MacRae Peak and Attic Window Peak of Grandfather Mountain

Grandfather Mountain is on the Blue Ridge, the "front range" in these parts, and was developed commercially a long, long time ago--but there are substantial areas now where the state has bought up the land and made a state park, and these are now at least protected from further development.

If one wants wildness in North Carolina, one has to go further "back"--but one is never too far anymore from development.  The wild side of Grandfather is best accessed off NC 105, not on the side of the tourist trap entrance which is still privately owned.

--Lannie

The Profile Trail off NC 105 is perhaps the best in terms of still being close to nature, but even on this approach one sees too many signs of development.

Most of my hiking in North Carolina has taken place further west near Asheville, such as in Shining Rock Wilderness as well as in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park on the Tennessee border.

North Carolina ain't the Andes, but it's. . . not too bad in places.

Here it is, warts and all:

For the record, I haven't hiked Grandfather since 1969--forty-seven years ago.

Things change.

--Lannie

This video shows a very different kind of hike on the part of a guy who was just about to turn fifty-three years old.  He started out on the "tourist side," the privately-owned Swinging Bridge area which can be accessed by driving up the mountain to an altitude of approximately a mile above sea level.

He made it on foot from the Swinging Bridge area to the top of MacRae (or "MacRae's") Peak in fifty minutes, giving some views from the top which show all three main summits of Grandfather Mountain: Calloway Peak (the highest but least rocky), Attic Window Peak, and MacRae's Peak (the lowest of the three, but the most exposed).

I made an attempt on MacRae's in the summer of 1969, but I was driven back by a severe electrical storm.  I have (somewhere) a picture of my wife standing on the Swinging Bridge in a very high wind--made that same day.  I think that my younger daughter has that picture. 

I haven't seen that photo in thirty or forty years, maybe longer.  That was our only trip to Grandfather.  We preferred the wilder mountains further west, especially the Shining Rock Wilderness area southwest of Asheville--or else the granite outcroppings on the South Carolina section of the Blue Ridge: our local "front range" when we lived on Paris Mountain near Greenville, SC in the late 1960s.

--Lannie