I just completed a three day, two night backpack trip with some friends to Panthertown Valley, located in the North Carolina mountains just outside of Cashiers.
It is a 6300-acre valley complex between Sassafras Mountain to the north, Toxaway and Hogback Mountains to the south, Cold Mountain to the east, and Laurel Knob to the west.
Panthertown has been called the Yosemite of the East, not because its cliffs are as tall or dramatic as those seen in the California valley, but because the main valley and its surrounding cliffs suggest a Yosemite-like landscape.
Panthertown is home to hundreds of species of Southern Appalachian trees, shrubs, vines, wildflowers, mosses, ferns and lichens, including many rare species, such as northern beech fern, the climbing fern, and Cuthbert’s turtlehead. Most of the trees consist of white pine, eastern hemlocks(now dying from infestation by the hemlock wooly adelgid) and yellow birches.
We hiked through the valley, with its stands of large white pines, creating a thick blanket of pine needles and mosses on the forest floor, and a feeling of eerie solitude and quiet. Only an occasional song from a robin, finch or sparrow would interrupt the serene quiet.
We passed many creeks, sometimes plunging noisily over rock littered stream beds and then a little further down the trail the creek would flow almost imperceptibly through high mountain bogs, it’s distinctive dark, tea brown color contrasting with white sandbars, and lush green rhododendron that strangled the banks of the stream.
Its cliffs rising majestically on either side of the trail, beckoning us to its summits to gain the view from above, rose in silence all around. We eventually climbed the steep terrain of Little Green Mountain and witnessed an unbelievable sunset from Tranquility Point. The sunset’s ever changing colors, beginning with pale yellows, pinks and blues, with an occasional white, puffy, cumulus cloud drifting across the horizon, separating the rising peaks to the west and the darkening skies above. The clouds changing shapes, lazily, slowly changing colors, hues, as the sun inched its way lower in the sky, eventually to disappear behind Laurel Knob to the west. The colors of the sky were changing to deep reds and purples, with the clouds turning to dark blues and grays, backlit from the setting sun, creating a glowing edge to the ever changing shapes of the clouds. It created a vision of God’s creation and we could only sit in silence and in awe. Each person watching, contemplating within themselves, touched in their own individual way, and witnessing one of nature’s most wondrous gifts to man.
Each trip into nature, alone or with friends, is truly an experience that one can never forget.
It is a 6300-acre valley complex between Sassafras Mountain to the north, Toxaway and Hogback Mountains to the south, Cold Mountain to the east, and Laurel Knob to the west.
Panthertown has been called the Yosemite of the East, not because its cliffs are as tall or dramatic as those seen in the California valley, but because the main valley and its surrounding cliffs suggest a Yosemite-like landscape.
Panthertown is home to hundreds of species of Southern Appalachian trees, shrubs, vines, wildflowers, mosses, ferns and lichens, including many rare species, such as northern beech fern, the climbing fern, and Cuthbert’s turtlehead. Most of the trees consist of white pine, eastern hemlocks(now dying from infestation by the hemlock wooly adelgid) and yellow birches.
We hiked through the valley, with its stands of large white pines, creating a thick blanket of pine needles and mosses on the forest floor, and a feeling of eerie solitude and quiet. Only an occasional song from a robin, finch or sparrow would interrupt the serene quiet.
We passed many creeks, sometimes plunging noisily over rock littered stream beds and then a little further down the trail the creek would flow almost imperceptibly through high mountain bogs, it’s distinctive dark, tea brown color contrasting with white sandbars, and lush green rhododendron that strangled the banks of the stream.
Its cliffs rising majestically on either side of the trail, beckoning us to its summits to gain the view from above, rose in silence all around. We eventually climbed the steep terrain of Little Green Mountain and witnessed an unbelievable sunset from Tranquility Point. The sunset’s ever changing colors, beginning with pale yellows, pinks and blues, with an occasional white, puffy, cumulus cloud drifting across the horizon, separating the rising peaks to the west and the darkening skies above. The clouds changing shapes, lazily, slowly changing colors, hues, as the sun inched its way lower in the sky, eventually to disappear behind Laurel Knob to the west. The colors of the sky were changing to deep reds and purples, with the clouds turning to dark blues and grays, backlit from the setting sun, creating a glowing edge to the ever changing shapes of the clouds. It created a vision of God’s creation and we could only sit in silence and in awe. Each person watching, contemplating within themselves, touched in their own individual way, and witnessing one of nature’s most wondrous gifts to man.
Each trip into nature, alone or with friends, is truly an experience that one can never forget.
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