Pisgah 400: Loose Ends at North Mills River and Pink Beds Connector

Pisgah 400: Trace Ridge/Wash Creek/Bear Branch Trails and Pink Beds Connector
 7/18/22 – 9 miles

Continuing my string of hikes in Pisgah National Forest following convoluted routes and tying up loose ends, today I hiked two separate routes.

The first was a couple of miles past North Mills River Campground, starting from the Trace Ridge parking area on FR 142 (Hendersonville Reservoir) off of FR 5000 (Wash Creek Road).

Okay, I’ll spare the turn-by-turn description and go with the photos. My hike started from the “P” in the middle left of this GAIA topo track of the Pisgah Ranger District.

But first…at the parking area I talked with a young guy named Nate who was camping out of his truck, asking him about the Trace Ridge trailhead (it goes in both directions, trying to get the right one. I was disoriented even with GAIA. That’s what Pisgah NF will do to you). He gave me helpful info about trail conditions because he had biked it the day before. With Nate was his black Lab named Jim, a sweet elderly fella whose eyesight was failing. A chance encounter, they were gone when I finished my hike. I wonder where they are now.

Trace Ridge is a rutted, sometimes-muddy bike trail. Like many shared use trails in Pisgah,
we all just gotta get along.

An unusual sign, makes me think that it's been hard to wean folks onto the reroute

Trace Ridge Trail soon connects with Wash Creek Trail, gentle loamy soil and an easy descent to North Mills River. Turn around, retrace steps and pass Trace Ridge – wait, I thought we weren’t doing detailed directions…

North Mills River

Deceptively tranquil at times, water so clear it’s invisible

Rattlesnake plantain was everywhere, one of my favorites. The foliage is easy to spot
 and the bloom is very hard to photograph

Rattlesnake plantain

Not-ready-yet blackberries

Wash Creek Trail levels out on a wide old roadbed and leads to FR 5000

Low bridge where FR 5000 passes over Wash Creek

After crossing this bridge and the forest road intersection, I started on Bear Branch Trail that pretty much goes straight up to another forest road. This trail begins at Wash Creek Horse Camp, which was empty today. The horse folks have a pretty nice setup, picnic tables, campfire rings and a privy too.

Nothing much to look at on Bear Branch Trail except a few new flowers. 

As far as I can ID, the flower below is a crane-fly orchid, sort of a camouflage flower. What drew my eye to it? After years of poring over flower ID books, there are a lot I am familiar with that I haven’t yet seen in real life. I am attentive to shapes as well as colors. Sometimes I just get lucky, take photos of anything interesting and look it up later.

When I reached the forest road, I knew from reviewing the map that this was my turnaround point, so I retraced my steps to the horse camp and walked the gravel road back to my car.

The back of the stop sign in the middle of the woods seems to be a favorite for sticker display

(Looking at the GAIA track later that day, I was dismayed to see that I had turned around before the end of Bear Branch Trail – about a third of a mile short! The gravel road where I turned around was not on the GAIA maps, but I assumed it was the one I’d made a mental note of.)

Today’s second loose end was the Pink Beds Connector, an interior trail that nobody but diehard map completers and maybe someone long ago with the Forest Service ever sets foot on. The popular Pink Beds Loop is easily accessed from the Pink Beds Picnic Area on Highway 276, but I accessed the connector trail from the same parking area that Jim and I started our High Falls hike ten days ago.

The blue track is my hike on the Pink Beds Connector

Déjà vu all over again 

At the start of the trail, an overgrown camping area and a gauging station (still functioning?)
 beside North Mills River

A closer look at the gauging station

Within a few hundred yards, Thompson Creek comes in on the right,
 probably a rock hop most days but I had to wade it

The trail was level but overgrown and obstructed by numerous blowdowns. It ran very close to North Mills River, rhododendrons encroaching the path. There were no blazes (maybe obscured by overgrowth?) and no evidence of maintenance in a while – stretched resources, low priority or does this just need to be decommissioned? 

At least there are pretty flowers

Flowering spurge

A jerry-rigged bridge, doesn’t look like Forest Service work to me

Something got washed away here – another wade with a muddy bottom

The return hike was slightly better only because I knew what to expect. Not my most exciting day in Pisgah National Forest, but the weather was cooperative and it was still better than a day at the office.

Postscript: Nine days later I returned to the North Mills River area with a friend and rehiked Bear Branch Trail out-and-back to its end.

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature,

 he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

 ~John Muir

Pisgah 400: High Falls on South Fork Mills River

Pisgah 400: High Falls South Fork Mills River & Buckhorn Gap Trail – 7/9/22 – 14.5 Miles

Here I am again at the intersection of “want to go” and “need help” for a waterfall hike in Pisgah National Forest. It’s not a bad place to be – out in the woods! – but I take safety in numbers seriously when looking at unmaintained trails and big water crossings. As part of the Carolina Mountain Club’s 100 Waterfalls Challenge, I’ve had this hike on my priority list for a year. Once Jim’s bout with COVID had passed (lingering affects?) he agreed to venture out with me.

Kevin Adams’ narrative for reaching the waterfall raised some caution flags for me [I trust Mr. Adams!] so I researched more information. Two of my resources, DWHikes and Brenda Wiley, offered blog posts with the level of detail I needed to decide how to tackle this hike. [Brenda’s description included info on an alternative manway as well.]

The most recent on-the-ground descriptions I found of the hike reported very overgrown, eroded conditions. Feeling cautious about a tough trail plus a possible deep crossing, I decided to take the longer but more traveled route: South Mills River Trail to the intersection with Squirrel Gap Trail and the bridge crossing South Mills River. Without crossing the bridge, we would then backtrack a quarter mile or so, looking for an unmaintained trail upstream to the waterfall (this worked!)

Afternoon thunderstorms were predicted (well, it is July) so we got an early start to get as much done as possible before getting drenched. We drove up scenic, windy Hwy 276 towards the Blue Ridge Parkway, turned right onto Yellow Gap Road (FR 1206) and turned right again at Wolf Ford Horse Camp (FR 476). A gate stopped us about .8 miles short of where we expected to park, adding 1.6 miles round trip to our hike. An early start is always a good plan for the unexpected.

Too much preamble? Let’s go.

So…we walked down the first .8 miles of rocky roadbed alongside South Mills River to another gate and the parking area we had expected to stop at. There were campsites beside the river. Perhaps this was recently closed? Who knows?

South Fork Mills River

The river and the trail curve right and then sharply left at Otter Hole, a deep pool with a little sandy beach. This may be a popular swimming hole, but the water was dark, tannic, not inviting to me in the least.

Another .9 miles to where the Adams’ hike description turns left onto an unmaintained trail. We took one look and confirmed we didn’t want to go that route. We crossed this concrete bridge instead. Now we were on the right side of the river.

From this point we were relying on GAIA GPS and our paper map. As we approached the intersection with Buckhorn Gap Trail, I broke the news to Jim that I wanted to connect the dots between this point and Black Mountain Trail if there was time later on (read more here). 

South Mills River Trail, a gentle, undulating old roadbed, winds in and out of coves, crossing many small creeks that drain down to the river, none substantial but all marked on the map. Fungi flourished in the wet conditions.

After about 2.5 miles on South Mills River Trail, keeping a close eye on GAIA and Brenda’s narrative, we spotted a faint path at the last hairpin turn before intersecting with Squirrel Gap. We walked further to check out this intersection and the bridge. (FYI, the intersection had no signage, I don’t know what you would do here if you didn’t have GPS or some navigation to keep you on track.)

A sign indicating where horses can ford the river and an ominous “Bridge Out” – hmmm.
The bridge was destroyed by the remnants of Hurricane Fred in 2021.

The bridge from our side looked damaged…

…and stepping aside for a clearer view, the rest of the bridge casually tossed onto the far bank was sobering indeed. Steel wires that held the boards were dangling somehow and a wasp nest was hanging on the end of one of the wires (looks like a volleyball).

For what it’s worth, at this point the river did look safe to cross if you chose your route carefully.

Backtracking to the faint trail, agreeing that we would go as long as the trail was obvious, we crossed Clawhammer Creek, getting our feet wet for the first time. From that point we had a very good trail, maybe .6 miles along the riverbank, a couple of campsites along the way. 

We got close enough to glimpse High Falls through the thick vegetation but couldn’t find a way to get down to the riverbed. Next we found a place to reach the water, but the river bent and we could only hear it…We tried going out onto the rocks in the river and could see some of it…

So close! Surely there is another way

Looks like I’m gonna have to fight through some rhododendron at the river’s edge. I slowly made my way upstream on the left side, hanging onto branches, around the bend in the river, out on the rocks. And there she was, a powerful beauty, called High Falls not because of her height but because she is the farthest named waterfall upstream.

High Falls on South Mills River

Jim the Hiker Model

We ate lunch and discussed our return hike. The short way was trying to cross the river and find Adams’ route back up (no thanks), the long way retracing our steps on South Mills River Trail (a known safe way), and the “middle way” of the unmaintained trail that Brenda indicated going straight up to the ridge. We chose the middle.

Backtracking to Clawhammer Creek, we turned right onto yet another faint trail just before crossing and began a short, steep climb. The trail was pretty good, narrow but clear, and we never lost it even as it gained the ridge line and followed through thick blueberry bushes and thick mountain laurel – not a scenic route but a straightforward one. More mushrooms!

South Mills River Trail was visible downhill on our left, close enough to bushwhack to it, but we kept our course until we properly intersected it. A great feeling to successfully follow the manway!

Our innocuous side trail

Now I faced my Pisgah nemesis: Buckhorn Gap Trail. It pops up at many intersections and this was the last bit I had not yet hiked, out-and-back (3 miles total). After our extra mileage at the beginning, this would make a very long day. Jim wasn’t feeling 100% but he encouraged me to do it because returning another day for this short remnant deep in the forest would be a pain in the a$$.

So we did it, a flat, dull trail that made me wonder a little bit about this completion thing I have. The last couple of miles to our car went faster, slightly downhill, and I forced myself to relax rather than hustle – sometimes going slower is really going faster. We finished about 4:15 pm.

Thunderstorms never appeared.

Changed clothes at the car – had the forethought to bring a cooler with sodas! We pushed to get home before dark and enjoyed pizza while watching the Tour de France, a small reward to Jim for hanging in there. He’s a good guy.

"At some point in life,
the world's beauty becomes enough."
~Toni Morrison