US National Forests : Pisgah NC

The U.S. National Forests are some of America’s greatest—and most overlooked—natural treasures. With more than 150 national forests covering nearly 200 million acres, they offer endless opportunities for hiking, biking, paddling, horseback riding, camping, and wildlife viewing. While some forests remain wonderfully wild and remote, others feature campgrounds, scenic drives, picnic areas, and visitor centers that make exploring easy.

In this episode, Kit Parks explores the stunning Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. To make the most of her visit, she stopped at the Pisgah Ranger District Visitor Center near Brevard, where friendly rangers helped plan her adventures. The visitor center also features informative exhibits, maps, and expert advice to help you discover some of the area’s best hikes, waterfalls, scenic overlooks, and outdoor activities.

Prefer to Listen to the Podcast?  Listen HERE

Exploring US National Forests: Pisgah National Forest in Western NC

The US National Forests are a FREE national treasure most of which you can hike, bike, paddle and horseback ride. There are over 150 national forests containing almost 200 million acres of land just ripe for exploration and discovery.

Some of the forests are very primitive, while others have camp grounds and Visitor’s Centers. Today we are exploring the beautiful Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western NC.

I took advantage of the Visitor’s Center at the Brevard side of Pisgah to plan my trip. The Visitor’s Center has a nice exhibit area and the ranger (thank you Peggy!!!) are available to help you plan your adventures.

Hiking: Hundreds of miles.  Here’s a good blog post, too.
Mountain Biking: 245+ miles
Road Cycling: Blue Ridge Parkway 400+ miles. Here’s a good blog post, too.
Water Activities: Several rivers to paddle, raft or boat.
Horseback riding: [stables offer 1-2-3 hour rides] or bring your own horse: over 100 miles

Be sure to stop by the Visitor’s Center for guidance and to see their exhibit (also bathrooms so you can get some water!) Speaking of water, there is plenty of springs and streams but you need to treat it to avoid getting giardia.

Cradle of Forestry: This is the birthplace of science-based forestry management. Wonderful exhibit and they offer lots of programs. This is where I saw the Blue Ghost Fireflies.

The Hatchery: There are LOTS of trout here (get a license). You can stop by the Hatchery to learn more about trout.

Stop at The Hub Before Entering Pisgah National Forest

Just outside the Brevard entrance to Pisgah National Forest is a fun, quirky gathering spot called The Hub. Part bike shop, part repair shop, and part outdoor hangout, it’s a favorite with both locals and visiting cyclists.

After a day on the trails, grab a craft beer and a meal from one of the rotating food trucks outside. It’s a unique business model that works remarkably well—and a great place to meet fellow outdoor enthusiasts.

One tip: arrive early. The Hub closes in the late afternoon so the staff can get outside and enjoy this beautiful corner of western North Carolina, too!

Before heading into the national forest, take advantage of Brevard’s grocery stores to stock up on food, drinks, ice, and any other supplies you’ll need. It’s also a good idea to fill your gas tank, as services become much more limited once you’re inside the forest.

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US National Forests: Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina Podcast Transcript

Prefer to read instead of listen? Below is the complete transcript of
Kit Parks’ exploration of Pisgah National Forest in western North
Carolina. Discover scenic hikes, waterfalls, mountain biking, camping,
the famous blue ghost fireflies, and practical tips for planning an
affordable adventure in one of America’s most beautiful national
forests. This transcript has been cleaned for formatting, punctuation,
and readability while preserving the original spoken content.

Prefer to listen to the podcast?  Listen HERE

US National Forests : Pisgah NC

Guilty as charged, I’m guilty of always looking for adventure in faraway
places when sometimes adventure can be in our own backyard. Many of the
trips that I’ve covered in Active Travel Adventures cost a lot, both to
get to and to do. I’m going local and taking you on an outstanding
adventure that doesn’t have to cost you a dime.

————————————————————————

We are going to explore a little-known national treasure in the US
called our national forests, and in particular, we’re going to Pisgah
National Forest in my own home state of North Carolina. This amazing
natural area is near the town of Brevard, a town I’ll most likely retire
to. In this area, you can hike, bike, paddle, horseback ride to your
heart’s content. It’s also a cultural and artistic oasis located in
Western North Carolina. I’m going to tell you all about the many
different ways that you can explore and play in the land of the
waterfalls.

I received my AAA magazine in the mail and in there was an article on
the blue ghost fireflies located in the Pisgah forest in my own home
state of North Carolina. I was intrigued. These fireflies mate around
the same time that the magazine came out and after seeing this one
photo, I was hooked. I got to go there. Oddly, for someone who travels
as much as I do, I don’t like to do a whole lot of planning for my
travels and I’m getting more and more where I go and then figure it out
when I get there. I saw that Pisgah has a really nice visitor center, so
I decided I’m going to let them do all the work for me. It’s about a
seven-hour drive from my house, so I did book an Airbnb from my first
night in a town called Hendersonville, which is lovely. That would give
me plenty of time to get to the forest in the morning and be fresh and
try to figure out what on earth I was going to do during my trip.

I drove up on a Sunday and didn’t have an appointment to see the
fireflies until Tuesday night. That gave me lots of time to explore,
figure out what I wanted to do and I didn’t have to get back home until
the following weekend. First thing in the morning, I headed to the
visitor’s center where I met volunteer Peggy, an amazing resource. I
told her what I like to do, how much time I like to spend and what kind
of activity level I’d like to do. Within fifteen minutes, she had
outlined the whole week for me of things that I should do and see.
Something that would’ve taken me hours to do it by myself. All for
nothing. This is a fabulous resource and I love doing things like this.
What a time saver.

Day One Of Hike

On my first day, she suggested I do the Daniel Ridge Loop, which is
about a four-mile moderate hike. I liked that it was blazed. I prefer
blaze trails. A blaze is when they put either some marker on the trees,
around the stones, on the pathway, usually by color that lets you know
exactly where you are so you don’t get lost. I’m not the best at
orienteering using the compass, the maps and all that. In any case in my
woods, there’s so much forest, it’s hard to see beyond your immediate
area anyway in order to orient yourself. I like the fact that this was
blazed.

This was a beautiful hike and I was able to, towards the end of the
hike, have my lunch at this really pretty waterfall. It was a nice way
to start my little adventure in the Pisgah National Forest. When exiting
the trail by the little bridge walkway back to the little park and
trailhead area, I came across a little puddle of blue butterflies. I’m
not sure what they were, but there had to be a half a dozen, so
engrossed in either bear or dog urine that they didn’t even mind that I
was that close and personal with. It was very cool. Peggy also
recommended that I do the John Rock trail after lunch in hopes that the
low hanging clouds of that morning would dissipate, which gratefully
they did. This nice hike, which is fairly steep uphill, so I’d call it a
little moderately hard. It’s worth it though. You get to the top of this
big rock face area that overlooks Looking Glass Rock and it’s a stunning
180-degree view.

Another cool thing Peggy did was she outlined a combination trail so I
had the most scenic route getting up to and back from the John Rock
area. Looking Glass gets his name because, particularly in the
wintertime when it’s covered in ice, it gives a mirror reflection.
Looking Glass is a huge domed rock on top of the mountain, and domes are
something that this area is known for. I’m not into rock climbing, but I
know and I don’t cover rock climbing on this podcast, but because of the
domes, this is a huge rock-climbing area as well.

Now, it’s late in the afternoon. I need to figure out where to sleep.
Gratefully, in the national park, she has lots of options. You can sleep
in a camping ground, go to town to Brevard or you can primitive camp.
The campgrounds are nice because they do offer an assigned campground
site. You do have a bathroom, shower, and there’s also security. Not
that it’s necessarily needed, but it’s nice to know that it’s there and
there’s also a host on the campgrounds should you run into any problems
or have any questions. It’s a nominal fee for the sign campsites or you
could primitive camp for free. You need to be 1,000 feet off the road,
although I don’t think they enforced that too much on some of the side
gravel roads, of which there are many. I promise you, this could be a
really inexpensive vacation. Once you get here, probably by car because
you need to be able to get around the park.

You can bring in your own food, you can bring in your own drink,
including alcohol, which is tolerated if not outright accepted in most
places, so it costs you about the same as if you were home. You’ve got
to eat anyway. I got to my campsite, which was lovely. It was a large
campsite. It included a pretty big bay area surrounded in the woods. I
had a gravel pad for my tent and then a nice picnic table. You could see
the neighbors, but they weren’t right in your face, which was nice. If
you do want to do a campfire and there is a campfire ring and a little
grill area, you do need to buy the wood in area so that you don’t
inadvertently bring in some pests that could actually hurt the forest.
Which has happened unfortunately in a lot of the forests in our country.
Do make sure that you buy the wood locally and it’s very reasonable as
an encouragement for you to do so.

“Cradle Share on X

Tired from hiking all day, I was asleep by 9:00. I slept like a rock and
I used that little trick I learned when I was in Bhutan where they put
the rug on top of my pad. Remember, I mentioned that it was so noisy, my
little Therm-a-Rest pad. I happened to have a couple of blankets in my
car. I put one under the pad and one on top of it and no crinkly noise
all night. That’s definitely a car camping addition for me in the
future. One of the beautiful things here is all the vegetation. The
trees are flushing out and there are still lots of wildflowers to see.
Among the wildflowers I saw were lady slippers, Jack-in-the-pulpit,
lizard’s tail, wild geraniums. Some of the beautiful shrubs were the
flame azalea, the mountain laurel on the lower elevations and also in
the lower elevation, some of the rhododendrons. Littering the forest
floor were the petals of the fading tulip magnolias. Plus, I saw some
beautiful sweet shrub.

One of the highlights was on my second day up on Graveyard Ridge,
trilliums were in full bloom and this is an endangered species. However,
on Graveyard Ridge there are thousands of them and I happened to get
there at the peak or past peak depending on what elevation I was at. It
was truly spectacular. At the lower elevations, there is an awful lot of
poison ivy. You want to be careful when you step off the trail to use
the restroom that you don’t accidentally squat in a poison ivy patch of
which there is much. I will also post a picture of what the stem of
poison ivy looks like. It’s very hairy, so it’s easy to recognize when
it’s mature. That way you don’t find yourself in a very itchy and
uncomfortable situation.

Day Two Of Hike

On day two, I got up early and went to the Graveyard Fields. They call
it graveyard because a wildfire many years ago had killed the trees down
to stumps, which looked like a bunch of headstones. This has got a
scenic overlook that you can park at and use this as a base setting to
do the Graveyard Field hikes to the upper and lower falls up to
Graveyard Fields. Do parts of the Mountain in the Sea trail or go over
to Art Loeb trail, which is another popular 30-mile hike that you can do
part or all of that hike as well. The weather in the previous week had
been really rainy and they had gotten eleven inches of rain. There was a
lot of moisture still on the Graveyard Field trek, a little boggy in
parts, but I still managed to keep my feet fairly dry. As you approached
the ridge, you go to this wonderful little birch grove of thousands upon
thousands of tiny little birches and their leaves had popped out, so
there’s this bright green. You see this flittering of the leaves dancing
in the sunlight and the wind, and there was this magical little grove on
your way to the ridge.

One thing I like about hiking here is that it’s such a massive forest
that it’s not crowded once you get maybe 500 feet off the main trails.
On some trails, I saw nobody unless I was at the very peak of say at the
John Rock or up at the Graveyard Fields. On the Davidson River hike, I
didn’t see a soul the whole trek, so I felt like I had the forest all to
myself. That night was the night to see the blue ghost fireflies. This
is a cool insect. I’m sure most of you know what fireflies or lightening
bugs are, but I’d never heard of the blue ghost fireflies. This is a
really teeny firefly about the size of a grain of rice. The males are
the only ones that have the wings and the females lay down in the leaf
mold.

At night during the mating season, which runs from mid-May to mid-June
up in this area and very few areas in the country, the male fireflies
will hover and glow in a consistent glow for up to ten seconds. Going
across the ground trying to show off for the females with its glow and
if the female likes the glow, shines onto the male and says, “Come on
baby light my fire,†and magic happens. Right after dusk, about 9:30 at
night, the grounds of this part of the forest were covered in these
little blue fireflies. You look down and get your eyes adjusted a little
bit and you’d see dozens and dozens of these little blue lights floating
all across the floor. This one woman referred to them as the fairyflies.
She didn’t know what they were. She just knew that something blue was
glowing across the forest floor. It’s a really incredible experience and
I encourage you if you are ever in this neck of the woods in the middle
of May, towards the beginning of June, come down to the Cradle Forestry.

That night they were calling for severe thunderstorms, so I was a little
bit dicey about what to do. The Cradle of Forestry, where I saw the blue
ghost fireflies is in the middle of the park and about 45 minutes or so
to the nearest town. Since I had the option not to sleep in a potential
severe storm, I chose not to and I didn’t feel like driving that late at
night. It’s already 10:30 that was dark, windy, unlit roads, so I truly
car camped. I went to sleep in the back of the car and said, “The heck
with it. I’m not going to worry about it. I’ll regroup in the morning
once I get a better idea what the weather’s going to be like.†When I
woke up in the morning, of course I had no cell service in the middle of
the forest so I couldn’t get the updated weather report, but the clouds
overhead did not look promising. I decided, “I’m going to cross over the
mountain and get out of the mountains right now.†I went to a little
town called Waynesville. That is one nice thing about car camping. It
gives you options.

It was nice outside of my initial Airbnb and the appointment to go see
the blue ghost fireflies. I had no other set agenda, so I was able to
have the flexibility to play around once I saw what the weather was
going to be like. I was grateful that I made this change of plans
because once I crossed over the mountains into the little town of
Waynesville, the weather improved remarkably and I had a beautiful day.
Instead of trudging through the water in the muck and the mud, I ended
up finding a lovely little place to sit out under the trees and actually
record what I’m doing, and having an absolutely delightful day in this
charming little town.

Activities At Pisgah National Forest

The cool thing about the Pisgah National Forest is there are tons of
active things to do. If you’re not into hiking, of which there are
hundreds of miles of hiking trails with all sorts of beautiful vistas,
you can do mountain biking or road biking to your heart’s content. It is
a true biker’s mecca and at all different levels from starter level to
hardcore, lung-busting, single track trails. If you come to the area to
come cycling and you are cycling solo, but you’d like a little company,
they have got lots of group rides of all different skill levels from
beginners all the way up to the hardcore super-advanced riders. There
are rides almost seven days a week.

“Be Share on X

There are plenty of places to rent bikes as well. If you prefer road
cycling, the Blue Ridge highway is nearby, which offers over 400 miles
of some of the most scenic cycling roads in the nation. It’s often
referred to as America’s favorite drive and it’s particularly popular in
October when the leaves are in full fall foliage glory. The nice thing
is there are lots of pullouts, so when there’s a particularly
spectacular overlook, there’s area for you to park your bike or your car
to take advantage of it. One pretty road ride is going up US 276 across
the parkway and down NC 215. It is stunning. If you’re more into
straight down, fly in your face trails, they’ve got that too. If you run
out of trails in Pisgah National Forest, there’s always the DuPont State
Forest nearby. Movie fans will recognize that forest because that’s
where the Hunger Games was filmed.

I discovered another quirky and cool thing about this area. Let’s say
you’re flying too fast on your bike and you wipe out, break something,
you need to park or need to upgrade your gear a little bit. Right
outside the forest, on the way to Brevard, there’s a place called the
Hub. Next to the Hub, and it’s inside the Hub, is the Pisgah Tavern.
While you’re having your bike fixed up, there’s a little tavern there
with local craft beers as well as your regular can beers. It’s a really
cool place. Even though I don’t normally cover restaurants and such.
This area is into his bikes and brews.

Get tired of hiking and cycling, there’s always horseback riding. If you
don’t feel like bringing your horse, there are stables in the Pisgah
Forest. You can go on a guided horse ride for one, two or three hours.
Be sure to reserve in advance. The horse rides are available from April
through October. After all this hiking, biking and horseback riding, you
are going to be hot, sweaty and dirty, so it’s time to get in the water.
The Pisgah area also has tons of water sports. You can whitewater raft
down the French Broad River, kayak, canoe and even tube. In fact, even
in the wintertime, you can tube down the snowbanks. You’ll also find
some great paddling on the Davidson River, and you can also go on the
French Broad River paddle trail. There are also some camping sites on
this paddle trail. There are six sites available, but you’ve got to make
sure you reserve and pay for those in advance.

Another interesting hike include hiking up to the Devil’s Courthouse.
This is considered the private dancing chamber, the slant-eyed giant
Gudacca of Cherokee lore. Also consider hiking up the Looking Glass
Rock, that dome that I was able to see from John Rock. You can hike up
to the footbridge area, Pilot Rock, Chestnut Ridge and return via the
north prong Shining Creek, go on the Art Loeb trail, and hike the short
but difficult hike up to Sam Knob. Take advantage of all the knowledge
that you find at the visitor center. While you’re at the visitor center,
don’t forget to check out the exhibits that they have there. It’s a
wonderful resource.

In the park where I went to go see the blue ghost fireflies, I went to
the Cradle of Forestry. This is where the first science-based forestry
studies were going on in our whole country and we can thank the
Vanderbilts for that. At this forestry center, there’s 20,000 square
feet of exhibits, events, an amphitheater, and they’ve got tons of great
events like seeing the blue ghost fireflies. These include things like
having tea with llamas that include a two-mile trek. If you can’t get
enough of llamas, the Sherwood Forest Golf Course nearby offers llama
caddies on its three-part course.

Other programs at the Forest Center include a Bring Back the Monarch
program. This is a migratory bird and monarch flyway. There’s also
Forest Festival Days, learning about the legend of Tommy Hodges, an
outdoor drama in the amphitheater. They also have three paved trails
that are perfect for people in wheelchairs and strollers. The Pisgah
Forest itself gets about two million visitors a year on its 160,000
acres, most of which is in Transylvania County. There are 400 miles of
hiking trails, 180 miles of bike trails and 100 miles on horseback
trails. Bisecting the forest is the beautiful US 276 highway, part of
the forest heritage service scenic byway. This is named as a national
scenic byway, which is the highest designation a road can get in the
United States. In addition to the Cradle of Forestry, you can also visit
the hatchery that’s nearby the Davidson River hike that I went on.
Inside the hatchery, they’ve got exhibits and you can also take a
hatchery tour. This is a big trout area.

There are national forests all across America that you can see things
from the temperate rainforest like we visited to glaciers, deserts, to
other mountainous regions. There might be one in your neighborhood that
you’re not even aware of and go out and explore this fabulous resource.
Most of it’s free and if they do charge a fee, it’s nominal at best.
It’s a great way to get out in the outdoors and enjoy the beautiful
country of the United States of America, at little to no cost. We talked
a little bit about camping in the campgrounds where there’s a nominal
fee, but if you want to make this a free vacation, you can primitive
camp. I’ve done tons of camping and tons of backpacking, but I’ve never
done either one by myself. You know how I’m always encouraging you to do
a little plus one.

My Day Hike Adventure

This time, I decided I was going to do day hikes and then do primitive
camping. I chose to go to trails that are off the Big East Fork Pisgah,
which is right in the middle of the park somewhat and most people tend
to be near the entrances near town, so it was rather isolated. As I
headed out, I parked in a lot and got there first thing in the morning.
I’m the only one there and I was like, “This is cool.†I walked all
day, I’d say until about 4:00, and I did not see a soul the entire day
until I was nearing back towards the parking lot again. I saw a woman
walking with her dogs, probably an after work walk and then as I got to
my car, there’s a young man from Georgia who was going to go back down
near where the river’s fork to do some camping and fishing. My first
hike, I was going up a very steep climb up to Chestnut Ridge to Shining
Rock, so I decided I’d rather go up hard rather than down hard and it
was a lovely hike. I had the whole forest to myself and as I got to the
top, there is clearings so I could get this panoramic view of the Blue
Ridge mountain. It’s breathtaking.

“A Share on X

When I finally got to Shining Rock Gap, I climbed down and then it’s one
of those areas where there are so many trees and roots that there is no
vegetative growth. It was hard to see exactly where the trail was. This
is an area too that I want to point out whenever you’re hiking and you
get to a place where you’re not quite sure of which way to go, take your
poles or grab a stick or something and make some notation in the dirt so
that you know which way you came in. If you have to backtrack, you can
find it. If I had gone into this one area where Shining Rock was and
didn’t notice how I entered, there were lots of ways to exit from there
because there were so many routes and it wasn’t an obvious path until I
got through and found the path on the other side of maybe 100 somewhat
feet.

In fact, anytime I come to a fork and I’m not 100% sure, I take a
second. Make a little notation on the dirt so you can find a way back. I
always know I can find my way back to the car. I might get lost heading
out and I can always find my way back home. I always feel comfortable
that way. This trail was not blazed, which is not my favorite. I like
blaze trails where they’re marked and I feel comfortable. I follow
little red dots, or the white blazes or whatever the case may be on the
trail. This one did not, so I had to use my map. I had a nice National
Geographic map that I would not go into these woods without a good map
and a good compass. I get to Shining Rock Gap and now I did the hard
part getting there. I had not an easy hike, but a relatively easy hike
on the way back along the Shining Creek.

When I get to near where the two prongs, there’s a north prong and south
prong. When I get near where they’re going to meet, obviously I see both
of the rivers converging together. There was a big tree that was going
across the second creek and I said, “That must be the path.†It was
simply a little drop of a couple of feet down, which is a little more
dicey than I would normally like. I said, “I remembered something when I
went to Miraval Spa outside of Tucson.†They have these challenge
events there where one of them is you climb up a 50-foot telephone pole
to a platform and you’re harnessed in ropes, so you cannot get hurt
doing this. It’s a mind over matter challenge and then there’s another
telephone pole, 50 feet going across to yet another 50-foot-high
telephone pole. Picture a big arch. I’m up 50 feet in the air about to
walk 50 feet across to the other platform and your knees are shaking and
you think you’re going to die.

I remember the lady saying, “You know how to walk in a straight line.â€
I was like, “She’s right.†If this was on the sidewalk, no problem. I
know the pole is skinny, but it was at least six inches or so. I can
walk that. Sure enough it’s a mind over matter. I had to use that same
trick crossing this tree even though it was not as near as high. There
was water down rushing. I wouldn’t have gone far down the river, but I
could’ve hit my head on the rock or something, so it was a little
tricky. Remembering that I know how to walk a straight line, I get
across the creek and everything’s fine. I’m looking for the trail and I
realized, “It’s not on the trail,†and I look up, I had crossed the
creek maybe 50 feet before I was supposed to. There was a nice rock
skipping a bridge across the creek that I was supposed to take. If
something looks like it’s not quite right, double-check before you
plunge ahead like I did that may not have been the smartest thing to do
considering I saw nobody. Should I have hurt myself, I’d been a long way
away from getting any help.

I make it back across the creeks and now I’m where the creeks are now
together and it’s gotten much larger and it was beautiful. This is a
good time to take my lunch break and so I found this big rock right
overlooking the creek. It was just me and a salamander hanging out for
half an hour or so enjoying the scenic beauty, the peace and the quiet.
It was very nice and beautiful. I eventually made it back to my car and
on the way up, I noticed that there were some pretty campsites along the
creek and I’m sure they will be taken by the time I get back.

I got to my car and all we have is the girl’s car with the dog and the
Georgia guys. I cannot believe not one person has snagged these
campsites that I saw. I took maybe the fourth one in from the road. The
trail is up above the campsite itself, but somebody had made log stairs
and stone stairs to get down maybe 30 feet down to the campsite, right
on the river. It’s an absolutely perfect campsite. I cannot believe I
can get this gorgeous campsite for absolutely free. This was my
first-time primitive camping by myself.

At first, I was a little uneasy and I was wondering, “Should I be
scared?†I knew that they had some bear signs out. I wasn’t worried
about the bears because I wasn’t going to keep any food at the
campground, so I had nothing of interest to a bear. I wasn’t worried
about that so much. I was a little bit concerned about flash floods.
They had eleven inches of rain the week before and thunderstorms the day
before. They had a sign saying they could get up to ten feet very
quickly in a flash flood. I have supersonic ears and I’m a light
sleeper. If I hear the water getting really loud, I can climb up the
stairs that I came down pretty quickly and so I felt I can mitigate that
risk.

You would worry about the bugaboos, the human element. I got to think of
all the times I’ve been in the forest, there was only one time I was a
little spooked. That was on my very first long-distance backpacking trip
when I came across a guy that looked a little crazy to me. When I look
back in hindsight, that was probably the first Appalachian Trail true
hiker I had ever seen because the guys often don’t shave the whole hike.
I was in North Carolina, so he’d probably been on the trail for over a
month and so he had a grizzly months’ worth of beard and was unclean
obviously because he’s been hiking for days probably since his last rest
stop. That was the only guy that I remember being spooked. Most of the
people I’ve ever met in the woods have always been nice.

“Pisgah Share on X

I do try to keep the rule of not camping within walking distance with a
case of beer. I try to stay at least two miles from a road, so I worry
more about townies coming in to have a party and then me being in the
wrong place at the wrong time rather than fellow hikers. I did break the
rule on this night because the road was so desolate and in the middle of
nowhere. It’s not where people will be going by to go drinking. I was
nowhere near a town, almost an hour’s drive to town. I was like, “I’m
cool. You’ve done this before. You can do this.†Within an hour, I was
so enjoying myself sitting by the river reading that all those fears
went away. Now, I’ve got the confidence, “I can do this.†I did my plus
one. That’s what I want you to do. Whatever it is you’re doing, try to
do it one more plus and build your confidence in the adventure things
that you can do. All in all, it was a spectacular day, a beautiful
evening, and I was very proud of myself for doing my plus one.

On a cautionary note in this land of waterfalls, of which there are
hundreds of waterfalls and I have only highlighted some of the prettier
ones. There is some common sense things you need to do for waterfall
safety. Unfortunately, about half a dozen people die each year because
they are silly. They get too close to the fall and then the rocks are
very slippery and then once they slip, they go over the ledge. In fact,
I was up at Turtleback Falls a few years back where it’s very safe. It’s
a really fun place, also in the Pisgah Forest, but you’ve got to get to
it, from a different area that I have been talking about.

On Turtleback, you can climb up this rope up to the top of this cliff,
which is fairly safe. You get up there and then you slide off this rock,
I believe it’s a 30-foot drop into this deep pool that’s very safe.
You’re not going to hit your head on the bottom or anything like that.
You’ve got this little area to swim around, but then they have a rope
and you’ve got to stay behind that rope because after that rope is
Rainbow Falls, which drops 150 feet. In fact, one of my campmates on
that trip had a friend die the year before because she went past the
rope. She got caught in the current, went over the falls and died. You
need to use common sense. Most of the accidents are preventable if you
do what they say to do. Stay on the trail, stay in the areas that they
designate are safe, and should you happen to get caught in one of these
fast streams for whatever reason, don’t try to stand up.

That’s the second reason people get hurt or die is because they try to
stand up, their foot gets caught in a rock, and then the current pushes
them down into the water and then they drown. I hate to be a downer on
all this, but you need to be prepared in case something does go wrong.
Above all, don’t be silly with the selfies and get too close. Be safe,
be smart, have fun and enjoy the beautiful waterfalls of the Pisgah
Forest. Do you understand why I want to retire in this area? It’s
amazing. I hope I piqued your interest in exploring our national
forests. You can of course get lots more details and links at
ActiveTravelAdventures.com. Plus, you can get the handy Travel Planner
by downloading it directly from the site, or if you’re a member of our
newsletter, I’ll send it to you directly at the beginning of next month.
If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe to the
Active Travel Adventures podcast so that way you don’t miss a single
exciting episode. I’ll be back with another incredible adventure and you
don’t want to miss it. Until then, thanks for reading. Until next time,
adventure on.

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