Cheaha Mountain - Alabama High Point

When we were in West Virginia last year we were confused as to the mountains we were in. Were we in the Appalachians, the Alleghenys, or the Blue Ridge? After a brief look I'm still confused, but the picture is clearer. The Appalachian Mountain Range, in its broadest sense, is the mother range that extends from Newfoundland, in southeastern Canada, 1,500 miles southwest to central Alabama. The term includes the surrounding hills and plateau regions. Then within the mother Appalachian range there are sub-ranges with their own names, including, among others, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, the Green Mountains in Vermont, the Berkshires in Massachusetts, the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, and the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina, which include the Great Smoky Mountains. In this context, the name of the Appalachian Trail, which goes from Mt. Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia, makes sense.  

This leads me to my topic. At the southern end of the mother Appalachians are the Talladega Mountains, which are also considered part of the southern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains (I had no idea the Blue Ridge Mountains were so extensive). The high point in Alabama, at 2,413 feet, is Cheaha Mountain, part of the Talladegas, about 58 miles east of Birmingham (as the crow flies), 75 miles northeast of Montgomery and 95 miles southwest of Atlanta.

We drove to Cheaha from Atlanta. Cheaha is about 17 miles off the I-20, about 12 miles of which was a fairly straight line along a forested ridge that gradually increased in elevation. Although the day was sunny and the temperatures were in the 50s, previous cold was evidenced along the way by an impressive collection of icicles along a section of the road. And although Cheaha is not real high, it seems higher than it is because it is raised above the surrounding terrain quite substantially.

Roadside icicles.

Lighting is poor, but you get a sense of the isolation of Cheaha Mountain which is in the center, the third peak left from the right.

From the same vantage point as the picture above, looking back in the direction of the freeway.

The summit is part of Cheaha State Park, which encompasses a fairly small area on the upper portion of the mountain and has hiking trails, camping spots, a lodge, a store and a restaurant. Bunker Tower, a stone building with an observation deck, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, sits on top. The tower itself was accessible and after negotiating some steep, winding stairs, we were rewarded with nice views of the surrounding countryside. The brass USGS benchmark is a few yards in front of Bunker Tower. It refers to Cheaha as "Cheehahaw." Entrance to the park requires a small fee, but they waived it for us when we said we were just going to spend a few minutes at the top.

Bunker Tower

Judy at the high point sign.

Judy at the Bunker Tower observation deck.

The USGS benchmark.

A stone bump near the summit.

People do go to Cheaha Mountain when they want to get out and enjoy nature and the store had warning signs about feeding bears and deer. 

Britton Hill - Florida High Point

Britton Hill, the high point in the State of Florida, is the lowest of all the state high points. In fact, at 345 feet in elevation, it is lower than 16 other state low points. The next lowest state high point is in Delaware, 103 feet higher. Britton Hill is situated in Lakewood Park, in the Florida panhandle, just about a mile from the Alabama border, and has a paved road to within 50 feet or so of it. 

Passing from Alabama into Florida. Britton Hill is about a mile ahead on the right. Doesn't look too steep yet.

A little hill as we approach the summit, which is on the right just beyond where you can see.

But "summiting" Britton Hill was not without its difficulties. First, it is out of the way. We stayed in a place called Defuniak Springs, Florida, a small spread out town about 80 miles east of Pensacola, and then had to drive about 25 miles north down country roads to get to Britton Hill. So it was quite a bit out of the way of other things we planned to do. Second, it was raining like crazy. Rain was coming down so hard that I had the windshield wipers on extra speed-wipe in order to try and clear off the rain water. We weren't sure how we were going to get anything like our customary "summit" picture without getting completely drenched.  No matter how high or how small, it seems like the weather at the high points when we visit tends to be extreme. Third, it was actually a little hard to find. Unlike some high points, this high point is not obvious. Our GPS led us just a bit past the place and we ended up wandering into Alabama and realized we needed to turn around. 

A view from the visitor shelter. The granite summit marker and a bench are to the left. Our car and the parking lot are to the right. 

The Florida high point marker. 

A helpful sign.

A view of the rest of the small park. Not much sense of elevation.

However, the high point gods were with us and it literally stopped raining as we pulled into tiny Lakewood Park. We took a few pictures and Judy announced she was getting back to the car before the deluge began again. I lingered a few minute longer and then high-tailed it for a tiny visitor shelter to take some more pictures while the rain cloud spiggot resumed to full-on position. 

In Florida, height is relative. I visited Shark Valley in Everglades National Park later in the trip and learned that Shark Valley truly is a valley, even though it looks as flat as a table top. It is 18 inches lower than the surrounding terrain. So when you have valleys that are 18 inches low, a height of 345 feet can seem significant. In fact, I wondered before-hand if it would seem like it was higher. On the way up to Britton Hill we actually did go up some noticeable hills. Nothing too significant, but noticeable.  

Spruce Knob - High Point of West Virginia

We planned a trip to West Virginia: (a) because we'd never been there; and (b) because this appeared to be a good time to catch the fall colors in this beautiful state. The state high point is Spruce Knob, 4,863 feet, in the Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area and Monongahela National Forest, one of the more beautiful parts of the state. And state high points are something I'm interested in. 

It was October 24th, a little late in the fall color cycle, but many of the leaves were still on the trees. We left Sutton for an approximate 2 1/2 hour drive to Spruce Knob. In Riverton, a dot on the map and not much more than that on the ground, we took a paved side road which indicated that Spruce Knob was 12 miles. I was not optimistic of making it all the way. Our drive so far had been a mixture of drizzling rain at times, which turned into snow at higher elevations. I was pretty sure our two wheel drive compact car would get halted by snow and icy conditions at the higher elevation. As we drove, the two lane road transitioned into a one lane road and we felt like Israelites passing through a sea of hard-wood trees. Both on the way up, and the way down, we stopped many times for "just one more picture" of the fall colors that were so breath-taking. 

Two lane road heading up into the mountains.

Amazing fall colors.

Now a one lane road and a joy to drive.

As we get higher, snow starts to accumulate on the ground.

As I feared, the drizzly rain turned into a steady snow as we got higher and the beautiful fall leaves were either covered up by or knocked off the trees by the snow. Heart in mouth, I drove on, fearful that the next bend would present roads too slick or too covered with snow to continue any further. Several times I thought we'd about gone as far as we could, but we kept going. 

As we got higher, we found more snow and fewer leaves on the trees.

More and more snow was sticking to the road.

Hard-wood trees transitioned to spruce. 

Finally, 11 miles up the road we had a turn off to Spruce Knob (the main road continued on to a lake), one more mile to the summit. The road got a little steeper and the snow accumulation greater. Our little car, the engine that could, kept going and we were not slipping and sliding and finally made it. 

Looking at Spruce Knob from the road.

The summit is not a bare point of rock towering over the surrounding terrain, but a parking lot, with an outhouse, some trash bins and a sign welcoming you to the state high point and pointing you to an observation tower 900 feet distant. Spruce trees (thus "Spruce Knob") surround the parking lot obscuring any views, I guess creating the need for the observation tower. 

At the summit.

Judy opted to stay in the car, as the temperature was 24 degrees and snow was covering the ground. I opted for a quick walk to the tower. What views there might be on a clear day were shrouded by the clouds, but I did get a beautiful view down on the snow draped spruce below. For a Southern Californian that does not get into snow often, this was magical. 

A nice place to be when it is 24 degrees outside.

Not the first one to be here today. But we were now alone.

An interesting transition from rocks to trees.

Summit observation tower, framed by spruce.

Looking down on the spruce from the tower.

On our drive back down the mountain we ooed and awwed and stopped for many more pictures and I saw what appeared to be a fisher or mink cross the road. I got out of the car to investigate and saw it go down a hole just off the side of the road. 

We stopped near Seneca Rocks, 20 miles from Spruce Knob, to view the beautiful sentinel from a distance, but opted to continue on as we didn't have time to do any hiking if we wanted to do justice to our last destination. At Seneca Rocks, it was sunny and the temperature was a balmy 47 degrees. What a difference a little elevation can make. 

Seneca Rocks

We drove another 33 miles to Blackwater Falls State Park and into an even thicker snowfall. Fortunately the falls are just a short distance from the road down a nice trail. The falls were magical viewed through the lense of dense snowflakes. It felt like we were inside a little snow-globe and someone had just shaken it. You can see from Judy's hair that the snow was accumulating pretty fast. 

Trail down to Blackwater Falls overlook.

The canyon walls covered in pines and snow.

Blackwater Falls viewed through a living snow-globe.

Christmas come early. One of Santa's cute elves. 

A respite from the falling snow.

We stopped for a view at Pendleton overlook and got a gorgeous view of the Blackwater canyon. 

Blackwater Canyon from Pendleton Overlook

Then while Judy stayed in the car, I opted to hoof it to Lindy Point, supposedly 10 minutes down a four-wheel drive road. I walked 25 minutes without reaching it, and turned around in order not to incur the wrath of my sweetheart waiting in the car.  But again, this Southern Californian enjoyed the walk through this magical white forest with the gently falling flakes and the peaceful surroundings. It felt like Narnia, where is the lamppost? There is nothing quite like the first snow of the year, when the colors of fall are enveloped by the newly fallen, soft, snow, before the snow turns to ice and sludge and bitter cold. 

The road to Lindy Point.

Transition from fall to winter.

A creek crossing made more difficult by low-hanging, snow-covered boughs.

Mount Washington

Last Thursday, Judy and I took the Mt. Washington Cog Railway to the summit of Mt. Washington, at 6,288 feet, the tallest mountain in New Hampshire, and the tallest mountain in the northeastern United States (the closest mountains that are higher are to the southeast in North Carolina (6,684 ft.), to the west in South Dakota (7,244 ft.) and to the southwest in Tennessee (6,643 ft.). The photo below, I believe of Mt. Washington, was taken from the Kancamagus Scenic Byway in the White Mountains. 

The cog railway, completed in 1869, was the first cog railway up a mountain in the world. 

There is only one other in the United States, up Pikes Peak in Colorado,  which Judy and I rode two years ago. The Pikes Peak Cog Railway starts at 6,537 feet and climbs 7,439 feet in 8.9 miles, to 14,110 feet. The Mount Washington Cog Railway starts at 2,700 feet 

and climbs just short of 3,588 feet in 3 miles. 

Although Pikes Peak is substantially taller and the views from the top are more spectacular, there are quite a few things about Mount Washington which made it, in some ways, more fun. It is more rustic and not as technologically advanced. We were in one car, made of wood, with a door open to the elements (it was raining and windy at the time). 

The seats were tilted forward on the way up to compensate for the 25% to 37% grade. 

Below, the grade is so severe that we were able to lean forward substantially and stay upright.

and

On the way down, the hinged seat backs were flipped which made the same seats now tilted backwards to compensate for the grade going down. We were able to interact with the conductor, ask him questions, 

and watch while he inspected the track to make sure the switches were working correctly. 

The grade was generally steeper and the terrible weather 

on Mt. Washington and its history made for fun and interesting stories. Also, there are grave markers along the route highlighting some of the deaths that have occurred on the mountain over the years. The Appalachian Trail, which goes from Maine to Georgia, crosses the cog railway near the summit and is marked by rock cairns to help hikers follow the trail in poor visibility. 

This is my first time seeing any portion of the Appalachian Trail. Very near the summit we passed a marker for Miss Lizzie Bourne, daughter of Judge Bourne, of Kennebunk, Maine, 

who died on that spot in 1855. Later, in the observatory at the top, we found a chart detailing those who have died on Mt. Washington. The first one listed is Fredrick Strickland of Bridlington, England who died in a ravine on the way down on October 19, 1849. Lizzie Bourne is listed as the second death, on September 13, 1855. She died of exhaustion and hypothermia just short of the summit. 

The last listed death, number 145, was Christopher Baillie of Forked River, New Jersey, who slipped on some some rocks at the top of a water fall and fell to his death on July 18, 2010. It is renowned for its bad weather and holds the world record for the highest recorded wind speed at 231 miles per hour. 

We got a taste of that poor weather. While we were up there, there were significant winds, rain and fog. The engine (on the left) and the passenger car (on the right) as seen from the observatory.

A marker, right near the observatory, showing the path to the summit.

A closeup of the Appalachian Trail symbol.

The summit sign at the top of some rocks.

Judy and I at the summit.

The Appalachian Trail touches the summits of each of the peaks in the Presidential Range and this experience has whetted my desire to hike the portion of the AT through the Presidential Range and perhaps to the terminus at Mt. Katahdin in Maine.