Bushwhacking with Lisa

03/29/20

Lisa and I

We haven’t hiked together since November which means I haven’t done anything crazy since then. I’m telling you people who think they want to hike with lisa, You DON’T!!! If you really do tell her to make it less than a 5 on a scale of 1-10. 🤣🤣🤦‍♀️

It’s social distancing times so we went deep into the Natahala National Forest. Near Balsam Grove NC. The First one is Herrin Falls. It’s on a 3 mile dirt road off HWY 215. We park at a bend in the road at a creek. Lisa reads the directions out load and says upstream. I barely listen as usual. I can’t retain it anyway. We get out and she is looking and pointing downstream.🤣 I say “upstream”🤦‍♀️. We head up a barely visible old logging road that follows the creek. We cross the creek then begin to scramble/bushwhack up the creek about a 1/4 mile. It’s a beauty.

Back to the car we go. Our next one is Wolf Mountain Falls. This one is another couple miles deeper into the Natahala Forest. We haven’t seen any signs of human and when we are almost to where the dirt road dead ends we see and older couple walking in the road? The man is peeing! We can’t help but laugh because there is probably a 1 in a million chance someone shows up while he is relieving himself! 🤣🤣🤣 She says they have property here. idk where because we haven’t seen any civilization or even another car.

We start walking down an old closed road and we can hear a waterfall below us but we are going to the next one first. The directions are : once you go around the ridge drop off the road and bushwhack down toward the sound. We cannot see this falls and can barely hear it. We look for the least steep way down, which is non existent anyway and do just that. Its briar city but I have my gloves at least. I’m wearing Capri pants and my lower leg is getting eating alive by briars! I’m not sure how far down we go. Then there it is. I’m good with my view which is about a hundred yards shy of the bottom but ol Lisa gotta touch it! I stay up cause that’s just another 100 yards up I have to go. I can barely see her through the Rhododendron and I’m hoping she don’t fall in cause I don’t want to go down there 🤣🤣

Here we go bushwhacking up that dang hill! Good lord. I didn’t do to bad. Was keeping up with her I think.

Once back up we walk down the road ish till we hear Yellow Patch Falls. We scramble/bushwhack down to the water. It’s a canyon like area. Not even to hard to get to. But that’s not it! It’s still way down stream so we start bushwhacking down. Lisa goes low but I go high. Reason – she wants to be near the water cause that’s where the falls is. My reason- it’s dangerous and slick by the water! My way turns out to be the better way because of some steep drop offs. We get down below the falls and when we look up it’s sheer rock walls all above us! Good thing we didn’t try to go that way.

Then it’s back up. It’s a little harder than down cause it’s slick. I went first and of course Lisa breaks out her camera to capture my best side. Thanks Lisa!

We scramble back up to the road. Then walk back up to our car. We sit here to have lunch. I was damn tired. Time for an easy one! Please!!! We head down the road back to where Dills falls. We are finally on a trail! 😁

Here there is two trails, one up to upper Dills falls and one down to Dills falls. We go down first it’s a quick trail to the falls. It’s a pretty one. It’s an easy one which makes it possible for anybody to get to but it’s so far out I don’t know who would drive that far for it? 😲

We go back up to Upper Dills Falls. This one was meh.

So I’m ready to call it a day. Lisa wants to do some more. We compromise 🤔 on going toward Rosman to a roadside falls. It was called East Fork Falls.

The next falls is in Headwaters state Forest but we have no signal and no idea how to get to it. We drive around and try to get near it. If she was by herself she would of picked a spot nearest the coordinates and start hiking. Me, nope to tired. I didn’t mention I hiked 5 miles in the Linville Gorge yesterday. Lisa said “next time you hike with me you are not allowed to hike the day before!” 🤣🤣

I swear she is like the energizer bunny except she doesn’t run on batteries she runs on waterfall adrenaline!

It’s always a hard, eventful, fun and rewarding day when we hike together! Thanks Lisa!

6 waterfalls in only 5 hard miles. 💪💪