Cave Mountain

Cave Mountain Trail

Take a little hike that offers nice big payoffs

Story and photos by David Moore

You know what walking is – put one foot in front of the other, move from point A to point B. You’ve done it since you were, what, 12 months old? Walking generally implies covering short distances without undue effort.

Cave Mountain Trail is more than a walk.

But it’s not really a hike, either, not in any serious or epic sense of the word. The loop trail clocks in at about 1.5 miles with an elevation gain of maybe 200. Even if you bushwhack to the top of Cave Mountain, you’ll add a climb of only about 170 feet.

So, let’s call the trail a little hike.

I’ve hiked the trail numerous times over the years. It requires no elaborate backpacking gear, but you might want to grab a daypack and some water. Maybe a snack.

And I’d say you’re crazy if you don’t take a camera, because this little hike packs an interesting assortment of features – from a bit of Civil War history to limestone-jumbled forest, a long, sheer bluff wall, a fascinating swamp, wetlands, sinkholes and – as you’d expect – a cave. Actually several.

Cave Mountain Trail is located off Union Grove Road on Snow Point Road, which goes down to Guntersville Dam. It’s on your left at the foot of Brindley Mountain. Just after you pass the gate into Tennessee Valley Authority property, the parking area is on your left.

Welcome to Cave Mountain Small Wild Area: 34 acres TVA set aside in 1976 as one of 28 areas systemwide that provide habitat protection for wildlife.

You can bring your pooch, but it needs A sea of fall leaves settle over the floor of the woods and scattering of rocks.

The swamp displays seasonal beauties that are all intriguing. The shot at upper right was made the first week of November 2021. Though usually on the lookout, the author has never seen a snake at Cave Mountain. For a moment, though, the dead tree above provided a jolt, looking too much like a giant python well out of its natural habitat. The trail along the base of the rock facing offers its own brand of intrigue, right, which is enhanced by the gaping mouth of a cave mined for saltpeter during the Civil War.

to be on a tight leash. I’ve never taken my dog, but I’ve read reviews of people who did, only to discover Rover balks at the two flights of steel mesh stairs on the trail near the powerline right of way.

TVA is a partner of Leave No Trace. You can bring stuff that makes litter, but do everyone a favor and carry it out with you. Trash your backseat instead of our neat chunk of land. Not to get political, but littering is one of the best arguments I know for capital punishment.

With preliminaries out of the way, in the right rear corner of the parking area you’ll see the path heading into the woods and soon reach a fork where this southeastto-northwest oriented oval loop trail ties together. As Yogi Berra famously advised, if you come to a fork in the road (or trail), take it. The choice is yours. I generally go right and hike the loop counterclockwise because you see the changes in the trail’s microcosms sooner. Several sinkholes punctuate the craggy, karst landscape as the path picks a lazy arc around the wooded underbrush of the southeast base of Cave Mountain. Rather abruptly, the trail steps down about 15 feet between the rocks, swings hard left and below you opens an attractive hardwood forest with a sloping floor.

The path now takes you through this different world, running northwest along the base of a rock wall facing that grows taller as you hike.

As you make that hard left turn down through the rocks, look up to your left and you might detect the remnants of an old trail that climbs the mountain then runs along the top of the ridge wall, parallel to the main trail you are on. I’ve not climbed that route in years, but, as I mentioned earlier, it’s basically bushwhacking and views are limited, even in the winter.

Far more interesting is this lower main trail along the rock wall. And it soon grows more interesting as the hardwood forest gives way to another microcosm – a black gum swamp.

At first, the swamp is maybe a couple hundred feet from the trail, but as the wall to your left grows higher and higher, the swamp edges closer and closer down the hillside to your right. I’m not sure what my favorite season is for seeing the swamp.

The dark entrance of the cave – mysterious in the way that only caves are

Each seasonal palette tints Cave Mountain Trail in its own unique light. The pictures on this page were shot March 13, 2022, on the transient cusp between winter and spring, when a hiker is as likely to see early trillium popping from the brown carpeted floor of the forest as icicles growing from the walls of the rock bluff. The swamp magnifies the blue of the crisp sky and starkly elongates the black gums that shoot up from its shallow depths.

Adjacent to the swamp is a wetlands pond, above. You get a good view of it from the steel stairs that connect you to the loop trail. Transmission lines from the dam run up a right of way by the steps, cut across Long Branch Holler and climb Brindley Mountain. The lines, along with the low sound of water crashing over the spillways, are a reminder that Guntersville Dam is just under a mile away as a bald eagle would fly.

– opens in the rock wall near the far end of this stretch of trail. Sadly, because of people screwed up enough to pack cans of spray paint for a hike, TVA has erected a sign asking people to not enter the cave.

I’ve not discovered much history on the cave, but during the Civil War the Confederates mined it for saltpeter to make gun powder. Nor have I ever ventured more than 100 feet or so inside, but what I said about dealing with those who litter applies to vandals who think nothing intelligent about painting their initials on the walls of a cave. But despite their callousness, the cave is cool.

Hiking this whole section of the trail, you can hear, as white-noise reminder in the background, the distancemuffled roar of the Tennessee River spilling through the gates of Guntersville Dam.

Soon past the cave, the swamp gives way to a long, open pond. And, where the rock wall reaches the right-of-way for power transmission lines from the dam, a steel staircase arises. While not natural, it is a portal to yet another microcosm.

Just past the top of the stairs, as you enter these Appalachian woods, somewhere to your left the remnants of the old trail to the top of Cave Mountain exists. Explore all you want.

Limestone rocks and boulders pepper the woods as you walk with the hillside to your left. When the woods start opening out to your right, look for a rock jumble around the sinkhole that has another cave in the bottom of it. I doubt it, but maybe it eventually makes a narrow way under the mountain to the Civil War cave and the microcosm on the other side. Cave Mountain is just a little hike, but after all these years I’m pretty sure I have yet to learn all of its surprises.