Black Balsam Hike

For Labor Day weekend we headed to the mountains. We left Friday morning and arrived at the Black Balsam Trailhead past Graveyard Fields around 9:30, still finding plenty of parking. The Art Loeb Trail was beautiful.

The first short stretch wound through forest where we spotted some interesting mushrooms.

Then the trail opened onto the bald with amazing expansive views

Goldenrod were blooming all along the trail.

There was a lot of snakeroot blooming as well and a few gentians.

Honey bees were busy pollinating the flowers.

The trail was open and the views were fantastic the entire way up.

Harper hiked most of the way and handled the rocky sections and steps really well.

We carried her the final stretch to the summit.

The views from the top were phenomenal, though it was fairly crowded.

She hiked most of the way back down as well. 

From there we drove south on NC-215, turned onto Tanassee Gap Road, then after about 1.5 miles took the gravel Pressley Fields Road. We stopped at a pull-off just past the second “area under surveillance” sign.  Access was steep and difficult enough that we left Harper and Amaroq napping in the car and took turns. I scrambled down to Tucker Creek and walked upstream about 0.1 miles through water that never got deeper than mid-calf to the lovely Tucker Creek Falls.

Even with low flow it looked great, and it seems to be pretty unknown.

Amanda took her turn next.

While waiting I spotted a pretty Diana fritillary butterfly in the road and a hickory tussock moth caterpillar on a plant.

We continued back to NC-215 and stopped at Mill Shoals, which was crowded.

Harper wasn’t interested in playing in the water, so we skipped Bird Rock Falls. Just past there we turned onto Macedonia Church Road and after about half a mile found a short path to Lemon Falls on Lamance Creek.

It's small but scenic, and we had nice lighting nice light.

The water level was low so I could cross the creek at the base.

We finished the day in Brevard with dinner and drinks at Oskar Blues. Harper played and didn’t eat much, so we boxed her meal and checked into the Sunset Motel.