Covering two-thousand feet of elevation the eleven hiking trails vary in difficulty and ecological communities. From gentle paths along with Watauga River to some of the most “sporting” hiking anywhere adventure seekers can get a serious workout while enjoying some ridiculously amazing vistas.

History

You know how it works. Over 700 million years ago tectonic plates within the earth’s crust came together. Among the results was the creation of one of the highest peaks in the Blue Ridge Mountain range.

The Cherokee named the mountain “Tanawha,” meaning “a fabulous hawk or eagle.” It was later named “Grandfather” by settlers who recognized the face of an old man in one of the cliffs. The area has been recorded in literature by countless historical figures including Daniel Boone (1760’s), Andre Michaux (1794), Asa Gray (1841) and John Muir (1898).

It is the highest peak on the eastern escarpment of the Blue Ridge Mountains, one of the major chains of the Appalachian Mountains. It is located at the meeting point of Avery, Caldwell (highest point), and Watauga (highest point) counties. The Blue Ridge Parkway curves past the south side of the mountain and also through the nearby Grandmother Gap.

Trails of Grandfather Mountain:

The west side trails begin at NC 105, near NC 184 (Tynecastle Hwy). A sign reading “Profile Parking” points to the Profile trail, which climbs steadily for 3.1 miles before intersecting the Grandfather trail. From there it is 0.4 miles south to Calloway Peak, and 0.8 miles north to Attic Window Peak. It’s 1 mile to Macrae’s Peak and 1.9 miles to the swinging bridge.

The east side trails can be found at Boone Fork parking area at mile marker 300 of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The trailhead is joined by way of the Asutsi trail at Serenity Farm on Hwy 221. The easiest east side route to Calloway Peak is to follow Tanawha Trail to the Daniel Boone Scout trail. This includes two large fixed ladders that traverse rock faces. The Cragway trail is steeper and littered with boulders but offers excellent views of the Boone Fork bowl, or “medicine valley.”

The Grandfather trail covers the 2.4 miles of ridge line between Calloway Peak and the Swinging Bridge (Linville Peak), passing Attic Window and MacRae Peaks along the way. This trail is among the most difficult and technical in the region. In addition to significant steep elevation gain and loss, trail conditions include frequent exposure to very high winds, contiguity to several large cliffs, crossings of cracked boulders, and multiple traverses aided by fixed ladders and cables. This 2.4 miles is normally covered at below half of normal hiking pace. In favorable weather conditions this trail is considered advanced. In poor weather, this trail should only be attempted by experienced hikers.

Features

The primary ridge of the mountain is oriented roughly north to south, and features four named peaks: Calloway Peak (5,964 ft.), Attic Window Peak (5,949 ft.), MacRae Peak (5,844 ft.), and Linville Peak (5,295 ft.). Although not as high as the adjacent Calloway and Attic Window Peaks, MacRae is much more difficult to reach due to challenging and exposed approaches from both both directions.

The area represents the Eastern Continental Divide. Two rivers have headwaters on Grandfather Mountain, the Linville River, flowing east, and the Watauga River, flowing west. Many lesser streams originate on the slopes of Grandfather, including: Upper Boone Fork, Little Wilson Creek, Wilson Creek (North Carolina), Stack Rock Creek, and others.

The attraction side of the mountain, which includes the Mile High Swinging Bridge, is accessed by way of Grandfather Mountain Entrance Road. Admittance fees are charged at the main gate. Part or all of the attraction is sometimes closed due to frequently inclement weather in the late fall, winter, and spring.

Hiking and camping are free in the “backcountry” area now designated as a state park. The required permits are available at all trail heads. Those intending to enter or leave the park via the attraction must still pay admittance. Fire is prohibited at many of the higher elevation campsites, due to high winds.

Visit the Grandfather Mountain website and like their social media sites at Facebook, Instagram Pinterest and Twitter.

Taken from the field notebook of Lucienda Rosalita 

“We are on the trail about 6:30 am. A late departure for such endeavors but Thunderbird was up late smoking and drinking rum. The walk up Profile Trail is a wonderland of blooming rhododendron under a thick deciduous canopy. Thunderbird’s knees and ankles are already visibly trembling and we are no less than halfway up the trail. He’s begun grumbling about the size and frequency of the boulder fields. We pass streams and thickets as the trail through the hardwood forest gives way to the “Peregrine’s Flight”, a vertical path of boulders rising all the way to Shanty Spring. This is the last sure water source on the trail, which is good news for those of us who have already began rationing our limited supply. Once again, we have run out of water somewhere near the summit and history has shown us that on the way back down no one will care whether the water running down the side of the mountain is full of parasites or not. 

At Grandfather Trail we decide to head south toward Macrae Peak and the swinging bridge. This is an amazing walk/scramble along the ridge line, supplying us with breathtaking views of the mountains all the way to Virginia. It is also littered with boulder-strewn vertical assents that are working to break both the spirit and body. Thunderbird continues to creep ever slower and produce more and louder noises when climbing over and around the rocks. After five hours we both realize it’s time to start heading back or someone is going to be sleeping on the mountain. The trail has gotten no less easier and as his feet and ankles deteriorate Thunderbird’s pace continues to drag. It is like mountain climbing with a manatee.”  l.r. 7/13/20

From the land of the Cherokee, keep up with the wranglers as we forge ahead into the very vortex of summer fun with foundations in advanced tubing. Learn from world champion river tubers as we navigate the raging rivers of Watauga and Ashe counties. Also watch for the five part series, “Lessons in Sloppy Fly Fishing” and answer the question, “How safe are the river trout?”  It may just be another in a long line of serious missteps.

The post Destination: Grandfather Mountain appeared first on wook wranglers.

                                                                                                                                   Book of Sorrows

Don’t pick a fight with a Mardi Gras float.

He was still locked in the bathroom grinding his dentures down with a drimel. They were painfully over sized due to the fact they had belonged to someone else as recently as yesterday. That guy certainly wouldn’t need teeth where he was going. Even the laminate faux wood paneling begin to smell like burnt bone. Burnt pig bone.  Like the grinding of metal-on-metal gears gone far too long without the save of some lubricating salve. The grinding may just go on forever but there’s always a way back. El zono finale has a rocky reputation.

He promised himself if could just find his dead cat and get out of New Orleans with a shred of what he used to call his mind, it would be the straight and narrow from here on out. From now on, the choices that lay ahead would be attacked with a furtive drive reminiscent of a more noble and stoic figure, like Thomas Jackson.

Another lost cat? There’s no way that’s a real thing. Full tilt Watusi boogie of the second Def-Con, to be sure. The last real tragedy was Lucky, who after mixing Ketamine and sawdust, threw himself into the Holiday Inn La Concha incinerator. Sometimes bad things happen to bad cats.

Around Bienville St. Frito saw Doornail entering a side door with a with a crate full of stolen Mardi Gras beads. Long ago, the crooked sign used to read “The Low Hanging Fruit” but most of the milkleaf had faded.  Luke saw him huddled in the corner, suppin on a dusty bottle of Butterfly absinthe and watching Baylor and Texas play girls softball in the afternoon shadows. Predictably, as the sun dropped in the sky the bits of shouting and profanity increased and after one unforgiving rant he was ejected from the tavern only to be seen stumbling from the curb into a mud hole slotted between broken cobblestones. At this point, all signs pointed to Madame Francis. He wouldn’t be able to go much longer without one of her Le Omelets Dauphine.

Known as an absynth drownery, Jean Lafitte’s has been a, “Muse”eum of sorts since way back. Thatcher Owen Mullins has always been a big fan of the, “Synthdriver”, an imaginary cocktail featuring absinthe, eye of newt, powdered bat wing, and the juice of virgin oranges.

The short man’s fountain of bigness is a prominent effigy in this fine establishment. None other than the biggest short man ever tops this pyramidal obelisk.

“Black Lung”

Her Christian name was Odessa but folks called her Black Lung and it was not a self-moniker. She found herself to be critical of people who gave themselves hippy-dippy names like “Harmony” and “Peace” when they were anything but. She was drinking wine out of a cardboard box. She said it was cardbordeaux. Eventually, she dumped the box and slung the bag over her should like a bloated udder. She made everyone slap the sack in order to get a shot of cheap wine. Somewhere between the warm wine and the second tin of grease, Frito realized she was trouble and no more than a godless savage.

She had been using dead cats in Vodoun ceremonies for years, but with all the new fly-by-night tourist brands of “voodoo” it had begun to seem gauche. Normally, it was pretty harmless business. A head full of mescaline and a couple weeks of dancing nekid with painted chicken’s feet punctuated by the occasional vat of animal blood. Often, the leftovers could be found wandering Lafayette St., covered in neck tattoos and uttering nonsensical gibberish about Mayan codices and the end of the world.

GRIS-GRIS LOVE SPELL

Author: Okrabeaux

Prep time:  30 mins

Cook time:  1 hour

Total time:  1 hour 30 mins

Serves: 1

This magic will help someone to fall in love or at least have an attitude adjustment.

INGREDIENTS

• leather pouch
• powdered lizard bones
• 3 pebbles from a cemetery
• human hair
• malachite crystal shard
• freckle
• shot of bourbon

INSTRUCTIONS

1. To create a gris gris, you should set up a basic gris gris altar or working space. This altar should contain the four element: a bowl of water to represent water, incense to represent air, a bowl of graveyard dirt to represent earth, and a candle flame to represent fire.
2. Choose a color specific to your need.
3. Gris gris must contain an odd number of items: more than three, never more than thirteen.
4. It must be filled with items that are specific to the desired purpose.
5. It must be dressed with a liquid of some kind.
6. Be very careful of the words you speak when making gris gris.
7. Each ingredient can be smudged or smoked in incense, and so can the final bag.
8. A petition petition should be added
9. Words of power are spoken over the bag as a means of activating the divine energy.
10. Breathe upon the gris gris to give it life.

In his screened-in kitchen, Okrabeaux used to tell stories about the old river woman who used to make up the gris gris. In the New Orleans tradition, there’s a gris gris for anything.  It’s a mixture of herbs and common ingredients such as powdered minerals, graveyard dust, roots, bones, and sacred words and seals. It can be used as a powder thrown in the path of an enemy, in an amulet or gris gris bag, in a doll, mixed with water and drunk, or used in a bath. Gris gris is part of a belief system that has remained relatively intact in New Orleans since it came from Africa by the first Senegambian slaves in the early 1720s.

Dead Cat Hit By Falling Statue

MAY 11, 2017

During the Jefferson Davis Statue removal today, an unidentified dead cat was crushed by the 400 lb obelisk. Subsequent removals of Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard Monuments will involve increased accountability measures. 

NEW ORLEANS – After two years of planning and court discussions, City officials continued the process today of removing the three remaining monuments that prominently celebrate the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” The crowd of onlookers was still applauding the removal of the statue as the unidentified dead cat was found crushed under the ruble. Said one eyewitness, “I guess the war called home one more soldier.”

All inquiries should be directed to New Orleans Police Department.

From his perch on the second floor, Thatcher saw the cat get into Black Lung’s El Camino. It was the one she’d driven since Reuben’s death but it had a new, bad paint job and the shag carpet on the dashboard had been changed and not for the better. She was perched behind the wheel, a mulatto girl with nose rings and a tattoo of Jesus eating a bowl of cheese and rice. The old man in the back seat had orange eyes and reeked of urine. Once he’d probably been handsome, but an M-16 bullet changed that, so now he was forced to eat, pray and love with scant amounts of teeth. They were all obviously tweaking and a curious cloud of dark magic seemed to follow them as they sped away from the drive-through daiquiri shop. Maybe never to be seen from again. Cat or no cat, the G-Train train was rolling to Texas and beyond. Maybe he would show up on the Mexican Blackbird.

May 22, 2017

Check out some other wookish delights including The Spirit of Suwannee Music Park: A Pictorial History. Keep up with the family as we head to Brainquility, Suwannee Spring Reunion and more.

The post Dead Cats and Voodoo on the Mississippi River appeared first on wook wranglers.