Sat, Mar 12 2005 - 4 waterfalls on the Horsepasture River (View Original Event Details) Trip Leader(s): Bruce Participants: d merat, Kiran Puttaswamy, Beth Arnold, Jason Bright, Ashey Bohnert, Simon Bright, , Mary Joyce Bacon, Bruce

Write Up:
After waiting the usual fifteen minutes for latecomers, we had only lost one person from AOC, none from the GATC; and exceptional turnout, for what was to be an exceptional hike on a great day to a fantastic river, and a great social group. The fantastic four (Beth, Ashley, Jason and Simon) were already a car full, and the rest of us split up in other vehicles and were on our way the 140 mile drive to the trailhead. The weather ended up being in the mid-50’s and sun shining, and appropriate for everyone enjoying the sights of this one of a kind national wild and scenic river. We took a short break at the third and largest waterfall (Rainbow Falls), and enjoyed the view of the gorge below its 150’ heights. Foz, Michael, Don and others got many good pictures of this and previous waterfalls (Drift and Turtleback Falls). All enjoyed the scenery on this voyeur friendly river with many viewing points of all waterfalls, all of them splendid in there own right.

After this short break and all enjoy a full frontal view of the gorgeous Rainbow Falls, we entered the more wild part of the trail, where only the fearless leader knew where the trail snaked through the less obvious backcountry. It is here we lost one person temporarily due to an unfortunate miscommunication between the sweep and myself at a very large tree-fall just short of Stairway Falls, our second break stop. She didn’t want to crawl and climb around the large tree-fall, as the rest of us did, and I’d thought that surely she’d stayed on the other side of the tree-fall to wait for us, as I had asked sweeper. We both assumed she would stay there and break, but that didn’t happen. On the way out after a slightly over a half an hour, we found to all of our surprise-after hearing calls for help; she had wandered off on her own and said she had been lost for that time.

Lost people and not losing them is ultimately my responsibility, so I apologized, a couple of times; and told her later it is not a good idea to go off on her own without supervision when you don’t know the trails. Besides that gaffe, for which I was sorry for foisting on the entire group, all had a good day, the lost woman calmed down quickly and we all headed back for a second viewing of all waterfalls before returning to our cars.

All of us but the fantastic four, who headed back to the big city early, drove to the last bonus of the day; Upper Whitewater Falls, at 441’ the highest waterfall east of the Mississippi. Everyone enjoyed the view from the upper and lower overlooks, and many more pictures were taken.

From there all of us were in the mood to dine at the Steakhouse Cafeteria in Walhalla, SC, on the way back; and we all were pleased with our very affordable meals of good country meats and vegetables. Then unfortunately we had to return to the reality and bad traffic of the big city leaving a lovely place behind and my favorite scenic river in the southeast, the Horsepasture.
Written By: Bruce Aldridge
Photos From: Don Norton

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