Rock-in in the Linville Gorge

10/4/19

Lisa and I

Lisa, my crazy friend got off work at 7 am and I picked her up at 8. We headed straight for the Linville Gorge. I thought this would level the playing field since she hasn’t had any sleep. 🤣

We went to Table Rock Road and Parked at the Sitting Bear trailhead. There is only parking for 3 cars here. I was the 3rd. We went up the trail then made a left on the Devils Hole trail. It was about a mile gradually down to the river. About have way down lisa took a hard turn around and came back towards me. I thought she saw a bear or something. She almost stepped on this guy. 🤣

He was completely blocked the trail and not gonna move. No idea what kinda snake and don’t really care. We went around it and continued. Toward the river. We saw some people camping. We climbed down to the river. The water must be at an all time low.

It’s a beautiful day. We are going to dry pot hole about a mile up. We have two choices. Cross the river hike up the Linville Gorge trail then cross again to the pothole or follow the river upstream hoping we don’t run out of rocks because this side doesn’t have a trail.

Time to play! Of course we are going rock hopping up the right side. We were going to do this without getting wet. There were a couple of areas that we had to work though. Nothing to big. We skirted the water here.

There was one other spot that we had to bush wack around. We played on the largest boulders and took lots of pics. Such a beautiful place.

We actually did have to get wet with two crossings.

It really didn’t matter because we were there and I was getting in the river! My body was so hot! The river was amazing! Pardon the face.

Time for lunch and pictues! This is the Dry Pothole. It is a large pot hole in a huge boulder. I can’t imagine the River was ever this high?

This is what it looked like from the other side. Made by the river? Idk 🤷‍♀️

It was really cool! We decided to cross and hike back on the LGT then cross back over and take the trail up. The river is so low it was easy to cross in a lot of places.

The picture below was on the LGT. It’s a rock ledge high above the river. With the moss it was extra cool looking.

The Devils Hole trail is a pretty good trail but it’s kinda steep. I ran out of gas and took quite a few breaks on the way up. Lisa? No she still wasn’t tired but of course she got lots of breaks because of me!

At the top we wanted to hike to Sitting Bear. It was almost a mile. It was a cool train with lots of wild flowers.

Then it got steeper. It was a great view of the gorge from there.

Truth is i didn’t make it to Sitting Bear, Lisa did. Now it’s back to the car and time to EAT!