Morrow Mountain Hike

Yesterday I went on a short hike at Morrow Mountain State Park. I sometimes visit that park when I can't get away to the real mountains. It's less than sixty miles away and I can be there in about an hour if traffic is light getting out of the Charlotte metro area.

The small mountain range there is called The Uwharries. Practically speaking, they are not mountains at all, but rather a range of low hills that persist due to a resistant layer of cap rock consisting of rhyolite and quartz. The range is considered one of the oldest on the planet at over 500 million years. Morrow Mountain, around which the park is set, was an important site to the Native American tribes that settled here thousands of years ago. Rhyolite fractures in a manner similar to flint and is excellent for making edged tools such as arrowheads, knives, axes, scrapers, drills, and the like. If you go to the summit of Morrow Mountain today you will find that it is covered in flakes of rhyolite, each and every one of them the result of tool production long, long ago.

The hike I took was one I had skipped in the past--a 4.1 mile loop called the Fall Mountain Trail. It takes you from the shores of Lake Tillery and over the top of Fall Mountain. It's an interesting hike with a change in vegetation--the flood-plain at the lake shore up to the rocky mountaintop with forests of oak and beech. A number of fires have run through the forest over the past few years and you get the impression of walking through a mature forest because all of the understory has removed through fire, wind, and ice storms. The forest is actually not old or even mature, at all. But because of the fires and storms it is wide and open.

In years past I would encounter a lot of wildlife in the park, but my last few trips there have been rather barren affairs when it comes to wildlife. In fact, I didn't see so much as a butterfly. I heard some locusts in the trees, and a woodpecker was having his way with a tree somewhere nearby, but I saw absolutely nothing living. I think I heard a lizard scurrying away at one point, but didn't see it. I suppose the forest floor has been scoured clean of food and so no wildlife. The oaks were, however, dropping vast numbers of acorns, so if there are any deer, squirrels, or bear still around they will have plenty to eat this season.

My original plan was to hike the Fall Mountain Trail and then go do a couple of other, shorter trails. But the heat became oppressive and I ended up only doing the one trail. One interesting thing that I noted as I climbed the mountain was that the lower and intermediate slopes were rich with quartz, but the highest ridges and summits were full of rhyolite. Some kind of layering there, but I don't know the reason for it.

Park entrance.

I'm pretty sure this building was constructed by the CCC. I do know they had a camp here and built a quarry to harvest local stone for building materials. It's vacant now and the park office is now in the interior of the park.

Along the shore of Lake Tillery near the start of the trail.

Just after I left the flood plain and began to climb the slopes.

You vant rhyolite? Ve got rhyolite.

I had to detour around a number of big trees like this on the trail. Some were victims, I think, of the remnants of Hurricane Harvey, Irma both of which created some windstorms through this area.

This is the only spot I have found in the Uwharries that makes me feel like I'm actually in the mountains.

I stopped for a quick peek at the overlook on the summit of Morrow Mountain before I left the park.

A brief video overview of the hike.