North Harper Creek Falls

We would be staying at Down by the River Campground in Pineola. I generally tend to avoid private campgrounds as they tend to be more crowded, but being a holiday weekend, this was the only one in the area that I could reserve. From Price Park, we headed south on the Blue Ridge Parkway and made a couple of quick stops along the way. First, we stopped at the Wilson Creek Valley Overlook.

The valley is almost 2000 feet in elevation below the overlook and it was interesting to see where we would be spending much of the weekend from this lofty perspective. Then we stopped at the Stack Rock Overlook, where we had nice views of the valley below as well as Grandfather Mountain.

The overlook is close enough to the peak that we could see the mile-high swinging bridge.

Soon, we got off the parkway and checked in and got our tent set up. Then we made the short drive to the Wilson Creek area of Pisgah National Forest, where the majority of our planned waterfalls for the trip were located. We continued south on NC-181 to Pittman Gap Road. At the church, we turned right on FR 464 and went about 2 miles and then turned right on FR 58. The trailhead for North Harper Creek Trail (266) was about a quarter mile down this road. We parked at the trailhead and started hiking down the scenic trail as it followed North Harper Creek downstream.

There were three creek crossings between the trailhead and the waterfall, but we had no trouble getting across by rock hopping. At the top of the waterfall, some rhododendron were blooming and butterflies danced about the blooms.

We crossed the creek at the top of the falls and followed the switchbacks down to the base, where a beautiful backpacking campsite is located.

Sandy is not so keen on getting her feet wet, but I took of my boots and waded around a bit at the base of the beautiful waterfall.

Another smaller, though quite high waterfall was visible just to the right of the falls. After spending some time taking pictures and enjoying the falls, we hiked back up to the car, stopping a few times to see some nice cascades on the creek above the falls.

It was getting late by now and we were both getting hungry, so we headed to Banner Elk and Sandy bought dinner for my birthday at Puerto Nuevo, a very good Mexican restaurant. Then we headed back to camp and built a fire before retiring for the night.