🍁 Hiking NC After Hurricane Helene 2024
Hubby and I hiked our favorite trail towards the end of October: Twin Falls in Pisgah National Forest near Brevard, NC.
We actually already had this whole trip planned to celebrate our 4th anniversary BEFORE the hurricane and luckily our Airbnb regained power & water and the roads/trails in this part of Pisgah were still pretty accessible and officially open before we got there.
This was our 4th time hiking this trail together;
• first was when we were dating in 2020
• second was for our engagement pictures in 2021
• third was for our elopement on 10/10/2021
FS Road #477 (Avery Creek Road) was closed before the horse stables so we had to walk an extra mile or so on that road before getting to the trailhead at Buckhorn Gap. We hiked out and back to the falls for a total of 6-ish miles [instead of doing the Clawhammer Cove loop].
This trail has several creek crossings – some of which are pretty creative.
We had the trail and the falls pretty much to ourselves on the way out and saw more hikers and bikers on our way back.
Ever since our engagement atop a fog-shrouded mountain, we committed to being an all-weather couple and were prepared to hike the trail no matter what condition it was in.
We were so grateful to see there wasn’t too much damage or debris, the weather & temperature were absolutely perfect and I’m pretty sure fall color was at its peak.
We live in another county of Western North Carolina that experienced more damage… so this was a welcome respite.
💖