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The Climb Up Little Green
Written By: Emily Crowell | Issue: 2018/08 - August
“Hello?” called the voice of worry from the other side of a cluster of evergreen and blueberry bushes.
My boyfriend and I were sitting and snacking in a patch of shade atop Little Green Mountain in Panthertown Valley, and he had just burped with the satisfied enthusiasm, apparently, of a black bear gorging himself on blueberries.
“Hello!” I called in response. “We’re not a bear!”
The small group that passed us were some of the surprisingly few people we encountered on that sunny Sunday afternoon. I felt a creaky apprehension as we pulled into the parking lot in time to watch a large group of excited youngsters tumble yelling out of a van—didn’t they know I was here for peace and freedom from human yawping? Luckily, we didn’t have to trek far down the trailhead before the voices were replaced by birdsong and wind-in-the-trees. This sort of thing happens almost every time I visit Panthertown—lots of cars or people in the parking lot and few human encounters on the actual trail (except for at Schoolhouse Falls, of course). Where do they all go? Not that I’m complaining.
There’s no shortage of trails to get lost on in Panthertown but I had a mission on this day: lunch on top of Little Green Mountain. Life had been doing that thing where everything was happening at once and all of a sudden it was at least a month since we’d been hiking. I love to explore new places, but we needed a sure thing, and Little Green Mountain is my go-to sure thing.
Maybe it’s because of the breeze. The climb up Little Green isn’t easy from any direction, and it’s made longer in the summer months by the absence of wind paired with humidity as stifling as it gets in the mountains. But it’s a short climb, and a cool, consistent breeze delights in greeting hikers as they emerge from the woods onto the sundrenched summit. It’s almost as good as ice cream on a hot day at the beach.
To get to the top of Little Green Mountain, we took the Panthertown Valley Trail to a right turn onto the Green Valley Trail, then a left turn onto Mac’s Gap trail, and another left onto the Little Green Trail. There are a myriad of other ways to get there—always take a map to explore your options and stay found.
To reach the Salt Rock Gap entrance to Panthertown Valley from the Cashiers Crossroads, take U.S. Highway 64 East two miles to a left turn onto Cedar Creek Road. In just over two miles take a right onto Breedlove Road, which dead-ends at the trail head in about four miles.
