Split Rock Falls, Indian Camp Falls, Chute Falls, and Paw
Paw Falls
Gorges State Park, NC
Saturday, August 18th, 2012
Me at Paw Paw Falls
Andy, Darrin, Johnny, and had planned for a weekend of
camping and waterfall wandering around Gorges State Park in Transylvania
County, NC. By the time the weekend
came, all the others had informed me that they would not be able to get there
until Saturday. However, if I am going
to go camping, I like to go for at least two nights.
So I drove up to Gorges State Park Friday evening after
work.
Most of the camping that I do is
considered Car Camping which means you can pretty much park at the
campsite.
This time it would be a little
different as the campsites are located about 0.75 miles away from the parking
area.
Since I don't have much in the
way of backpacking gear, I planned on making two trips to tote my heavy and bulky gear down
to the campsite.
The Pond at the Campground
I was surprised that I was the only person staying at the
campground, which made for a very peaceful and relaxing evening.
I wouldn't want to camp alone for more than a
couple of nights, but for one night it was very pleasant!
What surprised me the most was that it didn't
rain a drop all night.
My Campsite at Gorges State Park
I didn't want to worry about bear-proofing my food supply,
so I decided to do all my cooking at my truck.
So Saturday morning I hiked back up to the parking area to cook up some
breakfast and wait for Darrin, Andy, and the dogs to arrive.
Once they arrived, we hiked back down to the campground and
set up their gear before beginning our main hike of the day.
Our plan was to find the (4) waterfalls on Bearwallow Creek
which used to be collectively known as Paw Paw Falls. However, recently they have been given (4) separate
names. From the campground, we hiked a
series of forest service roads which took us most of the way there. However the last stretch down to the creek
would be a total bushwhack.
It was a tough bushwhack, but compared to other recent bushwhacking
adventures this one was not that bad.
We
arrived at the creek at the base of Split Rock Falls, which is actually the
second from the top.
Split Rock Falls
Since I knew we would be doing a lot of bushwhacking, creek
walking, and possibly swimming, I decided to bring my older camera along for
this hike. One critical mistake I made
was that I forgot to attach the tri-pod mount to the camera. So while I did remember my tri-pod, it was
kind of useless without the mount.
Therefore most of my photos were either hand held or taken using boulders, tree trunks, and
rocks as makeshift tri-pods.
Split Rock Falls was a nice start, but it ended up being my
least favorite of the (4) waterfalls.
From there we decided to bushwhack upstream to get to Indian
Camp Falls.
This is a neat sliding
cascade that makes a sharp 90-degree left hand turn through a narrow channel at
the base.
I think this was my favorite
of the (4) waterfalls.
Darrin and Andy checking out Indian Camp Falls
Indian Camp Falls
Indian Camp Falls
We backtracked down to Split Rock Falls and continued
downstream by walking through the creek.
This was quite challenging and both Darrin and I took a fall in the
exact same spot. Andy decided to avoid
the same mistake and instead bushwhacked through the brush. I don't think the route he chose was any
easier!
We eventually arrived at the top of Chute Falls.
We made our way down to the base along the side
of the waterfall.
It was a good thing it
didn't rain because this descent was scary enough on dry rocks.
It would definitely not have been safe on wet
rocks!
Andy and Kona at the top of Chute Falls
Boone and Kona at Chute Falls
At the base of Chute Falls, we ran into our next
problem.
At the base of the waterfall
was a deep pool of water surrounded by rock walls on the sides.
There was no getting around this obstacle; we
would have to get wet.
The shallowest
section was about belly high (chest high for Andy).
Darrin making his way across the pool at the base of Chute Falls
At first it looked like a really good swimming hole, but the
bottom of the pool was covered with boot swallowing mud!
I made it across the muddy water as quickly
as possible so I could set up and photograph the others making their way
across.
Andy working his way across
From there we continued downstream along the left side of
the creek.
At times it seemed like we
were on an old roadbed, but then it would disappear and turn into a
bushwhack.
But it wasn't long before we
heard to sounds of falling water and made our way back down to the creek.
We ended up a bit further downstream than
planned, but it was a fairly easy creek walk upstream to the base of Paw Paw
Falls.
Working our way upstream towards Paw Paw Falls
We made this our main lunch break and Andy was kind enough
to lend me his tri-pod while he ate his lunch.
Andy at Paw Paw Falls
Paw Paw Falls
Paw Paw Falls
Johnny was expecting to arrive later that afternoon and our
plan was to meet him at the campground at around 4:00pm. It was only about 1:00pm, so we figured we
might be able to make it up to Upper Bearwallow Falls and still get back to the
campground in time to meet Johnny.
From Paw Paw Falls we were able to pick up the remains of the old roadbed,
which gradually got more and more navigable the further we went. Soon we were making good progress and would
definitely be able to make it to Upper Bearwallow.
After some rough bushwhacking and creek walking this was a
quite pleasant and enjoyable section of the hike. However, somewhere along the way we made a
wrong turn and/or missed a turn we should have made.
When we eventually got our bearings we
realized that we were several miles away from where we should have been. So we scrapped our plans to hit Upper
Bearwallow Falls and instead worked our way back to the campground to meet
Johnny.
We arrived at the campground at around 3:30pm which was
perfect timing as Johnny showed up about 2 minutes later. After Johnny set up his gear, there was still
plenty of daylight left for one more waterfall wandering adventure.
Coming up next:
Saturday Afternoon Adventure to Lower Bearwallow Falls
