All around Highlands NC

12/30/20

Lisa and I

Left the house at 7 am without a plan other than to visit a place called Granite City near Highlands. It’s about 3 hours away and today is overcast/rainy and 40 degrees.

Granite City is a small area with 40 to 60 ft boulders. It’s like the Virginia Channels only smaller. There is a waterfall looking ditch/path heading up from the parking lot. No one is here but us. The info says the path leads to Main Street. That is the pathway between the boulders. From here go left, go right or go up. Just wander and explore.

There isn’t a good way to describe it so here are my pics.

Kit didn’t take long to explore so back to the car where we break open Kevin adams waterfall book. The closest one to us is Little Creek Falls. It’s a short but hard bushwhack down to the falls. I tell you the first one is the hardest, kinda like warm ups before working out. 🤣 it’s a couple hundred yards down off the road.

Next we head to Brooks Creek Falls. It’s basically a roadside but to get to the base there is a short steep path.

Then to a roadside Satulah falls.

We head over to 106 and hit Upoer Middle Creek and Middle Creek falls. Upper is a short walk from the road.

Then we head to Middle creek. There is a house there and the path goes right below their property. It’s a hard to follow path that luckily someone has flagged. It’s about another 1/2 mile. It’s a tough hike but really cool but when we get to it it’s amazing! It’s big and powerful. We can see there is more below so we head down to see if we can get another view. It’s a beauty.

We head back up and end up on a ridge line. There is a platform in the trees we walk near. While we’re checking it out we hear a weird noise and a guy comes zip lining in! Lisa headed for the woods. I waved and then followed here. We lost the trail by doing this so we stayed below their property as best we could. We grabbed cat stair falls which is super tall and hard to photograph.

Then we decide to head to the other side of Highlands for a bunch of waterfalls on the same road. They are all on the Cullasaja River. Bridal Veil and dry falls were right on the road. Scadin Falls was one of my favorites. To park was a little sketchy then a walk down to it. It’s a beauty. Dark rocks and a river pool then clear river.

The next was roadside called Quarry Falls or Bust Your Butt Falls. Mainly because kids hang at this easy one and drink!

The next is the final on the river it’s called Cullasaja Falls. It’s roadside and it’s massive. We didn’t climb down to this one.

It’s getting very late and we have one more in the area so we head to Buck Creek falls. It’s after 5 when we pull in and start hunting for this one. It’s an old logging road to a hard to find logging road then a bushwhack down from there. It’s a 9 on the difficulty scale and it’s getting dark and it’s steep. On the way down I’m regretting it. We finally make it and it’s not an easy one to get a pic of. I rush Lisa out and try to follow our path back out but it’s difficult and a hard uphill bushwhack and I start to panic. I don’t know why we have headlamps but I’m almost hyperventilating. But that was dumb cause we made it just fine. I used Lisa’s pic because it was better cause I was rushed.

We ended up with a big 10 waterfalls and we were over 3 hours away from home and now it’s dark and raining. We only ended up hiking 5 miles but I’m exhausted. Looks of short steep bushwacking. Fun day for sure.