Agile Trekker: Lower Sam Branch Falls and Wash Hollow Falls, Shining Rock

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
2/11/2023	1.1 miles	1 hour 26 minutes	101'	1.5 mph	75.2

Parking:

Route 215, Wash Hollow, parking on the side of the road at a hairpin turn.

Map:

Gaia Gps

Directions:

See North Carolina Waterfalls by Kevin Adams

Carolina Mountain Club Challenges:

100 Waterfalls Challenge, Lower Sam Branch Falls
100 Waterfalls Challenge, Wash Hollow Falls

Off today to do 2 waterfall hikes in Canton. I'm limited to short hikes for a while due to plantar fasciitis. I thought one waterfall was advertised as .8 miles and one as .6 miles. Well, in reality they are practically right next to each other, and so in total it should have only been a .6-mile hike to do both of them. We wandered around quite a lot, so it ended up being a whopping 1.1-mile hike. Phyllis and Paul were crazy enough to join us. A 1-hour drive each way to hike 1.1 miles. Ha!

This hike doesn't show up in the Pisgah Map Co.'s Shining Rock map. Gaia does show the trail. When I checked Gaia this morning, I noticed that both waterfalls were on the same hike. Oops. I would have planned another waterfall if I had known.

This ended up being an adventure! We climbed up a steep embankment from the parking lot and turned left onto a logging road. From there we continued straight to Lower Sam Branch Falls. At that point we had a predicament. Wash Hollow Falls was on the other side. We looked at our options and didn't feel comfortable crossing over the waterfall to get to the other side. I had read that it shouldn't be crossed during high water, and in low water, you still need to be careful. Hmm. I don't know if this was high water or low water??? We didn't want to be defeated, so we decided we'd try bushwhacking if necessary. We turned back and found a herd path that led down to the bottom of the waterfall. It was a great place to take a picture actually. Phyllis and I were able to cross there without a problem. Glen didn't follow us all the way and ended up going back and crossing at the more dangerous spot. Oh dear. Eventually all of us somehow ended up on the other side and just had a very short ways to see Wash Hollow Falls. Krummholz was happy as he got to wade in some waterfall pools. Back we went the easier of the two ways. You can see old metal cables on the ground near the waterfalls. Apparently, there was a logging camp here.

On the way home, we stopped at Papertown Coffee, a cute little coffee shop in Canton. They actually had some vegan black bean and sweet potato wraps, so we were able to pick up some lunch as well as drinks. It was a fun day, and I was happy to get out before our winter weather.