Hiking North Carolina's Mountain Heritage

Pinkshell Azaleas

Danny Bernstein — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:56:14 -0400

If you go on the Art Loeb Trail toward Pilot Mountain right now, and I mean now, you'll see a spectacular display of pinkshell azaleas. These native bushes have bright pink flowers which open before their leaves come out.

These pinkshells are considered rare because they're native to only ten mountain counties in Western North Carolina. But when you go there at the right time, they're not rare at all. Everywhere I turned as I climbed from Gloucester Gap, I saw pink, pink and more pink. I met Elizabeth and Heinz Feil, serious hikers and nature lovers, who were hosting family members from overseas. They took them up the mountain to show them what was special about the North Carolina mountains.

The view from Pilot Mountain is awesome - from Mt. Hardy and further into Nantahala National Forest on one side to Mt. Pisgah and Looking Glass Rock on the other. But that view can be enjoyed anytime. Now is the time to see the pinkshells.

Hazel Creek Backpack

Danny Bernstein — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:44:08 -0400

Writing a new guidebook has delayed me from working on my Smokies Challenge, the Smokies 900. But last weekend, I managed to schedule a mega backpack with six others, most of whom who were as obsessed as I am on getting new Smokies miles. We knew we were obsessed because the forecast had been awful for a week. They were predicting rain, thunderstorms, and freezing weather. But no one else seemed concerned, so I decided not to be either. I had called the Marina and asked if they still took people across the lake in a thunderstorm and they said “yes” and I didn’t question it.

We had two birthdays on this weekend. Sharon was celebrating her 50th and was starting a gigantic hiking project. She is going to hike all the trails in the Smokies in her 51st year. She’s also fundraising for the Girl Scouts, an organization she’s been involved in for many years. Read all about her adventure at http://smokyscout.blogspot.com/. It was also Lenny’s birthday, almost a generation older than Sharon. We were Don G., Bob H. Sharon Mc, Jim Mc, Lenny B., Elliot F. and me taking the picture.

On Friday, we met at the Fontana Marina, near Fontana Village. This is the heart of North Shore Road country. We took a ferry across Fontana Lake at noon, stopped for one photo and walked through the historic town of Proctor. In the early 1900s, Ritter Lumber Company established a lumber mill here and immediately upgraded the small settlement to a swinging town with electricity, telephones, and a movie theater. You can see the old kiln, railroad paraphernalia and cemetery.

Our walk to campsite #82 was easy since we were on an old road. I even took a couple of luxuries for a backpack, cooked chicken and rice, since the walk was only nine miles without much ascent. It rained that evening after we put up our tents and that turned out to be the most rain we had the whole weekend. The next day was the day of reckoning – 18 miles on a loop consisting of Cold Spring Trail, Welch Ridge and the descent down Hazel Creek. Sharon counted 23 water crossings. Sunday, it turned cold and it was tough to get out of the tent. We had to step on it to make the ferry by noon.

Everyone felt good, really good about our hiking accomplishment as they traveled home. I had to check out a gravesite on the Cherohala Skyway and I found it with no problems and I was thrilled.

Moses Cone Memorial Park

Danny Bernstein — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:57:51 -0400

Moses Cone Memorial Park is not a wild, natural place, but an elegant, landscaped estate with 25 miles of gentle carriage roads - perfect for easy hiking. There had been tourists and summer residents in mountain communities off the Blue Ridge Parkway for over a century before the road was built. Blowing Rock, in particular, was an established resort town, which tripled its population in the summer.

Moses Cone was one such summer resident who built a mansion outside Blowing Rock, now at MP 294. Having made his money in the textile business – he was known as the denim king - Cone and his wife Bertha bought over 3,500 acres adjacent to Blowing Rock and began building their dream house and estate, including two lakes stocked with trout and bass. They created a life of the landed gentry, a kind of modest Biltmore Estate. They built Flat Top Manor, a 20-room house in the Colonial Revival Style with large white columns, elegant leaded glass windows and dormers set high. Like George Vanderbilt, Cone hired Gifford Pinchot to help him landscape the property with fruit trees, sugar maple, and rhododendron.

The Cones’ dream house was finished in 1901 but Moses Cone did not enjoy it for long. He died in 1908 in his early fifties. Moses and Bertha had no children and when Bertha died thirty-nine years later, she bequeathed her entire estate to build the most modern hospital in the South as a memorial to her husband - the Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro. The land and house were subsequently donated to the Blue Ridge Parkway which turned it into the lovely park it is today.

Loaded Guns in the National Parks?

Danny Bernstein — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:33:09 -0500

Llamas in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Right now, a visitor cannot carry a loaded gun in a National Park but Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn has proposed a bill that would overturn regulations on firearm possession in National Parks and Wildlife Refuges that have been in effect since 1987. This amendment would prohibit the Secretary of Interior from enforcing regulations currently in place that require gun owners to have their guns unloaded while visiting most units of the National Park System. That would include the Appalachian Trail.

Senator Coburn’s amendment could dramatically degrade the experience of park visitors and put their safety at risk if units of the National Park System were compelled to follow state gun laws. It would increase poaching and much worse. In many cases, states would also allow guns in their state parks. Do we really want gun massacres in the parks the same way we have them in shopping malls?

Read all about it from the Coalition of National Park Retirees, the people who know the parks best and can voice their opinion.

Little Tennessee Greenway

Danny Bernstein — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:22:27 -0500

The Greenway is a pleasant, partly paved walk along the Little Tennessee River with many amenities, including benches, restrooms, and picnic tables. It’s four miles one way and if you don’t have any way to get back to your car, you have an eight-mile flat, easy walk where you’ll meet many friendly people. This walk is a change of pace from the heavily wooded forest trails; here you’ll see open sky, wetlands, historic bridges and yes, a little traffic. It goes in a general east/west direction but the Greenway map calls it north/south so you’ll be walking trail south. The mileage is posted every quarter-mile, starting from Suli Marsh.

A greenway is a linear open space established along a natural corridor, such as a river, stream, or rail-to-trail route for conservation, recreation, and even transportation. Greenways help preserve important natural landscapes, provide links between fragmented habitats, and protect wetlands. They can connect parks, nature preserves, cultural facilities, and historic sites with business and residential areas. People hike, run, bike, roller blade and walk their dogs. Greenways attract walkers who would not ordinarily go into the woods. An older couple walking their dog said that they probably did 1,000 miles a year on the Little Tennessee Greenway because they walk it every day.

South Mountain State Park

Danny Bernstein — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:21:47 -0500

Because of its low altitude, South Mountain State Park is a prime year-round destination, except maybe in the heart of the summer. Though the highest point is about 3,000 ft., when you’re looking down into a valley 2,000 ft below, you can feel on top of the local world. The wind whistling through the pines, the ridge vistas, the tumbling water give you the same rush as higher altitudes. The state park has cut trees to open up views and even arranged logs for low benches. White-tail deer, not usually seen at the higher elevations, is abundant here.
    Walking down High Shoals Falls can get any hiker interested in geology. Water travels through the park toward the Catawba River and cuts deep into the land, forming steep slopes. Rock slabs moved down the slope and piled up at the base. They have broken off by the process of exfoliation, a type of weathering that occurs in rocks which have uniform texture. Think of exfoliating the skin to make it smoother. As a layer is peeled off, like peeling off an onion, the underlying rock expands upward. Cracks form and eventually the rock break off along these cracks.
    As you come down the staircase, you’ll find large slabs of rocks with vertical fractures called joints. These fractures get wider when water seeps in and freezes. Plant roots make their way into cracks and expand the rock. Flowing water also encourages joints to widen. Every once in a while, a block of rock separates from the cliff along one of the joints and tumbles down. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo dumped a great deal of rain in South Mountain State Park. Many loose rocks slid off at once, resulting in the Hugo landslide.

Catawba Falls

Danny Bernstein — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:54:21 -0500

The Catawba River is a major river in the Carolinas which provides water for the city of Charlotte and beyond. But here, at the headwaters, the river flows wild, though it is creek size. The walk to the Lower Falls is moderate; however, reaching the Upper Falls is very difficult and should not be undertaken lightly. There are ropes for the rockiest part; you’ll need to pull yourself with your hands on other sections. This hike is good any time. However, if you plan to go to the Upper Falls, you’ll want to avoid yellow jacket season. Please stay on the trail – good advice in general, but especially where waterfalls are involved. Two ropes, in tandem, have been secured to tree trunks - you might find it harder to go down than up. Only one person should use these ropes at a time. One experienced hiker said of climbing to Upper Catawba Falls “It didn’t get this technical up to the base camp on Mt. Everest.”

In the early 1900s, Colonel Daniel W. Adams, a pioneer in the development of hydroelectric power, bought thousands of acres of land in the Old Fort area, including the Falls. In the 1920s, he built the dams you’ll pass on the hike, which created electricity for the town of Old Fort. In 1928 he sold the power plant to a small power company. Eventually Duke Power Company took it over and closed the Catawba facility.

Catawba Falls was always private; hikers could only to the falls with permission of the landowners. Catawba Falls, itself, were acquired by the Pisgah in the late 1980s from the Adams family. But a short access trail to the falls stayed in private hands; the falls became landlocked.

When the heirs put the 23 acre property on the market, the Foothills Conservancy acted very quickly to buy it with loan funds to secure public access to the trail. The Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina, a regional land trust, is dedicated to working cooperatively with landowners and public and private conservation partners to preserve and protect important natural areas and open spaces of the Blue Ridge Foothills region, including watersheds, environmentally significant habitats, forests and farmland, for this and future generations. FCNC now owns more than 1,000 acres in the Catawba Headwaters and has allowed access to Catawba Falls. The Conservancy has taken out a loan to buy this access to Catawba Falls and obviously needs to repay it. Please make a contribution and support where you hike. See http://www.foothillsconservancy.org/news.htm

Stone Mountain State Park

Danny Bernstein — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:30:00 -0500

The rock is pock-marked with weathering pits as if a giant left footprint impressions on the rock. Though impressive, the mountain is not as well known as Stone Mountain in Georgia. Most people just climb to the top of Stone Mt. and back down. If you continue past the top and do a 6.4 mile loop, you’ll leave the tourists and catch three waterfalls. The elaborate staircase paralleling Stone Mt. Falls, the main falls, is as impressive as the waterfall itself.

Beyond the rock, Stone Mountain State Park is loaded, with artifacts of its moonshine past. Wilkes County is the moonshine capital of the world,” proclaims the Visitor Center brochures. “It used to be hush-hush,” Bob, a local hiker, explained, “but now they’re proud of it. Just a couple of hundred feet off the trail, you can come down to a field of stills – large steel drums - whose tops have been blown off by dynamite. The way the metal peels off and curls in beautiful swirls make me want to display it in my garden as a sculpture. The pipes, which fed the gas to cook the mash, are still visible. Rubber tubes and jerrycans lie on the ground, helter-skelter. Around several stills, you’ll see a pile of old coke bottles – the 12 ounce dark green glass - that is now considered an antique item. All these Coke bottles prove the old saying, “Whisky was for selling, not for drinking.” The workers drank Coke.

Pilot Mountain State Park

Danny Bernstein — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 10:45:00 -0500

Though the mountains are very low in absolute altitude compared with Western North Carolina, they rise so high from the valley floor that they are very impressive. Both parks are located north of Winston-Salem and south of Mt. Airy.

Pilot Mountain State Park is a "one hike park", but what a hike! The trail circumnavigates the mountain, climbing from the Visitor Center with side trails to the top. You can also drive to the top and take in the amazing views down into the valley.

The park was a private commercial park for many years. The owners built roads to attract paying customers - pedestrians paid 25 cents and motorists 50 cents in the 1940.

Basin Creek Trail

Danny Bernstein — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:20:00 -0400

Basin Creek Cove was once home to over 50 families and is now part of Doughton Park, on the Blue Ridge Parkway, MP 238.5 – 244.7. If you take a solitary ten-mile walk (round-trip), you’ll find many artifacts but few people. You’ll cross Basin Creek over 16 times, without bridges, passing elaborate rock formations, cascades and several waterfalls. The trail leads deep in the cove and ends at Caudill Cabin, the only remaining cabin.

When I reached to the cabin, my first thought was “This family didn’t get out very much”. The cabin, a 14 ft. by 16 ft. room with two doors but no window, is propped up by columns of flat stones. It was the home of Martin Caudill who had 14 children. The cabin was restored in 2001 by the National Park Service and the descendants of the Caudill family. Two books on the mantelpiece explain the Caudill genealogy and include photographs of the cabin restoration. When I signed in, I noted that the last person visited here over three weeks ago. Look up toward the Parkway. The trail does not connect to the Blue Ridge Parkway so you need to go back the way you came. In July, 1916, a flood devastated the community and washed almost everything away. Somehow the Caudill Cabin survived.

To get another perspective on Basin Cove, look down from Basin Cove Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway, MP 244.7. To see the cabin from above, go to Wildcat Rocks, which begins at the far end of Bluff Lodge at MP 241. From the left side of the overlook, you can see the cabin down in the clearing.