Spring is in the air, as the saying goes, and winter didn’t amount to much. I can only remember once that we got any
snow, and that was melted and gone within a day. Not that I’m a big fan of cold and snow, but I'm told we need a good snowfall that sticks to the ground for about
a week to help kill the bugs. If that’s
true, we’ll see a lot of bugs this summer.
 |
on the banks of the Buffalo
|
Anyway, it feels like spring and we’re going hiking on the Buffalo River
Trail. This section of the BRT will take
us from Cedar Glade Picnic Area to Adair Cemetery. The Cedar Glade parking area is at a curve to the left in the Erbie
Campground Road (there is a small sign). From the parking spot
it’s a short walk on the spur trail back to Cedar Glade Picnic Area, the overlook
and BRT. For a little more on Cedar Glade see: (37 Ozark to Cedar Glade...). |
above the Buffalo
|
We go north on the BRT down
into a little side drainage, with a nice wet weather waterfall below and a
cascade above where the trail crosses the creek. Up the other side we turn to the north with
some nice views of the Buffalo down the hill on our right. Continuing the gradual curve to the left we
are now headed west and soon come to a trail intersection where the ORT merges
with the BRT for the next hundred yards, then the ORT goes right, and the BRT left. Everything is clearly marked
so there’s no confusion, white blazes along the
Buffalo River Trail and the Old River Trail uses
yellow.
 |
bridge over Sawmill Hollow
|
From here the BRT gradually
heads downhill and closer to the river, seeing a huge boulder at the edge of
the Buffalo, I bushwhack the short distance down to rivers edge and the large
flat almost level boulder. The top
of this rock is about ten feet above the water line and lying on top are
two big trees deposited up there by highwater, just upstream from this boulder is the
mouth of Sawmill Hollow. Back on the BRT
we head upstream about 20-30 feet above the banks of Sawmill Hollow.Along here we have sort of a unique encounter. A man armed only with a rope and 'come-along' is slowly dragging a steel culver (15’x24”) out of Sawmill Hollow, which must have washed down here during a big
storm. I don’t think he is a NPS
employee, as he isn’t wearing a 'uniform' or driving a park service truck, maybe this culvert washed away from his
driveway somewhere upstream.
 |
cascading side stream
|
Wherever it
came from doesn’t diminish from the fact that this is some back breaking work to pull this
thing over and around large rocks and trees up to the road where he loads it
onto a trailer. We always carry a
plastic bag while hiking for any trash we may come across, but this guy has taken
litter removal to a whole new level. |
bluffline
|
Continuing our hike, we cross Sawmill Hollow about 100 feet below the
bridge on Erbie Campground Rd. When
driving over this bridge you hardly even notice it but from down at creek level
you sure do, it’s a beautiful stone bridge. Built by the park service to improve the road back in 1980, it looks as well-crafted as the fine stonework of the CCC back during the depression. Across the creek the trail starts uphill then
around to the west above the Buffalo River and soon an overlook about a hundred
feet above the river. After going around
a little side drainage and climbing even higher we come to another river
overlook. The trail now bends away from
the river to our left along the top of a larger side drainage.
 |
little ledge falls
|
This drainage contains Liles Falls, a
beautiful stair step style waterfall with an equally beautiful cascade above it, (
see: 16 Hammerschmidt and Liles Falls). From over here, 200 yards away we
catch brief glimpses of the falls through the trees across the hollow. Soon we come to Liles Falls creek crossing
and a trail intersection. To the right is
the short steep climb down to the base of Liles Falls, left is the short spur
trail to a parking spot on Erbie Campground Rd. |
Adair Cemetery
|
We continue straight on the BRT around the top of the falls along a
rocky bluff then uphill into the woods and under a powerline, this
I believe is the sixth time we have crossed beneath this powerline today. Past the powerline the trail goes downhill
and towards the river. In the next
quarter mile, we travel around two more little hollows both these are gentle slopes down to the Buffalo. Then after
heading up a short hill is an old trash dumpsite consisting of lots of old
tires, rusting farm equipment and bottles and cans. We are now on an old road and on our right
are remnants of a house foundation with daffodils blooming all around.
 |
'John Adair'
|
Past the old homesite area and just a little further down the road we come to Adair Cemetery just 50
feet off the trail, you can’t miss it. Adair is a pretty small cemetery with a rail fence around it and maybe 40 graves. The area around the cemetery has some huge
old oaks, and the woods are wide open and flat.
Which all add up to a real nice scenic camping area. Adair Cemetery is our turn-around point today, we have lunch in a nearby campsite before heading back to Cedar Grove and the
car. It was great to get out today and go for a little hike, the wildflowers are starting to bloom, and the Buffalo was as fantastic as ever, we just
had a good time all around. Our total
round-trip was 5 miles with an altitude gain of 520 feet.
 |
BRT signage
|
Cedar Glade Picnic
Area/Trailhead: Statistics Chart 41 To get there turn west onto Erbie Campground Rd. (NC 2500) about 2.4
miles south of the Hwy.7 Buffalo River bridge, or 1.6 miles north of the
hairpin curve at the Little Switzerland Cabins, then go west on Erbie
Campground Rd. approximately 2.0 miles to the Cedar Glade Parking area.
 |
base map before fair use alterations is property of USFS Forest Service-
-licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 U.S. License |
Comments