Camp Alice/Commissary Best Hike

• Difficulty: Easy
• Total Length: 2.5 mi
• Trail Tread Condition: Few Obstacles
• Climb: Climbs Gently
• Lowest Elevation: 5720 ft
• Highest Elevation: 6080 ft
• Total Elevation Gain: 360 ft
• Trails/Roads Used: Commissary Trail
• Hike Configuration: Out-and-back
• Starting point: Park Office at Stepps Gap
• How to Get There: From Asheville, take the Blue Ridge Parkway north for 33 miles to the entrance for Mount Mitchell State Park. Turn left, on NC 128. Park just past the gated entrance to the park, at the Park Office.
  Directions on Google Maps

Hikers on the Commissary Trail below Mount Mitchell

This is a wonderful, easy hike that is less often used than the summit trail and the nature trail, offering the chance for silence and solitude. High altitude, alpine trees and meadows provide the foreground for the looming peak of Mount Mitchell. Great views - close-up ones of the various trees sculpted by the wind and the other high-elevation flora, and distant vistas of the summit of Mount Mitchell and the surrounding mountains - can be found on this easy walk.

Part 1: to Camp Alice

Follow the gravel road to the right of the park office, leading gently downhill. This entire hike follows this old railroad grade despite the fact that it changes names several times. Just go straight at any intersections. You can turn around whenever you wish, but the two destinations I suggest are Camp Alice and Commissary Hill. It's called the Commissary trail here at the beginning and a sign there has a map, description, historical photos, and other basic trail information.

Your first destination is Camp Alice, an old logging and, later, tourist camp. The road to this point has recently been improved, and the surface is mostly smooth pea-sized to 2" gravel. It's a park service road, used occasionally by park vehicles for accessing the water station at Camp Alice. It also roughly parallels a power line right-of-way, so you'll see those occasionally. Some areas can get wet after it rains, but it's nothing serious. Shortly after starting the hike you'll wrap around the east side of an unnamed mountain. Here the forest is mixed, with spruces, firs, and high-elevation hardwoods in disturbed areas. Next you'll round Bearwallow and Grassy Knob Ridges.

Here, spruces and firs grow along the edges of grassy and fern-filled meadows. This slope is directly below the park's restaurant, which, according to one source at the park, was originally built to be a ski lodge. The slopes you're looking at were to be the ski slopes. Although the skiing would've been great at this high altitude, the park officials never figured out how they intended to get vehicles up to the lodge in the snow, so plans for a ski resort were scrapped and the lodge was turned into the present-day restaurant, open in the warmer months only. Continue past the grassy slopes and you'll dip into the Lower Creek valley, right below Mount Mitchell's summit. The forest switches briefly to almost all northern hardwoods just past Grassy Knob Ridge before switching back to spruces and firs as you approach Camp Alice and Lower Creek. Ahead of you, as you come under the power line right-of-way again, you'll catch spectacular views of the summit of Mount Mitchell, the Lower Creek valley and its grassy meadows, and of the surrounding mountains as well.

Just before you reach Lower Creek, you'll reach the intersection with another trail and some rock steps on the left. This is the Camp Alice trail. It's also co-signed as the Mountains to Sea Trail. The Mountains to Sea trail is a new trail, and it was routed along existing trails and roads wherever possible, so many older trails are similarly co-signed. The Mountains to Sea trail comes in from your right further along (where it is co-signed as the Buncombe Horse Range Trail) and exits to the left here. If you were to go that way, it'd be 1 mile to the summit via the Mountains to Sea Trail as it is co-signed along the Camp Alice and Old Mitchell trails. Regardless of what it's called, it's a very steep climb.

The old railroad bed you've been following crosses Lower Creek. Then the service road exits to the left and goes up to Camp Alice itself, which is now the park's water station. A power line branches off and goes that way as well. There's nothing very interesting up there, just more spruce and fir trees and a fenced-in pump house. On the left, just past the exit for the service road, is the large, round, concrete well.

Part 2: to Commissary Hill

You can turn around here or go on to Commissary Ridge. It's 0.7 miles further ahead. Just continue straight on the same grade. This is now called the Mountains to Sea Trail (briefly). Although the trail becomes a bit rockier and wetter now, it still has gentle climbs and descents. At this point, you exit the State Park and travel onto Pisgah National Forest land. There is a sign here, but all you'll see is the back of it.

Shortly after that, you'll reach another intersection. This is where the Mountains to Sea Trail and the Buncombe Horse Range Trail come in from the right, on another railroad grade which they share. Continue straight; our railroad grade is now named the Buncombe Horse Range Trail. Just keep going straight; from here to the campsite the scenery is more of the spectacular same. Really, you hike as far as you want and turn around at any point along this grade, but the campsite makes a nice ending for this nice hike. Relax under the shade of a spruce tree or climb around on the huge rocks. You can also see the foundation of the old trail shelter, long since removed.

The Buncombe Horse Range trail continues on this railroad grade all the way around Mount Mitchell and Mount Craig. Just past the campsite you would reach the Mount Mitchell/Mountains to Sea Trails which come down from the summit via Commissary Ridge itself, and join up with our railroad grade and the Buncombe Horse Range Trail. Further along they exit to the right and descend 3000' to the Black Mountain Campground. It's obvious this railroad grade is a useful path, since nearly every trail at Mount Mitchell follows it at some point!

From wherever you decide to turn around, just follow the railroad grade back up to the park office. Remember: it's slightly uphill on the way back (a 300' climb from Lower Creek), so keep that in mind when judging your energy level!