Moore Cove & Cove Creek

Wednesday July 20, 2022                                            Most Recent Posts:
riverbend RV Resort                                            Three Lakes & Bridal Veil
Lake Toxaway, NC                            Shrooming with Tom & Christmas in July

Wish I could post these faster and more often since I’m just getting behinder and behinder.  But I’ll be back in Virginia in less than 2 weeks so I’ll have plenty of time to blog with not so many things to do.   Even at my slow pace, if you missed a recent post and would like to see it, there are always links to the two previous posts on the top right of each blog post.

You can click any of the pictures to make them appear larger.

It’s moving in to late July in this post so if you are sad to see summer ending you can jump back with me to July.  The high was 78 degrees here today.  Perfect weather!

My google maps took me totally on a wild goose chase down a narrow bumpy road for 15+ miles before I ended up no where near where I really wanted to be.  My fault for not carefully checking the route first but just plugging it in as I got in the car.  Waste of time and gas and Poor Ruby.  She sits low to the ground and this was tough on her I’m sure.  But she’s a real trooper.

Finally I went to the PAVED main road through the Pisgah National Forest where google maps SHOULD have taken me and found what, as you can see, is a nice reasonable hike to a pretty falls you can walk behind.

These giant rock formations always amaze me.  They weren’t pushed down here by the glaciers so they must be visible due to erosion.  Maybe Sue Malone will enlighten us.  I wish I could take a picture of me standing next to this giant for size.  How I LOVE hiking.

When I arrived at Moore Cove Falls it was absolutely lovely and there was a mother and her son enjoying walking behind the water fall.

Children do know how to have fun.

She graciously offered to take these pictures of me hiking up and behind the falls.

This is just how much happiness I felt in being here.

I laugh at this one since it looks like I’m standing right in the water but I’m not.  And I really didn’t get wet at all.

This is taken through the falls.  You can barely see the water toward the bottom as it splashes into the pool.  Here’s a short video of the falls.

A better look at behind the falls and the water from the side.

Above my head.

I found the rock behind the falls very interesting and wished I had a geologist with me to explain what they were and the colors running through.  I’ll take Rick Bass please.

Wish I’d brought a chair, I would have sat and just soaked in all those ions.  Good holiday gift, a nice light weight but comfortable back packing chair if there is such a thing.

Here’s a short video from behind the falls.

From Moore Cove Falls Ruby took me to what was supposed to be the trail to Cedar Rock Falls.  The falls is on the John Rock Loop whose trailhead is at the Education Center which is closed.  Therefore, no on site information.  My Waterfall Book and internet  information said there were two bridges at the creeks but they were not there when I got to the creeks. I found out after I’d turned around that the bridges had been washed out by last year’s powerful flood.  I wasn’t prepared with water shoes for wading and didn’t want to hike for a few hours in soaking wet socks and shoes.

So I gave that hike up and went on to Cove Creek.  Same road closed and creek warning but here I was able to cross and keep my feet dry on the way up but not on the way back.  Still wet shoes and socks at the end of a hike is ok.,

Along the way there were some lovely cascades.

  One of the wonderful things about hiking is that you just never know what you will come upon.  I might call this a waterfall but I hadn’t read anything about it in the trail descriptions.

The trail was rougher than the Moore Cove and at some points I was glad it apparently hadn’t rained here lately since this part of the trail looked like a water shoot.

Seems that nearly all trails are rooty and it is imperative to watch your feet.  Therefore if you want to see your surroundings too, you have to go slowly.  No foot races.

One of my favorite things on the trails in the North Carolina Mountains are the rhododendron tunnels.  Were this trail not pretty heavily traveled, they would grow in and close it up in no time.  How I’d love to be here when it is in bloom.  I’m a little too late.

I have said before that I find multi use trails dangerous.  Especially if the biker is a solo.  You may not hear them until they are right on top of you.  Luckily for me this was a group of 7 or 8 and I could hear them coming and get off the trail.  They were flying as perhaps you can tell from these pictures.

This picture is actually blurred because he went by me so closely and fast.  I couldn’t get further off the trail

Once I got to the very small nearly hidden turn off for the path or what turned out to be a ‘sort of’ path to the falls,  I was in for another surprise.

This young woman was leading, with a coworker from an adventure outfitter, a group of people rappelling down this waterfall.   When I arrived she was disassembling their gear.  Because of her work and gear I couldn’t see much of the top of the fall.

So I started down the trail to the bottom which was wet and muddy.

From various points along the way, I had these views of the group at the bottom.

I wish I’d arrived just a bit earlier to see someone actually rappel down and whether they all went swimming in the pool at the bottom.

I suspected some of the participants had more trouble than I did walking under this fallen tree but then I realized they didn’t walk down, they rappelled.  DUH!

I sat at the bottom and watched the group head out in the other direction.  I wondered where they were off to now.

Once they had hiked on, I had the falls to myself.  From this distance or with my camera lens it doesn’t look as tall as it actually was and appears in the pictures looking down from above.   This video taken from above looking down gives the sights and sounds.

 

This final video is taken from the bottom and shows some close ups of the water cascading over the rocks.  The lacy beauty of the water falling isn’t visible in the pictures.

I would love to have made this into a loop hike and followed the group across the water and up a trail but as I wasn’t sure where I might end up I just retraced my steps and called it a day.