Jacob Fork Falls

I went hiking on Thursday.

Here are a couple of videos I made. The first one is the easy approach trail to Jacob Fork Falls.

The second one is of the trail up to the falls (and above).

I did a loop hike---I think it totaled about four miles.

The author at Jacob Fork Falls.

This is the longest video movie I've ever made. I edited out about twenty minutes of video.

Another Bushwhack in the South Mountains!

For some time I have been trying to locate the highest peak in the South Mountains of North Carolina. I had read in a number of places that the range reached a height of 3,100+ feet. But whenever I'd search topographic maps, the highest peak I could find was just a shade under 3,000 feet. My pal, Andy Kunkle, finally realized that the confusion arose over a single Internet mention of the 3,100 foot mark. We quickly discounted it after researching the facts.

And the fact that kept coming up was that the highest peak in the South Mountains is a summit called Buzzard Roost, which is 2,980 feet above sea level at its highest point.

Andy, Jacky Thyen and I had tried to reach Buzzard Roost once before. We found a great waterfall (Sally Queen Falls), but failed to reach the high point of the range. This time Andy figured he had a better and shorter route mapped out for us, so we decided to give it a try. The team on this trip was me, Andy, and Bob Johnson. Jack opted out due to his holiday-period sideline business of selling toy Hess Trucks--this keeps him ultra-busy until Christmas time.

I met up with Andy here in town, then we drove to Morganton where we hooked up with the other Bob and then we drove to one of the new sections of South Mountains State Park. This spot is the old Broughton Hospital Reservoir (also known as the Clear Creek Reservoir). It will, in time, be the location of a new campground and cabin area for the park. For now, there's just a road, the lake, and lots of forest to explore.

We followed an old logging road for a while and when that finally vanished in the woods, we just followed the map, bushwhacking through the forest and climbing ever upward toward what we hoped would be the summit of Buzzard Roost.

Heading out from the car, we could see the dam that creates the lake, with the mountains beyond.

Above the lake was Buzzard Roost (on the right) and Hickory Knob (left). Although Hickory Knob actually looks a tad higher from this spot, it's about twenty feet shorter.

As we hiked through the forest we were reminded that Fall was still in full throttle here in the lower mountains of North Carolina.

Andy and Boone pause for a photo opportunity.

This time of year, the forest floor is often as beautiful as the trees above.

Golden as the sun.

We were pleased to find a great cliff just at the summit of Buzzard Roost. And what a wonderful view! We could see many of North Carolina's major mountain features from this overlook.

Looking down the 1700 vertical feet we had climbed, we could see the reservoir far below us.

This is the actual highest point of the South Mountains. The rubble summit of Buzzard Roost.

I was also surprised to find a healthy grove of the increasingly rare Carolina hemlock growing above the cliff on Buzzard Roost. These show no signs at all of adelgid infestation and could be saved with the application of the right insecticide.

Andy and Bob with a fallen oak behind them and some of the Carolina hemlocks around.

Andy took this one of me on the way down the mountain. The terrain was really tortuous, but this likely had made things difficult for the timber barons to rob the mountains of its old forests. We saw many big trees, including this impressive oak.

Andy standing beside the giant poplar.

Not quite straight down, but Bob and I both had more than our fair share of tumbles on the trip back to the base of the mountain.

South Mountains Hike

Too tired from work to write much about our last hike. But I did want to mention that we hiked in to the South Mountains from a direction I'd never used--that being directly due south. This takes you through the South Mountains Game Lands and a horrid clear cut toward the newer section of the park. The old park was around 8K acres, but the new addition has more than doubled the park's size to over 17K acres. However, the newest addition is mainly undeveloped and all trails are either access roads (which the park rangers obviously use) or old overgrown logging roads.

The South Mountains from the wide valley directly south. Click to enlarge.

Our goal on the hike was to find the summit of Buzzard's Roost, which is now the highest peak in the park, eclipsing Benn Knob which was highest before the new addition of acreage. However, with no definite route, we came up short and didn't get to see the rumored remains of an old fire tower that is supposed to be there. We'll go back and attempt it again from a different direction.

We did manage to hike about fourteen miles. Keeping up with Jack Thyen is a chore. He moves along at about a steady three miles per hour. Level hiking, downhill hiking, uphill hiking. When he hits the steepest slopes he still keeps up that pace, and it's impossible for me to hit that same stride. I'm just way too old.

A boulder field we passed early on in the hike.

The shitty, crappy clear-cut we had to hike through.

Toward the middle of the hike we stumbled upon this old chimney. The southern Appalachians have thousands of these old ruins--remains of farmsteads tucked away in coves and ridges all over the mountains and valleys.

My hiking pals, Andy Kunkle, Jack Thyen, and Boone the dawg.

I was surprised to see many dozens of apparently healthy young hemlocks. The older hemlocks were all either dead or dying, but the saplings appear to be okay (for now).

More Waterfalls, More Writing

I'm pretty sure the novel's going to take me right down to the wire, as far as deadline is concerned. I'm doing really well and have managed to catch up to where I should be from the week I took off in February to go to Los Angeles. But as the book continues the plot is becoming more complicated. That's the way of novels--the characters and the situations become more complex as you write. They really do take on lives of their own. At some point, I tend to become not so much a puppet master as an observer. This has occurred on every novel I've written since I was a young man. Even after all of these years, it's strange to observe.

Here are some more waterfalls. Most of these were trips I took in 2006 and 2007. For a guy whose main hiking hobby is peak bagging, I manage to see an awful lot of waterfalls.

Douglas Falls, North Carolina, with my nephew, Harris.

High Shoals Falls on Jacob's Fork in South Mountains State Park, North Carolina.

This waterfall is also in South Mountains State Park. It has a name, but I can't recall it.

Schoolhouse Falls, Panthertown Valley, North Carolina.

Laurel Falls, lower section, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Me, Carole, and Andy at the upper section of Laurel Falls, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Waterfall along the Virginia Creeper Trail near Damascus Virginia. With Cindi and Emily Aiken sitting on the right.

One of my favorite waterfalls: Backbone Rock Falls, in Tennessee.

I forget the name of this waterfall, but it's in Virginia not far from the Applachian Trail. I hiked several miles to see it, and it's not as high as I am tall. For the effort involved, it was a huge disappointment. Still, a pretty little minor cascade.

Midnight Hole on Big Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This is my ultimate all-time favorite swimming hole. No other swimming hole even comes close. Just be sure you swim there in the hottest weather possible, because even in the midst of summer the water is COLD!! COLD!! I MEAN COLD!!!

Sliding Rock in the Pisgah National Forest.

Some waterfalls on Bald River, Tennessee.

Greenland Creek Falls, Panthertown Valley North Carolina.

The Brown Geyser.

Me, the South Mountains, and a Virus.

As usual when I go hiking on my own, I got a late start. Carole wanted to use my truck to drive to work last night (she works nights in the maternity ward), so I had to wait until she got home at 8:00 am. Even though she got home at eight, sharp, I was still not ready and didn’t get underway until almost 9:00 pm. I had nothing to blame but my own dilapidated sense of punctuality. On the way out the door, she didn’t mention anything more about the nasty stomach virus that was going around at the hospital.

I drove uneventfully to South Mountains State Park, which is one of the closest mountain areas to my house. I was hiking by 11:00 am and had decided to first take the Chestnut Knob Trail to the peak to get some photos. The last time I’d been there it was rainy and I wasn’t able to get any good photographs. The first thing that I noted as I entered the park was that the new visitors center and office was not only completed, but open. So I pulled into the brand new parking lot and went inside where I grabbed a park map and asked a few questions of the ranger behind the big, huge, shiny, new counter. Yes, the new visitors center had been open for over a month. Yes, I could bring my travel trailer to the campground as long as the trailer was less than twenty-six feet in length. Yes, the Sawtooth Trail was closed, but only for those on horseback—hiking on foot was fine.

Sometime around the third question I realized that there was a rumbling deep down in my guts and that it wasn’t hunger and felt that I should visit the restroom facilities. Pretty darned quick.
Yes, the restrooms are open they’re down that hallway on your…I didn’t hear her say “right”, because I was moving pretty briskly down the hallway and the door was closing behind me before she could finish, I’m sure.

With suspicions that I was witnessing the nasty virus that was going around the hospital where my wife works, I evacuated my bowels quite noisily and with not a small amount of fragrance. I wiped and flushed and washed and feeling much better I left to drive to the trailhead for Chestnut Knob.





If you’ve never hiked that trail, it’s moderately steep with a gain in elevation of about 600 or 700 feet in about two miles. Not bad, but I know some people have a tough time with the climb. There’s a nice spot to stop along the way where you have a great view of the Jacob Fork Gorge in which High Shoals Falls is located. Today the sky was mildly overcast and the air was very clear so I had the best views from there that I’d ever seen. Strangely, in spite of the cold weather we’ve enjoyed the past two weeks, today had turned out extremely warm and I soon realized I could have easily worn shorts.

I stopped at the overlook for a while and took some shots. After a couple of photos, my stomach started rumbling again and with no small amount of pain I realized that I would have to once more clear the contents of my gut. I opened my daypack and found a roll of toilet paper (never leave home without backpacking toilet paper!) and cast about for a private spot in the woods where I would be least likely to shock anyone who might happen along.

Walking down slope slightly and behind some low pines, I decided that this was as good a place as any and dropped my trousers. Barely in time.

The bug-infested contents of my bowels exited at pretty much light speed I have to say. The mass hit the forest floor and drilled right through it and into the bedrock beneath and kept going. I’m sure if I check the website for the US Geological Survey, I will see that they recorded a mild tremor centered near Chestnut Knob at about noon on February 21. Roughly as that mass was passing through the molten iron core of the Earth, some neutrinos caught up with it and they all passed through the mantle together and appeared through the crust of the Himalayan plate at roughly the same time. The stuff didn’t quite have enough oomph left to reach escape velocity and fell back, and I suspect a Tibetan monk is now puzzling over the frozen, yellowish-brown mass that plummeted into his village.

Here in North Carolina I cleaned myself up and covered the small hole I’d drilled into Chestnut Knob with some leaves and dirt.

I had expected to encounter some other hikers, but all the day long I seemed to have the park pretty much to myself. After spending a few minutes at the overlook I pushed on to Chestnut Knob. Happily, the weather had completely cleared by the time I reach the Knob, and the views were spectacular. I ended up taking about 100 photos from this spot alone. It was a little after noon by this point and I was feeling much, much better, so I took out a sandwich and some water. After about half the sandwich, I realized Mr. Stomach Virus had not run its course and that I would once more have to find a private spot in which to squat. With great impetus I had to scramble down from the peak, discovering as I did so a great view of the rock tower on which I’d just been standing. This virus was serious business. The runs. The squirts. The brown geyser. I was one sick puppy and found myself merely relieved that no one else seemed to be interested in hiking the South Mountains on this unseasonably warm February weekday. There was that, at least, I pondered as I groaned and smelled up the World.

(If you ever stand at this point, you're on top of my toxic waste.)

Finally, though, I seemed to be rid of whatever it was that was ailing my innards. I’d only had a cup of coffee and two pieces of dry toast for breakfast, which I assumed was what had ended up in Tibet. And the partial sandwich had merely been the boost for this round. Yes, I was certain I was feeling much better and once I’d cleaned up, I went to my pack and drank some bottle water. It stayed inside me.



From there, I decided to take the Sawtooth Trail down to the Little River Trail and catch the Jacob Fork Trail and then the Short Trail back to the parking lot. I was totally unfamiliar with this section of the park so this was all new territory for me. Sadly, most of the terrain I traveled after leaving Chestnut Knob was pretty boring. The trails are mainly the old CCC roads from the 1930s, so they’re very wide and are basically auto roads that are open to horseback, bike, and foot travel. I didn’t see anyone else, though. I did walk through the Sawtooth Campground and it’s pretty much nothing but a wide grassy field with three metal fire pits and fire grates and a privy (which I happily did not have to use, thank Jove).


The trails were turning out to be very boring with the forest cover composed mainly of relatively young scrub oak and pines—not very pretty to look at. Soon after descending several hundred feet I came to a river crossing. Looking to my right, I could see that the stream went down a very long sliding rock. For some reason, the park service has chosen this point in the trail to dump brush and debris, and I had to push through this dried stuff to whack my way down below the sliding rock where I could take a nice photo. Once I’d done that, I made my way back to the trail and continued on.



Soon I was on the Little River Trail. As I was hiking along, I could hear rushing water. Looking to my left I saw a fence with a sign indicating that this was a dangerous spot and to stay on the trail. Of course this is an invitation to explore, and I soon discovered a waterfall that I hadn’t known existed:

Little River Falls.

(Translation: "Come Explore, Little Boy")

I had to very carefully climb down what amounts to a cliff face to get to the base of the waterfall. I used some old logs to maneuver my way down and so spent the next forty-five minutes taking photos of the falls and looking downstream to where there was another two sets of waterfalls that didn’t look to me that they were worth the trouble to photograph. A log had recently lodged itself below Little River Falls and I was able to use it as a kind of brace to take one really nice shot of the waterfall. Most of my other shots contain a lot of debris and vegetation that prevented me from getting a very clear photo of this waterfall. However, that said, it’s not a bad waterfall and I’d recommend finding it if you’re in the park.

After that I went back down to the Jacob Fork Parking lot and sat down at the picnic area and looked at my map. It was getting late—about 4:30 pm, and I decided to head up to High Shoals Falls and get a few photos there before heading back to Charlotte. As I set up my camera tripod for shots, three different groups arrived and left, all of them with dogs. I’m not a fan of taking dogs into our parks, so I’m always nervous when hikers bring their dogs along. These didn’t bother me, except for a moment when I was stuck between a boxer and a German shepherd who looked like they were about to start fighting (with me in between). Ugh.

Leave your dogs at home, people.

Packing up my tripod, I headed back down to my truck, pausing along the way to take a few dozen more photographs. Within two hours I was back home. It was a nice trip, and I really need to take my trailer to the park campground and set up shop for a few days and take my time hiking the few trails there that I haven’t seen.

And, hopefully, next time I’ll arrive at the park without my visitor, Mr. Stomach Virus.

(And, no, before you ask, it was not the pickled green tomatoes.)