Rough Ridge

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Rough Ridge
Rough Ridge

Driving the Blue Ridge Parkway as part of our route home to Durham last Sunday would take us by familiar iconic landscape as an earlier thunderstorm there broke apart. Clouds, shredded as they came up and over the mountains, played with the sunlight, and painted those “familiar” places in unfamiliar ways. Rough Ridge looks quite like the Matterhorn here. A noticeable difference is that throughout the ancient and worn Appalachians, there is no tree line… trees are found to the top of every mountain in the range.

Rough Ridge Trail, at Milepost 302.8, is easily one of the most popular and satisfying Blue Ridge Parkway hikes, at 1.5 miles roundtrip. Large rock platforms give outstanding views of cascading mountains, Grandfather Mountain, the Linn Cove Viaduct, and is a wonderful spot for sunrise. This trail ascends the highest and most rugged peak on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Either side of the trail is also one of the oldest ecosystems in North America with rare and fragile plants... watch your footing.

While the hike to the top is only about three-quarters of a mile, the change in elevation happens quickly… plus 480 feet at the peak. The trail is rugged, rocky, and often muddy in places, but when it opens through the canopy to the beauty around it, the climb is well worth the effort. The trail continues at the top, as it is a part of the Tanawha Trail, stretching 13.5 miles from Julian Price Park to Beacon Heights, paralleling the Blue Ridge Parkway on Grandfather Mountain. Tanawha, the Cherokee word for fabulous hawk or eagle, is an appropriate name for this trail that offers hikers spectacular views of distant mountains, such as here on Rough Ridge.

I know every step of that trail. Yet, I've had many a pretentious hiker hollering down to me from these rocks that I don't know what I'm missing from their lofty perch, as I shoot the viaduct or Yonahlossee Ridge in autumn from the parkway. Some images are just better from below, like this of their very perch. Yonahlossee is another Cherokee word meaning 'place of the bear', an indicator of what to watch for in this area.

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Taken on: November 27, 2022
Sets appears in:   • Blue Ridge   
Groups appears in:   • Landscape    • North Carolina    more » • Blue Ridge Parkway    • Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains    • The Blue Ridge Parkway    • Because You Love North Carolina    • .Southern Photographers - Southern Images    • Clouds, Storms, Sunsets & Sunrises    • Our State Magazine    • in explore    • CSSS: Earth - My Perspective, A Personal Focus    • Brain Vision. Art.    • CSSS: Earth - Ambient Light Through the Trees    • CSSS: Earth - Landscape Dominate (CSSS Required)    « less
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III, f/16.0, 1/125 sec, 105mm, ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Lens: EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM
Aperture: f/16.0
Exposure Time: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Focal Length: 105mm
ISO: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program: Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode: Auto
Metering Mode: Multi-segment
White Balance: Manual
Color Space: sRGB
Software: Adobe Photoshop 24.0 (Windows)
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