Shortoff Mountain

November 26 2017

Sherri and I

This is my 2nd time hiking Shortoff Mountain and I have to say it is one of my favorite hikes. It’s a hike that has a little of everything including dare I say, cell phone service. This hike has semi steep inclines, beautiful views, flat walking trails and my favorite rock climbing. I don’t do real rock climbing but I love to climb on the rock ledges and see great views around and look down. This particular day there were 2 guys really rock climbing but we didn’t get to them until they were packing up. I would of loved to watch them climb. They went up not down.

Shortoff is in the Linville George and has a rock face on the east side of the gorge that looks at a rock face on the west side of the gorge and Table Rock on the north side and Lake James in the South side.

One day I am going to hike from Shortoff to Table Rock State Park which I am guessing is about 14 miles one way.

Anyway we arrive at around 10 it’s Sherri’s first time up here. The parking area is full of cars. Full being about 10 because the parking area is actually the end of a dead end dirt road.

The first mile and a half are long switchbacks up to the rock face. When you look backwards Lake James just looks beautiful. Today it’s clear as glass with a single speedboat cutting up the middle throwing a beautiful shinny wake behind it that the sun made sparkle. Unfortunately my iPhone wouldn’t capture that moment. 😩

The next part of the hike rounds the edge of the gorge with spectacular views all around. If course it has lots of rocks that I just love to climb around.

Sherri loves the mountains and hiking but is just not fond of heights. This time she ventured out in the rocks and git this awesome photo.

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these climbs and attempted to get a pic of me hanging off a rock but since she’s kinda nervous and just knows I’m gonna fall it was all blurry!😜 but I did get this one.

We continued down the trail and saw some back packers. Some day we are gonna do that! The top of Shortoff is very flat. It’s very odd. For a while the trail winds around the top of a flat mountain. There is even a small lake up there. Although today it looked more like a large puddle.

We keep hiking about another mile before we turn around. We spent a lot of time on the views and because it gets dark so early we were running out of time.

I’m not sure when but there was a fire here. There is still some burned trees and most of the growth is pretty young. This tree definitely shows that.

On the way back I captured some more awesome views.

Some day I plan to be at the top of a mountain for a sunset or sunrise. Until then ……