Sunday morning rolls around and while I am making some lunch it is called to my attention that we were not heading to the lake, but taking a drive into NC to see some water falls. I was none-the-less excited about this and finished eating to head out.
Still having in my mind that we going to the lake, I dressed as such. Bathing suit, flip flops, bag with a towel, change of clothes, and of course some red kool-aid.
We set off and drove for over an hour into the NC wilderness. We ended up in Sapphire, NC which is in the Nantahala Wilderness, which coincidentally is where I will be on Thursday white water rafting.
We entered Gorges St. Park and drove down the entrance. We soon passed the parking lot where Heath had parked before, however it was closed at this time. This meant that we had to drive another 2 miles down the park road to the new parking lot where the new trail heads where.
In previous years, the path to Turtleback falls was not an recognized trail, so you had to know where you were going. Unfortunately we were parked about 3 miles away from the start of that trail so we used the official park trail. This trail was a nice trail for day hikers and the generally inexperienced that probably traverse these trails. However to the seasoned hiker a gravel trail is a nuisance. More so, to someone in nothing more than shower flip flops the sharp and pointy gravel did not treat the feet well at all.
Luckily the 2nd half of the trail was dirt (once we left the NC St. park and entered the US park services).
The total trail was listed as 1.5 mi to Rainbow falls, our first scenic overlook. Rainbow Falls are an impressive sight, probably falling 150ft plus and crashing into a skewed pile of rocks on the bottom. Just past that is a large pool with people lounging around.
We continued out journey another 3/10 of a mile to Turtleback falls. These falls were probably 25 ft tall, however the edge was curved downwards, looking like a turtle's back (get it??). This allowed one to slide over the edge of the falls and plunge down about 20 or so feet into a nice deep (cold) pool of water. To get to the top of the falls, there was a nice rope in place that you could literally climb up the side of the face to get to the top.
After a few slides down the turtleback falls, I went upstream a little because I saw a nice swift moving patch of water... Let me just say that I am not always the brightest. I slid into the flow and started to get carried away, however as it dawned upon me later, the reason that no one else was sliding down these rocks was because they were somewhat sharp, and not pleasant to slide down...
Worse yet was that when I finally regained control of myself and stood up, I was covered in leeches... *UGH*.
I tried to wipe them all off, but there were to many leeches, too many places, and they would hang on like a mo-fo.
I quickly went back downstream and went off the edge of the falls down 20 something feet into the cool water. This was enough to get my body leech free which I was very excited about.
Shortly after this escapade, we left turtleback falls and continued to rainbow falls where a cliff was point out to me. From the trail which was near the top of the falls, it looked only 15-20ft above the water, just a little more than a high dive. However upon descending the steep and winding trail (not easy in flip flops) the cliff grew some.
At the edge of the pool, we watched Heath scale the side of the cliff using tree roots and patches of dirt as a ladder. He worked his way out onto the ledge and then proceeded to jump into the pool.
Upon seeing that Heath was in fact not dead, two more of us continued on up to jump. We climbed the same route, and ended up eventually on the ledge. From up there the water looked a good 50 feet away... After getting mentally prepared to jump, I took one step. Then the next step. Then into the third and final step, I realized that I didnt know what the crap I was doing and that I could quite possibly die in a matter of seconds. At once I didnt want to jump, however with my momentum, there was no turning back. I planted my last foot and shot off the edge of the cliff and looking down thought I was going to fall into the rocks at the base. Luckily the mind is frail and cant think well under these circumstances, because obviously I didn't hit those rocks and instead plunged into the pool in a semi cannonball form.
The thrill and rush of excitement followed the splash and instantly I was glad that I had climbed and jumped. Shortly afterwards, Heath climbed back up with AJ. After a long long wait (with numerous attempts to back out) AJ finally jumped off the cliff with Heath simultaneously.
AJ and Heath jumping:
After a long hike back to the cars in my dying shower flops we were set to head home.
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