Mt. Calloway on Grand Father Mt. North Carolina

[Ed'n Lauky]

Saturday we drove from our home to Grandfather Mountain. It’s about a 3 ½ hour drive. The plan was to climb Calloway peak the highest on Grandfather Mountain – 5964’. I chose to use the Profile trail partly because I thought I could reach it faster than the trails that start off the Blue Ridge Parkway. It turned out to be the weekend of the Highland games. I was really glad we weren’t planning on going up to the Hanging Bridge as that was impossible this weekend. Grandfather Mountain is now a state park and the small Profile parking lot was manned by a couple of young state park officials who managed parking and made sure that the hiking permits were filled out.



The Profile trail is the most recent of the trails on Grandfather Mountain and it is a work of art. This stream crossing is a case in point. The huge flat stones at the stream crossing obviously did not just happen to be there. Further stream crossings having the same type of flat rocks made it evident that they had been put in place.



Every half mile on the way up there was a mileage sign making it easy to keep track of your progress. In many places stone steps had been put in place and the trail maintained a steady grade with the good use of switch backs.



There are a couple of viewpoints on the way up where you come to understand the reason for the trail name. Off in the distance you can see North Carolina’s “Old Man” or “Grandfather”. In other words you could see “profile.”



About three miles into the hike you come to Shanty Spring where the water comes gushing out from the cliff. The water was coming out in numerous places, but there was a pipe with water flowing that made a water refill very easy.



From the spring to the ridge and the junction with the “Grandfather” trail, the trail itself changed dramatically. Just to make those of us from New England feel at home it was completely rocky and went straight up. I don’t know but I suspect that this section of the trail is much older and was originally a spur trail from the Grandfather trail to the spring.



Once on the Grandfather trail we encountered the first of three ladders taking us to the summit. Lauky had never before encountered ladders of this size or type but he learned in a hurry. He went up them pretty much as he does ledges, He jumped from rung to rung. I understand that other trails coming in had other ladders but the Profile trail had none.



The summit was fogged in and a bit of an anticlimax. Accuweather for the area had predicted a sunny day with an afternoon storm but instead it was rainy and foggy all day. So much for mountain weather predictions. At least it wasn’t hot.

 

[Driver8]

Great trip report, Ed. Enjoyed pics of you and Lauky in action. Grandfather Mountain is one of those which, when you read about it, you immediately want to do it, at least I do. Glad you enjoyed it.

 

[hiking lady]

That looks like a neat hike and sounds like they are meticulous about there trails down there! Glad it wasn't a hot day. I would assume that any day down there hiking is either hot and humid or just humid. I'm thinking I would't like hiking in summer down there, given how much warmer it is.

The rock looks unique though! Are there a lot more hikers crowding the trails down there?

 

[Ed'n Lauky]

This has been a strange summer. Normally it is warmer here, but I note that Accuweather has Bridgton ME at 90* right now and it's 82* here. It has been very wet, but I have been enjoying the milder weather.

Just as with the Whites it depends on where you are as to how many are on the trails. On our last hike we went up Brasstown Bald the Georgia high point. We saw no one on that fairly long trail. At the top obviously there were quite a few people as it is a state park with a road to the top. The Profile trail on the other hand had a lot of people on it. Many did not go all the way to the top. There are a variety of intermediate points people went to.

There were many dogs on the trail also. The ladders seemed to stop many as Lauky was the only dog at the top while we were there.

There is a leash law in the state park and to my surprise I saw only one dog that was not on a leash. It definitely made getting past other dogs much easier.

Lauky's bandanna with the four 4000 footer patches attracted a lot of attention and brought about a lot of conversation about hiking in the Whites. There were even requests for pictures.

I didn't mention it in the report so I'll add here that there was a lot of available water for dog drinking all along the trail.

 

[IQuest]

Thanks for sharing. There have been a few times in the Whites where I wished they had those mile markers. It's also interesting to see the trees behind you at almost 6k feet. Was it "alpine zone" like up there or more like scrub and small trees?

 

[Ed'n Lauky]

What a difference a bit of latitude makes. At almost 6000' is was not Alpine zone at all. In fact the views would have been in basically one direction only. Above 5000' you started to see some fir trees but we were still well below the "imaginary" tree line. Even on Mt. Mitchel at 6684' they had to build a tower to get you above the trees.