Ugh

If you knew how tired I was you'd tell me to go to sleep.

Which I am going to do.

So. Some photos.

I have a couple of days off coming up. I've always wanted to camp here, at Hunt Fish Falls. There's a fantastic campsite right at the top of the waterfall. However, the hike in is less than two miles and one thing that I have learned over the years is that road access often equates to a high chance of encounter with drunken, gun-toting assholes.

Linville Gorge is probably a better option. If there's a long trek involved, the scumbags aren't interested.

A Weird Year for Hiking...

This has been one of the worst years for me in terms of hiking and backpacking. I have hardly had any time to go outdoors as I normally do over the course of a year. Part of it is the fault of my job as a writer. I am committed to completing a couple of novels and that has taken up time I would normally spend climbing a mountain or canoeing a river.

The other problem has been the increased difficulty of my day job. I'm losing physical momentum as I get older and I just can't push myself as hard as I could in earlier times. The old body is breaking down and there's nothing much I can do about that. Last night after getting off work and showering and eating, I ended up sleeping for over twelve hours. No writing done yesterday, at all. Any idea I would have had of going hiking today was so much fantasy. And it's back to work tomorrow.

Joy.

When I have gotten out, it has been a weird scene this year under the skies. For instance, there were the two hikes I took one week apart, back to back in the Spring. One week was so warm it was actually nice enough to have thought about going for a swim. The following Sunday in the same general location the snow was falling. And the only thing that kept me from fleeing the scene was that I had tossed a few warm clothes in the truck just in case.

So, today, no hiking, but back to the latest novel. We'll talk later...

North Harper Creek. Considered wading after my hike to the big falls just above this little cascade.

The next week as I visited Hunt Fish Falls nearby, the temperature suddenly plummeted.

I ended up on the Parkway near Grandfather Mountain and the snow started to swirl!

In short order the snow began to cover the ground.

Grandfather Mountain hidden behind passing veils of snow squalls. (I think this was part of the last significant snowfall of the year.)

Salamander Eggs

While I was hanging out at Hunt Fish Falls I noticed some weird-looking stuff floating in a pothole out on the bare granite expanses below the main falls. These are places where small stones and grains of sand have worn out circular depressions and holes in the granite face. This particular pothole was about two feet across and about the same depth. It was full of water and floating in that water were a couple of clusters of what were obviously eggs of some type.

I figured that they were amphibian eggs, but I don't know much about such things and wasn't sure. And they could have been any type of amphibian for all I knew. So I took some video and photographs and when I got back I showed them to some of my online pals who are far more knowledgeable abut these things.

The consensus is that they're obviously salamander eggs. But as to the exact species--that's up in the air. It would be nice if they're Hellbenders, which are our largest species of salamander here in the NC mountains. I've never actually seen a Hellbender, and it would be nice to think that I got to see literally hundreds of Hellbender embryos floating in that little pool of water.

Here I am on the exposed rock below the falls. This rock is riddled with many potholes. It was in one such pothole that I saw the clusters of eggs.

Here is a macro shot I took of a single egg. The eggs looked to be absolutely perfect little spheres, and in the center of each sphere was a forming embryo soon to become a baby salamander.

The eggs.


A better view of both masses. Each cluster was about the size of a soccer ball.

Hunt Fish Falls Revisit

I was able to get away on Sunday for a hike in the mountains. Since I was going solo again I didn't want to go bushwhacking. I promised Carole that I won't go off in the trackless wastes any more without hiking companions. So I decided to go back to the Wilson Creek area to find the South Harper Creek Falls which I have never seen. After that I'd have time for some other trails that I wanted to hit.

But trouble found me almost as soon as I got to the Wilson Creek Recreation Area. In the form of the weather. When I arrived, the weather was fine. A mild day with clear skies. However, the previous evening had been very windy and as I got a good ways up Forest Service Road 464 and was about six or seven miles from the trailhead I wanted to use, I discovered that the road was blocked by a large tree (see yesterday's post for a photo). I had to turn around. There was no way to go around the tree.

I had passed the trail to Hunt Fish Falls a mile or so before the blockage and I turned around and went back to that. I'd been there before, but it's a very picturesque waterfall if not a very tall one. And the hiking would be easy, and I could head down the trail to another waterfall that I'd heard about but had never seen.

In quick order I was on the trail and plunging down into the gorge. As I hiked I noticed that it was getting colder. At first I thought that it was just my imagination at work, but by the time I got down to Hunt Fish Falls and walked out on the big granite clearings below the falls I realized that it really was getting colder. There was a powerful front moving through and it was bringing cold air with it. Out on the rock I actually had to put my gloves on to keep my fingers from going numb. Fortunately, I'd brought a jacket, a ski cap, gloves, and a scarf. I don't know why I had grabbed those items at the last minute, because all weather reports I'd read had called for temperatures in the low 50s. But that wasn't the case at all.

After I'd spent some time at Hunt Fish Falls I packed my camera stuff away and shouldered my pack and headed downstream, seeing more of the trail that I'd never hiked. After a mile or so I came to a spacious camping area beside the creek and I pushed on. I met some people fishing in the creek and I waved and said hello and continued down the trail. And then I saw that the trail ended and to continue the hike I'd have to cross the creek. To do that I'd have to take off my boots and socks and unzip my convertible pants. But by then the temperature was definitely in the low 40s, maybe even down into the 30s--it was much too cold to go wading in a fast-moving creek pumped up with recent rainfall.

So I turned around and headed back to my truck. I figured I could take another Forest Service Road up to the Blue Ridge Parkway and do some hiking from there. In quick order I passed Hunt Fish Falls again and made the climb back to my truck. Once more I was really surprised at how cold it was getting. Oh, well. I had the right clothing on hand in case it got even colder.

Taking another Forest Service Road I began to climb up toward the Parkway. And just as I was getting close to the Parkway I saw something. My first thought was that I was seeing some early blossoms being blown off some tree, because the wind was whipping up. And then I realized that it was snowing. The higher I drove the more intense the snowfall became. A huge front of clouds was coming in from the west and bringing, apparently, heavy snow. I kept driving and hit the Parkway where I turned north, meaning to find some trailheads near Grandfather Mountain.

And it was at that point that the storm really hit. Soon the snow was pouring down and the wind was whipping fiercely. Grandfather Mountain disappeared behind dark clouds and blinding snow squalls, the reappeared as breaks in the cloud cover passed over, then vanished again. This was repeated again and again, but soon the cloud cover seemed to be winning out and the ground quickly began to turn white. I parked at the Beacon Heights trail and strolled to the big exposed rocks at the end of that stroll where I took some photos. Then I figured I'd take advantage of the snow and hit a trail off the Parkway that I'd wanted to hike for some time, but after I'd driven a few miles I found the Park authorities had blocked the route south.

By then, it was getting far too late to think about much in the way of a serious hike. Resigning myself to the fact that the weather had gotten the best of my plans, I backtracked and turned toward the Linville Gorge Wilderness. At least I could stop and walk to the top of Linville Falls, then drive down to Wiseman's View and wrap up my day of outdoor adventures.

And that's what I did. More photos (and video) tomorrow.

This is as the start of the trail to Hunt Fish Falls. It's classic southern Appalachian hiking. If you want to see mountain laurel, azalea, and rhododendron in bloom, this is one great place to go in Spring and Summer.

This is the view from the top of the modest (but very pretty) Hunt Fish Falls.

This is one gorgeous campsite right at the top of the falls. I'd love to hike down here and camp.

A panorama of Hunt Fish Falls and the wonderful swimming hole below it. I can imagine spending an entire day and evening here just lazing around the site and swimming and taking it easy.

Hunt Fish Falls.

The sky was almost clear and spectacularly blue. Little did I know that things were about to change drastically.

This is a panorama of a vast campsite that I hear is mainly used by fishermen. It's huge and is about a mile or a bit more than that from Hunt Fish Falls. Just beyond here is where I had to turn around because it had gotten way too cold for me to ford the creek.

Trail 262 (Lost Cove) is just a lovely path.

And one more view of Hunt Fish as I passed it again on my way back up to the top of the canyon.

I've been to Hunt Fish Falls three times. And every time I've been this little waterfall has been running, sending water in to join the creek below Hunt Fish.

You're not to keep any of the fish you catch on this creek. It's all catch and release.

The great campsite right beside Hunt Fish Falls.

You can always find little treasures like this along the trails. This was just a tiny little cascade. But there in the shade beneath the rhododendron, it was quite pretty.

Good ol' Hunt Fish Falls.

Yesterday's Hike

I managed to go hiking yesterday. My trip was scrambled by a number of factors, all dealing with the (changing) weather. I'll post details later, but my first problem was the blockage of the road I was going to use to get to my preferred trail head. The wind of the previous evening had planted a large tree across the road, blocking access.

The road was blocked. Thanks Mr. Wind!

So I had to completely change my plans and play it by ear. After a hike to see a waterfall I'd visited a couple of years ago I headed into higher country to access some different trails, and ran into fierce winter weather complete with snow.

Oh, well.

My final stop of the day: Wiseman's View in the Linville Gorge. The snow was starting to come down in serious fashion as I left the Gorge.

The big snowstorm was gliding across Grandfather Mountain, getting ready to hammer me.

And this is the weather that soon caught up to me.