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Date Climbed
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North Carolina's County
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All of my North Carolina highpoints came in May 2000 when I flew into Atlanta and spent a week in the southeast, principally in the Appalachian Mountains. Many of these highpoints were accessed via the Blue Ridge Parkway, a specially built road maintained by the National Park System. The Blue Ridge Parkway stretches from North Carolina into Virginia and is an extremely scenic road built high in the mountains. Storms kept me off of the North Carolina highpoints at first, so I detoured through Virginia and Kentucky, then back south, when the weather was much improved.
I was coming back south after a day-long sojourn into Virginia to bag its state highpoint, Mount Rogers, and a very brief visit just inside the Kentucky line to visit its highpoint, Black Mountain. After a night in Kingsport, I started the meandering drive up into the heart and spine of the Appalachian Mountains. First on my list was Roan High Knob at the Roan Mountain State Park.
Roan Mountain is a series of peaks along the Tennessee/North Carolina state line. On the Tennessee side, there is a state park with a Ranger Station, information kiosks and some built-up areas for the visitors. I drove in from the Tennessee side through the towns of Johnson City and Elizabethton, and just followed the signs to Roan Mountain State Park. The Ranger Station is located about 2 miles south of the town of Roan Mountain, and about 8 miles north of the state line. There is a pretty nice creek in the area. The Appalachian Trail is the principal hiking route through the park.
Roan High Knob is the highest of the peaks, and access to the summit is from Carvers Gap, where there is a nice parking area. The sign says it's 1.7 miles to the summit, so off I went. The trail starts steeply (and is eroded in places), then moderates through a series of switchbacks before becoming more level. Soon the trail makes a bend left around the mountain and starts a slow descent. Little did I know that I'd missed my turn-off! I knew something wasn't right but I hiked on anyway. Soon I came back out in the open to another parking area and a fee station. I asked the little old ladies in the booth where Roan High Knob was and they pointed it to me: right where I had come up from. I overshot it by about 0.7 mile. The thick forest inhibits views. So I retraced my steps, hiked back toward that "bend", and found the turn-off to the summit. It's poorly marked and only visible for the northbound hikers, not for southbound hikers like I was.
It's an easy trudge to the summit, which is marked by some rock outcroppings, dense forest, and a nearby shelter (apparently, the highest one along the Appalachian Trail). I built a rock cairn on the main trail near the turn-off for later hikers. In all I added an extra mile and a half to the hike, making a 3.5-miler into a 5-miler, although I can hardly complain. Overall, the hike invloved about 700 feet of gain and took me about 2 hours.
I didn't know it at the time, but the highpoint of Avery County, North Carolina, can be reached from the same Carvers Gap parking lot. Hike north across the highway, up the grassy slopes and follow the ridge line to the summit. I would have done this one had I known about it. Oh well. I descended down some amazing;y beautiful loacl highways and got myself onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, heading toward Mount Mitchell.
Two days earlier I had intended to visit this highpoint but a storm blew in and hid everything in a thick pall of fog - some of the densest fog I have ever driven in and I've been caught in the Tule Fog of Central California, so I know my fog! I literally could not see beyond my hood. From Asheville I tried to poke along the Blue Ridge Parkway at about 10 miles per hour but soon enough common sense prevailed and I aborted this attempt to wait for a clearer, better day. Today was quite nice and I worked my way along the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Mount Mitchell turnoff, and up the narrow two-lane road to the top of the mountain. Mount Mitchell is not only the highest point in North Carolina, it is also the highest point in the Appalachian Mountains as well as the entire Eastern United States - the next highest peak heading west would be Harney Peak in South Dakota's Black Hills. At the top of Mitchell is a huge lookout tower (Note: Spring 2005 - the tower is being dismantled and a new one will be built, so I have read), parking area, and a visitor's center. Lots of people were there, mainly RVers and people like me. The hike to the top went quick, following a paved and dirt path to the tower. I rewarded myself with a Coke after the descent. It was a quick visit and a pleasant one; some day if I have the time I'd like to hike it properly, but for this visit this was perfect.
The day was still fairly young, and I hoped to visit a whole set of relatively easy county highpoints along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Descending from the Mount Mitchell Road, I was very near my next objective, Blue Ridge Pinnacle.
The access to this hike is just a half-mile on south-bound Blue Ridge Parkway from the junction of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Mt. Mitchell access road. In terms of cardinal directions, I actually traveled east from this junction due to the meandering nature of the Blue Ridge Parkway. There is a locked gate at a side road, with some minimal space to park. I crossed the gate, and walked up the jeep road about 50 feet to an obvious trail on my right. This trail quickly attains the ridge, along which it is about 1 mile of steady hiking (and steady gain) in the thick forest to the top. The last half-mile or so had "no trespassing" signs posted and an old barbed-wire fence that ran along the ridge, but I believe this only refers to the southern slopes, as they lie inside the Asheville Watershed, which is known to be off-limits. I think the ridge itself is legal.
After about 20 minutes and 400 feet of gain I came to a rocky jumble, the summit of this little peak. McDowell County just touches the top of this peak; in fact, until I set my foot on the tippy top, I spent the entire hike outside that county. The best (and only) views were to the south; thick forest blocked any other views. I stayed maybe a few minutes, then proceeded back to my car and drove up the road to my next objective, Little Pisgah Mountain. Overall, this little sojourn covered 2 miles round trip and about 400 feet of gain in about 40 minutes.
After successful visits to Mount Mitchell and Blue Ridge Pinnacle along the Blue Ridge Parkway, I proceeded southbound to my next objective, Little Pisgah Mountain, here in Henderson County. There are two Pisgah Mountains: a little one and a big one. The big one is obviously more substantial and more popular, and most people in the parking lot were there to hike Pisgah Mountain. I parked in the furthest lot (at milepost 407.7 off the Blue Ridge Parkway) and started in on the main trail ... toward Pisgah Mountain. The hike was nice but I realized I was actually hiking to the wrong peak, so I backtracked back to the parking lot and read the directions carefully this time.
The trail for Little Pisgah is located on the east side of the lot across from where the cars park. The trail is marked with white circles, and heads north. It is a short, easy half mile hike up the trail to the summit. The actual highest point is located just off the trail in thick growth, so I got down on the hands and knees and reached into the underbrush a short bit to tag the top. I did this around 4 p.m. in pleasant weather. I returned to my car and proceeded south some more to my next hike, Chestnut Bald.
Only a county highpointer would ignore Pisgah Mountain for its 'Little' neighbor. In retrospect I should have hiked up the main peak... maybe some day I will.
This hike has access from the parking area at milepost 422.4 on the Blue Ridge Parkway. After a long day in which I'd already done four other hikes and a lot of driving, I found myself at the parking area and trailhead around 5 p.m., the weather holding steady, and me getting pretty tired. I wasted no time and started up the trail immediately. The trail heads east along the Blue Ridge Parkway along a paved path into the forest. The path is paved for a few hundred yards as it rises rather steeply. About 0.3 miles in, this paved path turns right toward a jumble of rocks and an overlook, but I went left onto an obvious side trail. I followed this trail for a bit until it junctioned with the main "Mountains to the Sea" trail (crossing over the Parkway in the process). From here, I followed it as is slowly gained more elevation until it seemed to flatten out and begin to drop. Sensing I was at the main ridge, I began the final leg of this hike.
The summit is located about 0.2 miles of bushwhacking off the trail. Some blue surveyor's ribbons help lead to the summit area, but the undergrowth is extremely dense, and I found out what wearing shorts can do to a guy's bare legs. I battled up the ridge, through spruce, blackberry and all sorts of knee-high brambly crud, until I reached the flattish summit. It is so overgrown and crowded at the summit that it's not easy to tell where the true top really is, so the reasonable thing to do is to walk around a bit and "grid" the area, which I did. The undergrowth really scratched me up and I was bleeding quite a bit from the scratches. I should have known better. I got back to my car, toweled off the blood and soothed my wounds. This was a pretty rough little hike, and tit's no small wonderI didn't get bitten by any snakes. I was really emotionally ready for a beer and hot shower, but I still had one more highpoint left to do: Richland Balsam in Jackson County just up the road.
I arrived at the parking area for this hike (the "Haywood-Jackson" parking area) at milepost 431 on the Blue Ridge Parkway around 6:30 p.m. My last hike up Chestnut Knob in Transylvania county had rendered me bloody from numerous scratches after a hefty bushwhack, and I was simply beat, tired and ready to call it a day by the time I arrived at Richland Balsam. Fortunately, this would be a short, quick, fairly easy trail hike to the summit, no bushwhacking required. The hike begins at the north end of the lot at a marked trail. It's paved for the first 1000 feet or so, then gives way to a good trail. Small wooden posts numbered 1-13 lead to the summit, presumably there in conjunction with a trail-guide one can read when hiking this route (it's a developed "nature trail", but I didn't see any literature on it).
In death march mode, I ambled up the hill until I came to the summit, which has a bench and a nice big sign. The clouds were here and it was kind of foggy, so I just tagged the sign, and turned right around for my car. It's actually a pretty hike with plenty of views (although most of mine were shrouded in fog and haze), as well as being one of North Carolina's highest county highpoints. After the hike down I egressed from the Blue Ridge Parkway and took a hotel in Wayneville up the road. I've never been so ready for a shower as I was today. I bought a beer to drink but dropped it while fiddling with the doorknob to get in my hotel room, and spritzed precious beer all over the place! A minor tragedy. The shower felt great, my legs hurt like hell, soothed by Neosporin, and I settled in for a night of channel-surfing.
Fresh from a night's sleep, I headed into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park via the town of Cherokee. The southern border of the National Park is bordered by the Cherokee Indian Reservation, and they have built up every square foot of space with hotels, fast food places, souvenir stands and everything imaginable. The 20 miles or so from Waynesville to Cherokee was really bad. RVs going 10 mph don't help, either. However, once inside the park, the commercialism stops and the trees resume. I drove up the highway to the crest of the Smokies to Clingmans Dome, the Tennessee state highpoint at 6,643 feet. A road leads to near the top, leaving a one-mile round trip hike to the summit along a paved path. The fog was real dense so I saw very little, but there is an interesting tower at the top, and despite the fog there were numerous people there. State highpoint #32, done.
After Clingmans, I headed down toward Robbinsville where I was to meet up with Fred Lobdell, the king of county highpointers (at the time with over 490 done). He has done many peaks in this area, and it was his notes that I used for my highpoints along the Blue Ridge Parkway. His mother lives near Asheville, so it was convenient for us to meet. However, we both encountered delays into Robbinsville and didn't meet up there; instead we met at the Nantahala Forest Ranger station up the road by luck. Together, we convoyed over the Cherohala Scenic Byway across the Unicoi Mountains along the Tennessee and North Carolina borders, and knocked off two more counties: Graham County and, then across the state line into Tennessee for Monroe County.
After coming down from Clingmans Dome and battling holiday traffic (and one near rear-ender), I drove into Robbinsville in North Carolina's extreme southwest corner. I was supposed to meet with Fred Lobdell, at the the highpoint king of the counties (490+ done; long since eclipsed by a few others, although Fred's totals are now close to a thousand). We both had delays and actually bumped into one another up the road at the Nantahala Forest Ranger Station (Cheoha), mainly by dumb luck. But it was good luck! Our plan was to drive the Cherohala Scenic Byway up and over the Unicoi Mountains bordering Tennessee and North Carolina, and do two county highpoints along the way. Fred had done these before so it was very gracious of him to re-do these with me.
Our first was Huckleberry Knob, about 40-minutes drive into the Byway from the east. We parked at the Huckleberry Pullout (5 parking spaces), and began our hike in. It's an easy hike, just over a mile to the summit, along very old tire ruts. It's mostly open grassy slopes, and the views are quite nice. Soon we were at the round, broad summit. There is a gravesite at this summit! Apparently an old timber cutter drank himself to oblivion in a snowstorm while seated at the top. The grave marker was hard to read but it seems to be a fairly well-known story in these parts. After a few minutes we were back to our cars, overall time just under an hour. A few miles up the road was our next highpoint, Haw Knob.
Until next time, goodbye North Carolina, and thank you very much!
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(c) 2000, 2006 Scott Surgent. For entertainment purposes only. This report is not meant to replace maps, compass, gps and other common sense hiking/navigation items. Neither I nor the webhost can be held responsible for unfortunate situations that may arise based on these trip reports. Conditions (physical and legal) change over time! Some of these hikes are major mountaineering or backpacking endeavors that require skill, proper gear, proper fitness and general experience. |