Random to see this here, but I like it! I grew up in Western NC on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so I'm a big fan.
Max Patch is always a nice day trip, and Black balsam knob is one of my favorite spots period. Fantastic panoramic views, and go in August if you want to take home a bag full of blueberries. The most seasoned hikers will want to follow the Art Loeb trail out to Cold Mountain, and climb the summit. But it's not for the faint of heart! ;)
Or from Max Patch, keep heading generally North following the white paint marks to wind up on Mt Katahdin in Maine :)
One of my favourite memories from the Appalachian Trail was somewhere up in New England; someone was on a day hike and asked "how far does this trail go?", my answer "Georgia" wasn't satisfying to them for some reason...
I started at Amicalola Falls in 2014 (where I briefly worked as an intern back in my college days) and thought I'd follow the white marks and see where they went. It took longer than expected. Jokes aside, I grew up hiking on the AT in Georgia and it was fun to do the whole thing. I had no idea there was an entire article on the balds!
Quite a trip seeing the names of all those mountains I walked over. This is an interesting factoid I wish I'd known on my hike, I was always curious why there were no alpine zones in the southern Appalachians.
Wow, the Art Loeb trail from the parkway past Shining Rock to Cold Mountain is one of my favorite hikes of all time. Yet very few folks, even in North Carolina, have hiked it or even know it exists.
The backpacking group at my university used to do the Art Loeb in one day as a feat of strength of sorts. One time a group got lost in a sudden rainstorm and had to be rescued by rangers.
Never did it myself, though I'd still like to, and I have hiked the section from Sam Knob/Black Balsam to Cold Mountain a few times. The Narrows is definitely the best part. The Appalachians aren't as impressive as mountains on the west coast, but being out them is just as satisfying -- I just wish they were closer to the urban areas.
We called the woods (all pines with no underbrush, perfect for camping) around Black Balsam the "enchanted forest", because, well, they were.
Hoka hey! I believe we may have been part of the same backpacking group :) .
As an interesting stat about this area, the bear population in Pisgah has rebounded sharply in the past few years. I have run into bears multiple times on this exact section, and bear cans are now required for camping north of the BRP in the park.
Agree that the Narrows is the best. Most people just stop at Shining Rock so they never get to the real gem. If that's what it takes to keep the trail empty, fine by me!
Absolutely. The main area near the parking lot can get a little hectic sometimes, but once you get away from there you're good to go!
I love 'The Narrows' stretch right before the base of the Cold Mountain summit. If you want a true test of mettle, instead of starting from Black Balsam knob, drive over to Canton and find Camp Daniel Boone boy scout camp. There you will find the Art Loeb trail head.
To get to the summit and back is 10.5 miles round trip & 3000 ft total elevation gain. Don't try this if you're not in shape haha! One of the most difficult hikes I know of in WNC but the feeling sitting on top of the rocks at the summit is magical. Very satisfying!
The Narrows was my favorite stretch as well! Art Loeb was the very first backpacking trip I did -- was just 14 at the time. I've been meaning to do it again so I can fully enjoy it this time around.
My parents grew up in the southwestern corner of the Ozark Mountains and I've been to Branson, Missouri a number of times, so I have at least a passing familiarity with the Bald Knobbers. Nevertheless, I had not made the connection between Balds in the geographic sense and the Bald Knobbers. The southwestern Ozarks are actually a heavily eroded plateau, and I'm not aware of any hilltops that look like the Appalachian Balds, but then I have only actually seen a tiny portion of the Ozarks.
The Ozark balds exist primarily because the tops of hills in the White River Valley have very little soil, as they're made up of dolomitic limestone that dissolves in rain water instead of breaking down into clays. The scant soil that exists is enough to host grasses, but few trees; Eastern Red Cedar can grow, but before widespread fire suppression, it was pretty contained to fire-protected rock outcroppings. With fire suppression (which may have stabilized the soil and limited erosion as well), Eastern Red Cedar and some oaks (blackjack and post oak) are filling in the balds. This is in constrast to the Appalachian balds that are mainly a product of climate differences between the peaks and the lower hillslopes.
The hills to the north of the White River Valley (around Springfield) and south (south of Harrison) are capped by rock layers that have a relatively high clay content and produce soil that can more easily support forests.
The Bald Knobber history is pretty interesting. I had always thought of them as analogous to the earliest KKK (also a Reconstruction-era vigilante group initially) but I hadn't realized until I read the surprisingly detailed Wikipedia page that the Bald Knobbers were Republicans who sided with the North. (Unfortunately, the Bald Knobbers are history at this point, while the KKK is still quite active in the area, especially Harrison/Boone County, Arkansas).
They are fascinating. I live in Western NC and I've seen many of them. You're climbing up the mountain, nearing the summit, going through the trees and then, pop, the trees are gone leaving only a mystery.
Randomly saw a youtube video on Devil's Gardens in Rainforests, where ants use formic acid to destroy non-symbiotic/competing plants in given areas. Makes me wonder if this could be something similar.
I grew up in the Appalachians of South Carolina and I've visited all over them. I've seen the one mentioned in the article and always wondered why it was like that
I sought one of these out for the 2017 solar eclipse in North Carolina, but was sorely disappointed when it turned out that while there were no trees, it was covered quite thoroughly in shrubs and you could not see the sky.
Hypothesis: For thousands of years, people burned them periodically, to provide habitat for desired prey, and make it easier to see them. Since then, until recently, people burned them periodically for livestock pasture.
Problem: Forest is expected cover, but now you have endangered plant species which have migrated uphill, with global climate change, until there's no uphill left. So restoring forest cover would cause extinctions.
> The character and distribution of Appalachian balds remained stable from the time the first naturalists explored the region, until forestry regulations no longer permitted annual pasturing of local cattle. How and why a summit develops into a grassy bald is unknown; they represent "an ecological enigma and a conservation dilemma".[4] Weigl and Knowles note that "the presence of both rare, endemic plants and northern relicts requiring open habitat suggests a long evolutionary history" and offer a scenario in which grazing pressure of the giant herbivores of the Pleistocene retained the open tundra habitat as the Wisconsin glaciation retreated far to the north. With the arrival of the paleoindians and the disappearance of the megaherbivores, grazing pressure was maintained by deer and elk, and then by the grazing animals of European settlers.
I do agree that cattle seem unlikely. Maybe "grazing animals of European settlers" points to sheep? Maybe even goats?
It happens. I'm reading a book on Cades Cove that mentions Gregory Bald in the Smokies being used to graze cattle.
Here's an online source:
"The Bald is named after Russell Gregory, an early homesteader in the Cades Cove area. He and other cove residents used the meadow to graze cattle during the spring and summer when cove fields were used for growing crops."
Source - I've been licked by ponies and cattle more times than I can remember at Grayson Highlands VA. I've also camped at a former highland cattle "sale" pasture where ranchers herded their cattle for sale in Western NC. Not really done anymore, cattle is too $$$ to raise there when chilled railroad cars exist, but it was a thing.
In a similar vein, does anyone in the Bay Area know why the Santa Cruz mountains on the west side of the valley have a bunch of trees, but the mountains on the east side (near Fremont) have no trees and are mostly just grass? I would think the climate and elevation are similar.
The mountains on the west cause a lot of moisture in the air to precipitate out as the prevailing winds blow from the west, so they get a lot more rain than the eastern ranges.
Not only is it drier, but the Diablo range is heavily overgrazed. If it weren't, it'd be the same chaparral woodland you can still see around calaveras dam.
Much of the Bay Area (and Northern California) was exceedingly heavily lumbered. I don't know for certain that the East Bay hills were heavily timbered though I suspect they were.
There's at least one history of the EBH which might answer your question:
Max Patch is always a nice day trip, and Black balsam knob is one of my favorite spots period. Fantastic panoramic views, and go in August if you want to take home a bag full of blueberries. The most seasoned hikers will want to follow the Art Loeb trail out to Cold Mountain, and climb the summit. But it's not for the faint of heart! ;)