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.
Tag Archives: US 276
2017/10/17 – Touching the Sky at Tennent Mountain
I felt like I was walking on air. I knew I wasn’t – in fact I was hiking on the narrow ridge of Tennent Mountain. There was but a narrow path that navigated the small bit of the ridge that remained level enough at the top to walk. In many areas the terrain sloped quickly and someone steeply on either side, but still mild enough to provide just the right level of unobstructed views and excitement without the feeling of danger. one could see the distinctive ball of Looking Glass Rock, though very small and far, far below (some 1,500-2000 feet lower in elevation gain). We had hiked that rock yesterday, and it was hard to imagine one could find a location so dramatically higher, but there we were, looking down on the rock which had struck fear into us at the end, where the dramatic slope of the rock gave us little comfortable place to enjoy the views we had hiked over 3 miles to obtain.
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 