It was nearly dark as I made my way along a footpath I could barely see. I resisted the urge to use my cell phone as a flashlight, though it wasn’t because I was worried about the power consumption. Rather, I wanted to spend a moment disconnected from everything, instead in tune with the woodsContinue reading “2020/10/20 – Catawba River Rendezvous”
Tag Archives: Pisgah National Forest
2020/10/20 – The Tall Way Up Shortoff
Hiking up a mountain is a phrase that sounds fairly ominous for those who haven’t done it a couple times. For those who have, they know the journeys are not the dragon filled, death defying escape that they might have imagined. For one, dragons are expensive, so due to budget cutbacks they only appear on weekends now on most trails. But getting to the top is often a circuitous route involving only gradual climbs, a few highlights along the trail, and at least in Appalachia woods and other features which obscure the totality of the climb and keep you in anticipation of what you’ll see next.
2020/10/16 – Doing Time at Silvermine Bald
I’m not sure if the ridge that the Blue Ridge Parkway rides west of Asheville through Mt. Pisgah and to the Great Balsams is actually the Pisgah Ridge. I saw that name on a sign once, though, so I’d like to think it is. Maybe its name is Gerald. I like to learn a lotContinue reading “2020/10/16 – Doing Time at Silvermine Bald”
2020/10/16 – Heading West along the Big East Fork
I couldn’t feel my legs. That might have been a little more disconcerting than it was, for at least it had a rational explanation. I had been standing in near-freezing water for nearly a minute (I have it on good authority that I could tell it wasn’t freezing because it wouldn’t have been water anymore). I was standing, barefoot, in the Big East Fork, a river that drains an area flowing from the Black Balsam/Graveyard Fields area of the Pisgah National Forest. It wasn’t for no reason that I was doing this. I didn’t recreationally try to catch hypothermia. It was the only way I had found to get a good picture.
2020/07/04 Jumping John Rock is a Gas, Gas, Gas
I wasn’t sure I could go. I was pacing, or at least the best approximation I could do, back and forth in our hotel room, testing out the injured foot that would need to have far more than the 20 hours I’d give it to recover from the nasty turn I had given it on the Flat Laurel Creek Trail. It really wasn’t good. My foot had swollen so much through the gaps in the compression sleeve that I was wearing that the edges nearly cut my skin. I wasn’t sure I could walk down to the car, and was half hoping Jess would push me a luggage cart. I could barely make it from bed to bathroom, and yet in less than an hour I was hoping to tackle a 7 mile, 1100 foot elevation gain hike.
In normal times I might have heard the fat lady sing. But these were covid times, and the fat lady’s performance was canceled as it was against CDC regulations.
2020/07/03 – Sam Knobs and Broomsticks
I kicked it into high gear and moved as quick as I possibly could, poles and feet crashing in furious and uncoordinated fashion into the grassy ground along the trail. And that was when it happened. My right ankle in foot erupted in pain as I had misstepped and landed with my foot sideways on the uneven ground. I couldn’t tell what was actually hurt, foot, ankle, pride….I just knew that it was NOT GOOD. Now, as somebody who has been hiking for years, I’m quite used to the run of the mill twisted ankle. On longer trips I usually get a good twist about every three days. Sometimes, like at Grandfather Mountain in 2017, that ankle twist will be with me for weeks. Twisted ankles are quite common for Jess as well, to say the least. As a former cross country runner, I’m well accustomed to just dealing with your run of the mill ankle twist. But nothing about this felt run of the mill.
2017/10/20 – Reveling in Roan Mountain
“Throw everything for a loop and go to Roan Mountain?” That’s what my immaculately prepared trip itinerary had listed for this Thursday in October 2017, the sixth day of our eight day mountain trip and our second in the vicinity of Grandfather Mountain and Linville Falls, likely next to a notation on a restaurant thatContinue reading “2017/10/20 – Reveling in Roan Mountain”
2017/10/19 – The Wonders of Linville Gorge (Table Rock and the Chimneys)
“The last mile to the parking area is very steep”, one of several trail guides I referenced had warned. Well, they weren’t joking. At least it was paved. The serious nature of this ascent mean that after miles of rustic roadway, you suddenly found pavement again. That made the road feel much safer in much the same way that duct tape always provided reassurance when one was on a poorly maintained fair ride.
2017/10/16 – Letdown at Looking Glass and Moore Cove Falls
Looking Glass easily provides the most striking and distinctive peak in the area. It’s shape can be easily identified from the rest even at a great distance. Every view which includes it is better because of it. You get no benefit from that when you’re on the actual rock. One thing is conspicuously absent from the view from Looking Glass; the rock itself.
J. Parker Nature Stories 