Oct 15 A Nice Randolph County Hike

 

Like a monument, this chimney soars high but is almost completely hidden from sight. It is located within 100 yards of some farm buildings and a open well. There are several wolf trees surrounding it defining the home's yard. The bricks are solid, hand formed and secured with mortar. Another pile of darker bricks may have been the the front entrance. A rectangular water filled hole likely was a cellar.

Obviously, this was a two story home. Fireplaces warmed 2 downstairs rooms and two upstairs rooms. The lower fireplace here looks like it may have been an oven. 

A large grand fireplace was probably the main room of the home.

Smaller upstairs fireplace

This is a fancy corncrib

The barn has survived due to the roof being almost fully intact. It is slowly succumbing to weather and nature.

The skinny purlins indicate to me the roof had always been metal. The ladder accesses a hayloft. The right side of the barn has several animal stalls. 

Possible grain storage bins

Mortise and tenon joints are solidly held in place with pegs throughout the structure. The wood beams show circular saw blade cuts.

Strawberry bush. However, I prefer the more whimsical "Hearts A'busting". Deer love the leaves. Often all you see is the sleek green woody stem. Don't try to sample it, for us humans it is poisonous. So poisonous it plays its way into the Grimm's fairy tale - Sleeping Beauty. The strong woody stem of the European counterpart - Euonymus europaeus (our version is Euonymus americanus), was used to make spindles. You'll recall that an evil fairy caused the young princess to prick her finger on a spindle. Instead of killing her, a good fairy was able to save her from death by changing that to 100 years of sleep. 

This creative bridge looks like a troll hangout. Several 55 gallon drums filled with concrete act as buttresses for the timber bridge. We found several large timbers down creek. 

Our tour of the property included following a creek for about a mile. It was a lovely rock filled creek with many snakeskin liverwort covered rocks. Liverworts are nonvascular plants. Without a vascular system to transport moisture and nutrients throughout the plant, liverworts tend to be small and grow in moist areas along creeks. 

The property had a long dry ridge of large rock outcrops. 

One member of our party had to depart early and encountered this dam. She texted a photo, so the rest of us altered our course to check it out.

This dam appears to have impounded several acres of flood plain along an unnamed tributary of the Uwharrie River. It is completely built of dry stacked stones probably from the creekbed. The dam has been breached where the creekbed is, on creek right. Lots of stones are just downcreek as a result of the breach. There is a small stone portion on far creek right that survived. That portion has a small conduit opening with no water flow. The dam does not appear to have spillway abutment walls like the check dams of Caraway Creek. 

About 130 feet in length, 5-6 feet wide with a level top and varying height, 8 feet at its highest point. It is located in a narrow area with rather steep hills on either side. 

Just downstream is a flash board riser laying on its side which appears to have been recently made (within 10 years). It likely was secured in the breached area for raising and lowering the pond level. 

Oct 10 Inside Sally Coggins Mine

 

Hidden in the Uwharrie National Forest, on a tract with no curated trails, is this mine. To get to it, you need to follow a number of old forest tracks and a lot of offtrail just using dead reckoning (I know that is a nautical term).  During a previous visit with Will here, we were able to locate the mine entrance for the Sally Coggins Mine but getting down a steep embankment to it was too risky. Since then, another friend, Matt, made a visit and was able to get down and in. However, without light he entered the mine and took a photo. The flash startled a Vulture which in turn startled Matt who does not startle easily. This trip, we had multiple ropes and light sources.

Ed. note: Some conflicting information indicates this might be Morris Mtn mine or Sallie Coggins mine.

After repelling down the embankment, there is a small space right in front of the opening, flanked by steep sides and this water filled vertical shaft. Matt attempted to measure the depth of the vertical shaft using a rock tied to a string. It is at least 10 feet deep. 

At the very end of the mine shaft this Camel cricket makes its living. Also known as Cave crickets, they are wingless and unable to fly or chirp. They can jump a surprising distance. 

For safely repelling and climbing out, two safety ropes were used. 

Measuring the vertical shaft.

Matt looking at an upside-down Russula mushroom 

We saw several upside-down mushrooms on the mine ceiling

Looking out

The shaft goes in about 30 feet, then turns for a short distance and we can easily stand up the entire way.

Looking in

After visiting the mine we climbed back out using our ropes and continued our exploration of the mine area. 

Nearby is another vertical shaft. This one measured about 6 feet deep. Matt saved a Box Turtle that had gotten down to water level and could not get back up the steep sides. 

Then it was off to find the Morris Mountain mine which we never found but had a nice hike in the woods. 

A White Oak cradles a Red Maple.

Fresh patch of Jack-O-Lanterns

Sep 5 A Big Meal for RIFA

 

RIFA - Red Imported Fire Ants. The photo above is a recently killed toad which is being consumed by Red Imported Fire Ants. It appears the ants are building a mound encircling the toad. RIFA can kill toads and other small prey. I don't know if this toad was killed by them or died some other way. I saw a smaller toad nearby that was just a skeleton with a similar ant structure around it. 

Aug 3 Lilies, Cheetos and Chiggers, the Legacy of Eastwood Preserve

 

Lilium pyrophilum, the fire loving lily, otherwise known as the Sandhill Lily. Its range is a narrow strip of sandy bogs along the fall line separating the piedmont from the coastal plane in NC, SC and a possible population recently reported in Georgia. Reports of populations in VA are questionable. It has not been known to science for very long. Beginning in the 1950s, botanists from UNC Chapel Hill were confused by it but they lacked the ability to fully define it. Bruce Sorrie, after moving to NC in the 1990s was tasked with inventorying the flora of Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty. Jay Carter alerted him to be on the lookout for the lily the UNC group had reported back in the 1950s. Sorrie teamed up with Mark Skinner, a lily specialist, and fully documented the species in 2002. Today I got to see several of the lilies in bloom at Eastwood Preserve after trampling through chigger infested terrain. This one above is quite brilliantly at its peak. 

There was a very nice community of these yellow or orange fringed orchids in a boggy area. I was told a white fringed orchid was on a nearby property. It was described as the whitest white can be. 

Bog Cheetos, more commonly known as Yellow milkwort and more formally known as Polygala lutea grow close to the ground often hidden in tall grass. Why is it Yellow milkwort and not Orange milkwort? Lutea is Latin for yellow. Why not Polygala aurantiacus (Latin for orange)? Well, the species was dug up in America and shipped to Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist credited with establishing the binomial system of naming and classifying all living things. So, Linnaeus received the species months after it had been dug and it had turned from brilliant orange to yellow. Hence, we still call it lutea. I'm sticking with bog cheetos. 

Meadow Beauties

Orangegrass but looks yellow to me

Summersweet or Sweet pepperbush. The flower has a sweet fragrance and blooms in the summer. The mature fruit resembles a peppercorn but does not taste spicy. The peppercorns we use as a seasoning come from a vine that is native to India but now grown in tropical areas around the world. 

I think this is White camas or Death camas. That sounds like you would not want to eat it.

Blazing Star. Which one?

Beaked pencilflower. I've heard it is called pencilflower because its color resembles a #2 pencil's color or a school bus.

Jeff Marcus of the Nature Conservancy gives introductions. Jeff lives on the preserve so he knows this place like his backyard. 

My souvenir from today's hike. If chiggers have a redeeming feature I don't know what it is.  

Jul 5 Catawba Falls

 

It's back after a several year hiatus. Access to Catawba Falls was closed while construction of a massive staircase and access roads were ongoing. The public was invited back at the end of May. Social media posts have been largely negative on the "improvements". I don't see that the USFS had much of a choice. It has been reported that over $1.5 million was being spent annually on rescues at the falls. Numerous deaths have occurred here. I think is vies with Elk River Falls as the most deadly in NC.

The property was acquired in 2005. A parking area and trail to the lower falls was constructed in 2010. A couple footbridges were installed in 2016 and now the grand staircase has opened this year. Visitation has skyrocketed. The first trail only went to the lower falls. There was a scramble route to the upper falls. This made rescues quite difficult. Now there is a dizzying 580 step series of stairs and roads to both upper and lower falls. The roads were built to facilitate rescues. The trail to lower falls is rescue vehicle accessible while a new road needed to be constructed to the upper falls. 

It is an easy uphill hike of about 1 mile to the lower falls plunge pool. The stair structure is placed in such a way that you can photograph the waterfall without seeing the structure. You can get great views of the many drops and cascades of lower falls as you climb the stairs. 

It was a hot day, so the climb was a slow one. Between lower and upper falls, the stairs seemingly never end. The amount of work that went into this structure is hard to fathom. The original contract bid was about $1.65 million. I don't know if that was just the stair structure or entailed the trail and roadwork as well. I suspect that it was separate. The stairs are not complete at the upper falls yet. There was a crew putting the final touches on while we were there. A fair number of people were hanging out at the upper falls today. It was a little awkward to get around with the work not being completed but the sheer beauty of upper falls is worth it. 

We followed the upper falls access road back to the parking lot. It rose up to a ridgetop and then made a gradual descent. I found this to be a very pleasant walk down. 

We arrived at the parking lot about 8:30 and it was about 70% full. By 11am on our way out, the parking area had closed and traffic was turned away. About a mile from the trailhead was a private hay field converted into a parking lot. Dozens of drivers paid $5 to park there and add about 2 miles of roadwalk to their hikes.

I tried to get a shot of the lower falls and the the bottom portion of the stair structure. In the top right you can see how the wood stairs turn into a metal tower. 

Old power house near the parking area

The gravel trail to the lower falls