Best Easy Day Hikes Blue Ridge Parkway by Randy Johnson & Globe Pequot Press

Author:Randy Johnson & Globe Pequot Press
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FalconGuides, best easy day hikes series, day hikes, hiking, hikes, hiking trails, day hikes, wilderness, national forest, national parks, wildlife, nature
Publisher: Falcon Guides
Published: 2013-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

Key Points

0.1Pass between Jesse Brown’s Cabin and springhouse.

0.2Enter the woods beyond Cool Spring Baptist Church and shortly pass first bench.

0.5Second bench.

0.6E. B. Jeffress Park Picnic Area and Cascades Trail parking.

The High Country

Mileposts 276.4 (US 421 at Deep Gap) to 384.7 (US 74 at Asheville)

From Deep Gap at US 421 (Milepost 276.4) to Asheville, North Carolina, at US 74 (Milepost 384.7), the Parkway traverses what can only be called the High Country corner of North Carolina. Ironically, the highest spot on the Parkway is not here—it’s south of Asheville.

But everything else about this area says lofty, indeed, almost alpine. At Grandfather Mountain the Blue Ridge escarpment rises to its greatest relief—nearly a vertical mile above the surrounding Piedmont. The computer-designed span of the Linn Cove Viaduct—the Parkway’s newest section, completed in 1987—puts you right in the middle of it. Easily accessible just 5 miles off the Parkway is Mount Mitchell (6,684 feet), the East’s highest summit. Trails at both locations deserve your attention.

But there are two sides to the High Country. The first half of this Parkway section is bordered by private lands, some of it developed and a popular resort area. The second half is again wrapped in national forest lands. In the High Country you get the Parkway at both ends of a spectrum.

The resort experience is on the northern end—where it’s been since the 1880s, when the lowland rich first fled the summer heat to spark tourism in the mountains. They came for the South’s coolest summer temperatures and, later, golf at classic, still-popular hostelries like Blowing Rock’s Green Park Inn and the classic, chestnut bark–covered luxury of Linville’s historic Eseeola Lodge.

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