-growth forest and a great diversity of wildflowers.

Dr. Ambler was an ardent conservationist who played a key role in the movement that led to the creation of Pisgah National Forest and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The 6100’ Mt. Ambler near Newfound Gap is named in his honor. He was also the founder of the Appalachian Mountain Club, forerunner of today’s Carolina Mountain Club. This organization maintains 142 miles of the Mountains to the Sea Trail including the section that passes through the site of Dr. Ambler’s Lodge.

The lodge was completed in 1904 as a summer retreat for Dr. Ambler’s family. Visitors parked their carriages at Bull Gap and then walked, rode horses, or took a specially-built narrow-axle carriage up the 1.4 mile path to Rattlesnake Lodge. The lodge seems to have been an interesting mixture of the primitive and the luxurious. Electricity was provided by a water-powered generator, and amenities included a rock-walled swimming pool and tennis courts as well as gardens, a reservoir and spring house, barns for livestock, and various other outbuildings. Ruins of many of these can still be seen.

As you can guess from the name, Rattlesnake Lodge was famous for having an abundance of timber rattlers. Family members recall that 41 rattlers were killed on the property during its first three years, and the snake skins were used to paper the living room ceiling. I can’t make promises as to rattlers on Saturday, but the first time Tom and I walked to the lodge, we had to navigate around a large timber rattler sunning itself on a rock beside the trail!

Meeting Place: The Folk Art Center, 382 Blue Ridge Parkway, Asheville, NC. Go past the trailer parking area on the left, and park in the lower parking lot. The Folk Art Center opens at 9:00 and is well worth a visit.

Time: Please try to arrive by 10:15. We’ll have a short introduction, and then plan to leave the parking lot at 10:30. Carpooling is mandatory due to the limited number of parking spaces at the trailheads. When we gather at the Folk Art Center we will hand out maps showing the location of the trailheads.

Logistics: There are three options to reach Rattlesnake Lodge, and we expect to use all three.

Option 1: Tanbark Tunnel, 1.0 mile roundtrip. This is the shortest route, a steep half-mile climb from the entrance to the Tanbark Tunnel on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The hike up is strenuous, but when you reach the lodge you can explore at your leisure. This trail is marked by blue blazes. There should be several parking places available along the parkway.

Option 2: Bull Gap Trailhead, 2.8 miles roundtrip. The most scenic approach to the lodge is by way of the old wagon road (now part of the Mountains to the Sea trail) at Bull Gap on Ox Creek Road. This trail climbs to the lodge site by gentle switchbacks at a gradual grade and reaches the lodge site after 1.4 miles. Unfortunately, parking is extremely limited, and we can reasonably expect no parking spaces to be available on a nice summer Saturday morning. Some of us will drop folks off at this trailhead for those who wish to take this route. Drivers who drop folks off can then use Option 1 or Option 3 to reach the lodge.

Option 3: MTS Trailhead on Ox Creek Road, 4.4 miles roundtrip. For stronger hikers, an excellent option is to extend the hike by parking where the Mountains to the Sea trail crosses Ox Creek Road, near its intersection with the Blue Ridge Parkway. This option takes you through a wild-flower rich 0.7 mile section of the MTS trail before reaching Bull Gap, the Option 2 trailhead. There should be a limited number of parking spaces near the starting point.

Restaurant: Pomodoro’s Greek and Italian Café, 1070 Tunnel Road, Asheville, NC 28805