Sunday, August 10, 2014

North Carolina - Hanging Rock State Park


Hanging Rock State Park was a short couple of hours from the Raleigh, NC airport where I landed on Sunday for a work meeting in Danville, VA on Tuesday.  It was foggy and a little rainy the entire drive so I figured I would be in for a little moisture and unfortunately not a log of good views....which is one of the reasons I selected this location.

There are many trails in this park but I decided to take the loop route as described on Hiking Upwards website as described by one of their users. This route would take me to all the highlights I wanted to see, Moore's Knob, Cooks wall and Hanging Rock.

The path starts towards Moore's Knob, it's a little difficult to follow but once I got my bearings I was on my way.  Right before the stairs section that I read about I came across some stacked stones on a large rock.



 After this it's 75% stairs climbing a couple thousand feet.  So yes they get annoying after a little while.  The rain also started falling so I knew the trip down was going to be tricky.



Once at the top I could tell that the views would have been spectacular had it not been foggy.








You can win em all.  It still was a nice spot though.  On to the next.  Due to the fog and the rain I decided to skip Cooks Wall because again that was a good spot for a view.  So I headed right for Hanging Rock.  This was a fairly easy hike once I made it down all the rocks from Moore's Knob.  Along the way there were a lot of interesting rocks.









Then onto Hanging Rock.  This was the best part of the hike for sure.  The fog again hid the views, but it had a really cool "End of the Earth" feeling to it.



The fog began to clear up enough to at least see some greenage below.



End of the Earth!


I'll do this hike again someday, and I will make sure it's a clear day.  Flickr Photos Here



Monday, November 28, 2011

Wednesday, October 19, 2011