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Our next destination in North Carolina is in the mountains northeast of Asheville. Down by the River Campground is in the community of Pineola. It’s just a blip on the map that most people don’t even realize is there. The nearest “big” town is Newland but with a population of ~700 people, calling it big is a bit of an overstatement. The drive from Chill Hill will be just over 100 miles with the majority of the route on I-40. We needed to get out rather early since another rig was showing up the morning we left. We took advantage of the rest stop near Marion to kill some time and even drive into the nearby Camping World to pick up a couple items. The remaining drive up into the mountains along US-221 was a little bit challenging. It’s a narrow winding road that requires concentration to navigate. We pulled into the campground and had 2 other rigs in front of us waiting to get parked.
It’s not a huge campground with 124 sites listed. Although a dozen or so of the sites actually have park models on them most with extensive planting beds around them. Plus there are probably 10 more travel trailers or fifth wheels that aren’t necessarily permanent but have decks built making them quasi-permanent. Most of the pads are concrete although you need to drive across a neighbor’s lawn area in order to get onto the pad. They have water, electric, sewer and surprisingly good wi-fi. There isn’t a swimming pool, tennis courts or other similar amenities, but we wouldn’t use those things anyways. The grounds appear to be meticulously cared for. Fortunately the nearby sawmill appears to be closed so we don’t need to worry about noise waking us up early. The Linville River flows south along the western edge of the campground. In all, this looks like a nice, quiet place to spend 2 months.
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| Our Home for the Next 2 Months |
When we were making our plans back in March for this summer, we had picked this area of NC because there seemed to be a fair amount of hiking nearby. Plus being at 3500 feet in elevation, maybe the heat of the summer wouldn’t be too bad. Another advantage of this location was our proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway - only a 2 mile drive from camp. It wasn’t until we got here and started to investigate the hiking possibilities did we realize there were about 200 trails within a 20 mile radius of camp! For our first hike, we picked one close by. The Harper Creek and Lost Cove Wilderness Study Areas are about 10 miles to the southeast of camp. The AllTrails app lists ~20 trails within the nearly 13,000 acres of forest in these two sections. The trail we picked was the Little Lost Cove Cliffs and North Harper Creek Trails. The combination of these two trails along with just under a one mile section of forest service road would give us a 5 mile loop hike with about 800 feet of elevation gain.
Before getting to the actual hike, I should mention a new tool I’ve been using for our hiking and biking adventures. Caltopo is a website that has some excellent mapping capabilities. I am by no means an expert, so if you are curious, I found many YouTube videos describing the use of Caltopo. I will provide an overview of how I have come to rely on this site for additional mapping options. While my handheld Garmin 750T has built in topo maps and many trails already loaded, it doesn’t always have them all. Or sometimes there are numerous trails in the Garmin but I want to make sure we are on the intended one during our hike.
Caltopo has various base map layers to choose from. Once positioned on the map, I can “Add a Line” and started drawing along the intended trail. Unlike doing this in Google Earth where you must tediously add points along the trail, Caltopo will automatically follow the trail as you click on it. Once the trail is created, I often output it in two formats. I can have it export the track in a GPX format to then load onto my Garmin. Big hint here: if you do this, make sure to go into Track Manager on the Garmin and select the track you added and click the toggle to display it on the map. Early on I loaded tracks, got to the intended trailhead only to not see them on the Garmin. Little did I know, they were there just not displayed!
The other output format that works quite well is a geospatial PDF format. Why would I want this and how is it used? Well another useful app for a smart phone (IOS or Android) is Avenza Maps. In the past I would load free USGS topo maps for the area I plan on hiking onto the phone for use on the trail. Once the map was loaded, I no longer needed cell coverage during the hike. The phone’s GPS would put a blue dot at my location on the map within Avenza. It was handy since many areas we hike have no cell coverage. But the downside was, the standard topo maps don’t often have the trails marked. By using Caltopo to create a geospatial PDF of the exact hike I want to do, I can now have that loaded on the phone as a backup to the Garmin. Below is an example of the one created for this particular hike. I can easily load it before leaving by using the QRCODE at the bottom of the PDF. The second image is a screen shot from my phone within Avenza Maps from a different hike.
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| Sample Geospatial PDF from Caltopo for Avenza Maps |
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| Screen Shot from Phone Using Avenza Maps |
Now back to this hike. The trailhead is about 8.5 miles from camp. The first 4 miles are paved before turning onto FS464 - a gravel road that winds thru the forest. It’s not a terrible road but there are plenty of rough sections and numerous parts that are only wide enough for one vehicle. We get to the trailhead and find a few other vehicles already parked along the wider section of the road near the gate. We decide to go in a counterclockwise direction starting on Trail #271A which has us going uphill for the first 3/4 miles. The brush along the trail had recently been cleared and within the first quarter mile we saw the culprit. A tracked skid steer with a mean looking brush cutter was parked along the side of the trail. Unfortunately it had also been used to clear probably a couple of acres of the forest and what had been an obvious trail was now completely obscured by the cut brush. This is where having the intended track on the GPS came in handy. We could walk across the field and find the continuation of the trail on the far side of the clearing.
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| Mean Brush Cutting Machine |
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| Newly Cleared Land |
We knew that near the 0.75 mile point was a side trail to the Little Lost Cove Cliffs. Good thing we knew it, because we didn’t see a sign and the trail itself wasn’t very obvious. The cliffs are just a few hundred feet off the main trail and well worth the visit. We spent a bit of time relaxing here and enjoying the great views of the valleys and mountains. The Blue Ridge Parkway is somewhere in the distance, but couldn’t identify it.
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| View at Little Lost Cove Cliffs |
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| Rocky Outcropping |
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| Mountains as Far as the Eye Can See |
At the 1.5 mile point, we work our way back down to FS464. There is a marked trailhead here as well as a wide enough shoulder for a few vehicles. We walk the road heading west and then follow FS58 south for a total of just under a mile before we find the North Harper Creek Trailhead (Trail #266) - again with room for several cars. At the 2.7 mile point we come upon North Harper Creek. After making the creek crossing, we decide the Boulder near a small waterfall would be a good spot for lunch.
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| Trailhead at FS464 |
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| Heading to North Harper Creek |
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| Dark Red Fungus |
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| Small Falls Along Trail |
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| Soothing Lunch Spot |
For the next mile we will more or less follow the creek, needing to cross it a couple more times. The water wasn’t that deep and there were plenty of large rocks we could use to get across while keeping dry boots.
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| Pink Tipped Bud |
At the 3.7 mile mark, we intersect North Harper Creek Falls Trail (#239). This is our route back to the car. But while confirming which way we should go, I happened to notice a waypoint on the Garmin for a waterfall that was less than a quarter mile away along Trail #266. We decided we had the energy needed to make the slight detour to check it out.
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| Mushroom Central |
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| Diversion Point for Waterfall |
We didn’t need to go far before we came to the creek again and we could tell we were at the top of a small water waterfall. It was neat but it was tough to see the actual falls safely from this vantage point. The trail along the creek got dramatically steeper and we decided that wasn’t the best option nearly 4 miles into a hike.
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| Falls Down Below |
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| Small Cascade |
My GPS had a trail continuing on the opposite side of the creek and it did a large loop to negotiate the big drop in elevation a bit more safely. It was still steep and a bit muddy, but we made it safely down and were greeted with a rather impressive 20 foot falls. We spent some time enjoying our unexpected find realizing we now had to climb back up the steep, muddy trail to work our way back to the proper trail that would lead to the Jeep. Along the way, we ran into a father with his two young kids. He was looking for some falls with a pool for the kids to play in. We did our best to give him directions but I’m not sure if they even attempted to find it. When we got back to the road and our car, a large forest service truck and trailer were picking up the skid steer we saw at the start of our hike. We were talking with the guy and he assumed the land was cleared for some research project but was not aware of the specific details.
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| Unexpected Falls |
About a 1/3 mile in will be a trail intersection. Don’t take the hard left which leads to the visitor center. Instead, go 50 feet further to take another left that heads to the Upper Falls Overlook. There are signs, but it could be confusing. The overlook has a great view of the side by side falls. They aren’t huge - maybe 10 feet? - but they are pretty. There is also a view of the water going thru a small canyon that curves thru the rock as it flows to the lower falls which isn’t quite visible from this spot.
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| Upper Linville Falls |
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| Water Snakes to Lower Falls |
Back on the main trail, there will be a left turn to Chimney View Overlook in less than half a mile. There is a small viewpoint along the way, but it is worth going down the stairs to the larger viewpoint. This spot is further downstream and provides a nice view of the lower falls which drops about 45 feet. You can also see the lower falls overlook in the distance and a look of the Linville River Gorge downstream.
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| Lower Linville Falls from Chimney View |
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| Zoomed In to Upper Falls Viewpoint |
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| View Down Linville Gorge |
The last two viewpoints are another 1/3 mile out the trail. The Gorge View Overlook is pretty given we are about 300 feet above the river. But probably our favorite view point is from Erwin’s View Outlook. The trail leads to a set of wooden stairs that bring us to a large rock outcropping. There is a stone retaining wall around the perimeter for safety but it is the perfect height to sit down and simply enjoy the view. The lower falls are about 0.2 miles away but it still is a spectacular view.
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| Stairs Up to Erwin's View |
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| What a View! |
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| Lower Linville Falls |
From the overlooks, we could see people on the opposite side of the river down at the water level. We weren’t positive how they were getting there so we decided to figure it out. We saw there was a trail near the Visitor Center called the Plunge Basin Trail. It sounded promising. We decided to drive to the paved lot and have lunch before attempting the trail. Getting to the Visitor Center was a bit confusing since the road we needed was off the Blue Ridge Parkway but at this time the BRP was closed for construction at the bridge over the Linville River. We eventually managed to get there, have lunch and find the desired trailhead.
Plunge Basin Trail is listed as a 1.7 mile moderate trail with just over 500 feet of elevation gain. The first 1/3 mile isn’t too bad and we hit a split in the trail. We head straight to check out another overlook about another 1/4 mile away. There are nice stone stairs with stone railing leading down to the lower falls overlook. We are still about 50 feet above the river but this vantage point lets us see back up a portion of the small canyon that we saw winding it’s way thru the rock on its way to the falls. We could also see people up at the Chimney Overlook. We enjoyed the view from here and the trail was more challenging than the one on the other side of the river but not terrible.
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| Many Mini Mushrooms |
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| Stairs to Plunge Basin Overlook |
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| View at Plunge Basin Overlook |
We headed back to the split in the trail and decided to give the other portion of the Plunge Basin Trail a try since it was likely to take us down to water level. This was probably a poor choice. It’s only about 1/3 mile long but loses over 250 feet for an average grade of 15%. There is a section of wooden stairs but for most of the trail, it was wet, muddy and lots of fallen trees, roots and rocks to get around or over. My biggest problem was I had brought along my larger DSLR camera and lens. So not only did in need to deal with my footing on the trail, I had to be careful not to smash the camera into something while doing it. We came across a few people heading back up and they would encourage to keep going - “that it’s worth it”.
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| Stairs Along Plunge Basin Trail |
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| Albino Mushrooms? |
We did make it to the water without injury or our bodies or the camera. There were a few other people out enjoying the view and the roar of the falls. There wasn’t much dry land down here to do additional exploring. And at least according to the signs, swimming isn’t permitted. We spent at most 10 minutes before we started back up the obstacle course of a trail.
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| Lower Linville Falls at Plunge Basin |
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| Beautiful Setting Once You're Here |
Another hike that is very popular nearby is the Upper Creek Falls Loop. This short (1.5 miles) hike isn’t very far from camp and it’s easy to get to - 7 miles south on NC-181. There were at least a dozen cars in the parking lot at the trailhead. We took the trail in the clockwise direction which drops about 200 feet in the 0.4 miles down to Upper Creek. As we approached, we could hear lots of people. There are some smaller waterfalls and pool areas along this section of the creek. At least 20 people were here enjoying the water. Since the water wasn’t too high, there was a large amount of the exposed rock that was dry so it was possible to walk around safely. We spent some time checking out this side of the creek before continuing on the trail.
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| Small Falls on Upper Creek |
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| Looking Down Upper Creek |
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| Looking Over the Edge |
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| Mini Rapids |
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| Chris Hates When I Get This Close to Edge |
To complete the loop, we needed to cross the creek at this point before heading down the trail on the opposite side. I suppose if we were willing to get wet feet, crossing would have been easy. There were spots that were less than a foot deep and where the water wasn’t flowing too quickly. But we really don’t enjoy hiking in wet boots and while they might be waterproof, that only holds if the water doesn’t go over the top of the boot. I definitely had an advantage over Chris in these situations with my longer legs. I found a route that worked and then I waited for her to find a series of boulders and rocks she could hop across.
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| Loads of People at Upper Creek |
There was a geocache several hundred feet upstream of our crossing point. So Chris found a place to sit and people watch while I headed up a narrow footpath looking for the cache. There were probably another ten people in the water above where we crossed. I found the cache and headed back to get Chris and continue downstream on the real trail. After a tenth mile or so, you be below the actual falls and can come back to another portion of exposed rock to actually see the falls. They are impressive looking with a 40 to 50 foot drop.
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| Upper Creek Falls! |
After checking out the falls, it’s back to the trail and continue downstream for another 800 feet or so before the trail brings us back to the creek. There are a couple smaller falls along the section of Upper Creek but the people here were using the smooth rock surface of the creek bed as a giant slide. It looked like fun if we had only brought our swimming suits.
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| Near Our Second Creek Crossing |
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| Looking Down the Creek |
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| Slide Down Slick Rock Anyone? |
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| Small Falls at Second Crossing |
This creek crossing was much easier only needing to jump a couple feet across the narrower sections. The hike back to the car is a good workout. A series of about 10 switchbacks bring us back up the 400 feet in elevation required to get our car. The hike itself was “okay” but the area along Upper Creek was well worth the effort required. It’s clear why this hike is so popular.
In less than our first week in this area, we are discovering some incredible hikes and waterfalls galore. But given the quantity of good hikes, we might find that 2 months isn't enough time to get them all in!
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