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September 1998
North Carolina - Waterfall Country
David Aaronson2005-09-23 22:11:55
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if you can avoid the unfriendly property owners, it's highly scenic. This is Drift Falls, once known as one of the finest swimming holes anywhere. Not just that, all 70 feet (21 m) of it is swimmable. Or rather, slideable. If you've got a fair bit of courage and dexterity anyway. Alas, these days it is cordoned off by the local officials, who were apparently tired of having to rescue people who have courage but not dexterity.
Now we feature Turtleback Falls, which isn't nearly as high as Drift Falls, but as you can see, still swimmable for the intrepid. We don't know who this is, but he provides a nice sense of scale. Furthermore we should point out that (a) the water was very very cold, and (b) his dog refused to go over the falls with him. It was hiking in the vicinity of this waterfalls that we came across the rabbit sitting on a log, which is the background of this page. In case he reads this, we'd like to thank said rabbit for posing so nicely for us.
Now we feature the next waterfall down from Turtleback Falls along Horsepasture Creek, which we probably do not need to point out is not even remotely swimmable. Furthermore, David is not providing a very good sense of scale here either. This falls may or may not have a name, as you can see from the picture, there is a railing of sorts at this overlook, but there isn't much of a trail to get to the railing. This is as far as we wandered down Horsepasture Creek as it was getting dark and we weren't entirely sure how to get back to the car which we had just sort of abandoned alongside a road anyway, and which still didn't have a license plate (that's another story). We did find the car, and we found a hotel and we had a lovely dinner of Burger King (it was the only thing still open) while we watched news crews file reports on the local FBI manhunt from the parking lot of the hotel.
The next day we rented ourselves a 2-person raft and set off down the relatively minor whitewater of the Nantahala River. The most challenging rapid on this section of the Nantahala is the Lesser Wesser Falls shown here (unless you miss the take-out and go over Greater Wesser Falls a few hundred yards downstream). Also called Nantahala Falls, it's not really much of a falls, it more of a nice little class III rapid with a nearby viewing area where you can throw tow-ropes to all of the paddlers who fail to complete it inside their boats. There is a separate page related to this specifically on Nantahala Falls. We note for the record that we had no problem with this rapid.
See photographs from:
United States Gallery
