Customer Reviews

North Carolina Waterfalls: Where to Find Them, How to Photograph Them

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I'm sure no one has written a book more extensively covering Waterfalls of North Carolina than this one. It remains an excellent guide to many of the wterfalls included. But one drawback at this point in time, as the author acknowledges on his own web site, is that the book needs updating now, as several trail accesses have changed. He says he's been wanting to update it for some time but the publishers have been slow to warm up to the idea. Hopefully, that will change. I have no comprehensive list of all the directions in the book that are now out of date, but here are a few hints: Unfortunately the Bob's Creek Pocket Wilderness as described in his Marion Hub seems to have been abolished and is no longer oper to the public. A company that formerly owned it allowed it to be a protected wilderness with what was even designated a National Recreation Trail. Many of us thought that designation would protect it forever. I'm afraid it turned out to be a short forever. I was fortunate to go there in the last years of its accessability. The waterfalls there were small and never the highlight, but it was a nice area now sorely missed. In his Saluda hub, the road providing access to Little Bradley Falls has recently been realigned, making the trail as described hard to find. I was with a group that did find the falls. But the change can leave you disoroented and with a very sttep roadbank looming and no obvious way to find a less steep descent in or climb out. On a more positive note, where his Hendersonville and Brevard hubs meet, there's a new thing called DuPont State Forest, providing new public views of at least four waterfalls. These include the modest Hooker Falls and the much larger Triple Falls and High Falls, and also another smaller one I've not yet seen, Wintergreen Falls (not to be confused with a falls of the same name farther west and covered in the book). At that farther west location, quite a bit of change has occurred in his Lake Toxaway hub. One thing is the new Gorges State Park, now encompassing about half of the land owned by Crescent Resources at the time the book indicates. It will preserve several waterfalls and presumably ultimately provide smoother trails to them, including the second mentioned Wintergreen Falls. But the park is now in early development stages and hasn't provided any new waterfall paths just yet. It does now provide the parking of choice for the Horsepasture River, just outside its western edge. The parking lot for the park, just off NC 281, less than a mile south of US 64, is now the place to park for the Horsepasture River. One then walks back to the road, turns left, and a short distance down the road picks up a 3/4 mile trail down to the Horsepasture River. Once there one turns right to hike to a view of Drift Falls, now form behind fences and no-traspassing signs, or turns left to views of the other falls on the Horsepasture River, the trail downriver from there not having changed much. The access to the Horsepasture as described in the book has now been made off-limits by no-parking signs along the road and no-trespassing signs where the book's directions called for scrambling down the bank. The old directions had the hike starting very close to Drift Falls, which was then said to be on Nantahala National Forest Land, but the present state of affairs seems to imply that it is just outside that public land. Although Drift Falls is visible from the road, at least in low-foliage seasons, the no-parking signs now make the prospect of parking there to see it forbidding. Best to hike from just downroad from the state park parking lot to see any of the Horsepasture's falls, which adds most of 3/4 mile to any of the distances given in the book. In the book's Waynesville hub little has changed, except the last steep part of the descent to Second Falls has been replaced by a wooden stairway, bypassing the steep part of the footpath, badly eroded by the HIGH volume of visitors to that falls. Nearby Yellowstone Falls is as hard to view as ever, and the overlook providing a limited view from the trail is made harder to find using the book's directions, due to a proliferation of campfire rings. The best safe view of that Falls is still from the Blue Ridge Parkway, a distant view where binoculars help. In the Hot Springs hub, I feel fairly certain that the hike to the falls on West Prong of Hickey Fork has been lengthened somewhat from the book's directions by a trail relocation that added switchbacks. That makes part of the hike less steep, but one needs allow extra time for the longer distance (maybe up to 50% longer) and carefully finding the trail where it doesn't quite match the book's directions. In the Burnsville hub, the falls on Big Creek is about as hard to find as any roadside falls can be. This seems in part because the junction of US 19, US 19E, and US 19W seems to have been slightly relocated, making the 17.5 miles from that junction in the directions a bit inaccurate. Instead look for the pull-off as about 1.8 miles beyond the little sign identifying the community of Sioux, or about 4.2 miles from the Tennessee line, if approaching from the opposite direction, and the only pulloff in that vicinity with guardrails coming right up to both ends of it. You cannot see the falls from your car; it is below road level and you must park and get out. Riding along and listening for the sound is little help, as there are numerous noisy rapids along that part of Big Creek. Finally in the Stone Mountain hub, the trails have not changed much, but the location of the picnic area has. Park officials can tell you where to find the old route from where the picnic area was. But actually you can hike from the new picnic area and it is closer that way to Stone Mountain Falls at least. You'd just feel disoriented if going only by the book's directions, because you'll reach the top of the falls rather than the bottom first, and then go right from the bottom of the stairs if you still wish to reach the smaller middle and lower falls, or go left there to the nearby base of the main falls.

Kevin outlined everything you need to discover and photograph waterfalls in North Carolina. Compared to other waterfall guides (New Hampshire, California, Tennesse, Michigan, Wisconsin), this book is the standard for which everyone should aim. He included everything you might ask for:

* beauty ratings (helpful when no picture was provided) * directions (including maps) * pictures (wonderful collection) * photograph statistics (camera, film, f-stop, lens) * photo tips (places to shoot, things to avoid)

I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone interested in touring North Carolina's waterfalls and particularly interested (like me) in taking pictures of them.

For New Hampshire waterfalls, buy Doreen Bolnick's "Waterfalls of the White Mountains: 30 Hikes to 100 Waterfalls." While not as well suited for photographers, Doreen produced an equally helpful resource to find waterfalls.

When my photo trip to Yellowstone was cancelled, I was heartbroken. As I was browsing the net looking for an alternate place to vacation (a place closer to our FL home) I came across a site on NC Waterfalls. I then browsed Amazon.com and found this book and liked what I read in the reviews. This book was a real vacation saver! It is extremely specific and it is quite obvious that the author when to an enormous amount of time, trouble and travel to write the perfect waterfall seekers book. Not only does he provide the waterfall locations, the trail lengths and difficulty ratings, but he also gives fantastic photo tips. He organizes the book in area locations so we found hotels in the areas that provided the falls that appealed to us and spent a day or two hiking each region. Out of the 51 falls we attempted to find, we located 49. The 2 we missed were remote and the trails were probably so overgrown that we couldn't find them. The author rates each fall according to a "beauty rating" that he assigns, and in our opinion, he is dead on. When we were running out of vacation days, we stuck mostly to falls that had at least a 5 out of 10. Thanks to his ratings, we didn't waste precious time searching for waterfalls that would be a disappointment. All I have to say about this book is -- excellent job! During our vacation, we spent a few days in PA & NY and looked for a book similar to this one to outline the falls in those states. There was nothing! Once you've had the best, no other book compares.

The purchase of this book marked the beginning of many beauty-filled days of adventurous hiking in the mountains of North Carolina. This book minimizes the wasteful time of searching for these hidden treasures and maximizes quality hiking time. The detail is astoundingly accurate. At times Kevin Adams's ratings of the waterfalls can seem a bit underappreciative, but we feel that this is due to the fact that he has a much broader spectrum of waterfall background. His rating system is consistent, and therefore each reader can determine their minimum hike-worthy rating based on Mr. Adams's opinions.

My wife and I spent some time last October photographing several of the waterfalls in Kevin's book. As someone new to shooting falls, I found that the book gave several good pointers on how to expose for falls, as well as what equipment to use (eg., polarizer). I plan to buy a copy for myself soon (used a library copy before). It is a wonderful guide for how to find the falls. The only difficulty I had was in finding one that is now on posted land (I still had to ask someone nearby). I went in anyway, and this is where I got my best shot. White Owl Falls, if you are curious. Never would have found it though without Kevin pointing me in the right direction. I too would like more pictures.

Kevin Adams has taken the guess work out of all the details from driving , parking, hiking difficulty, even the right exposures for your pictures. I appreciate his candor when the waterfall isn't worth the hike. For those who have a limited amount of time on your vacation this book will bring you right where you need to be.

We bought this book because we want to visit every waterfall in NC. We appreciated the difficulty rating because our husbands started the trip with injured knees; we learned not to include them on many of the trails. Sometimes we disagreed on Kevin's beauty ratings; we thought some of the falls are prettier than Kevin describes. We made our own notes and ratings in the margins. We haven't seen all of the falls YET but we will keep exploring.

Kevin Adams has made a remarkably complete inventory of the Tar Heel state's waterfalls. This book, which naturally includes many, many photos, has pretty good directions on how to find these falls and great advice on waterfall photography (it's harder than you think). My only complaints: (1) At times the author seems a bit full of himself (I mean his name is Kevin, not Ansel, right?) and (2) there are lots of falls which aren't pictured. Some people might prefer the joy of first viewing the falls in person, but I wish he had included photos of each and every falls described in the book. But, hey, this is more a field guide than a coffee table book. 'Course you'll still want to put it on your coffee table.

When my photo trip to Yellowstone was cancelled, I was heartbroken. As I was browsing the net looking for an alternate place to vacation (a place closer to our FL home) I came across a site on NC Waterfalls. I then browsed [...] and found this book and liked what I read in the reviews. This book was a real vacation saver! It is extremely specific and it is quite obvious that the author when to an enormous amount of time, trouble and travel to write the perfect waterfall seekers book. Not only does he provide the waterfall locations, the trail lengths and difficulty ratings, but he also gives fantastic photo tips. He organizes the book in area locations so we found hotels in the areas that provided the falls that appealed to us and spent a day or two hiking each region. Out of the 51 falls we attempted to find, we located 49. The 2 we missed were remote and the trails were probably so overgrown that we couldn't find them. The author rates each fall according to a "beauty rating" taht he assigns, and in our opinion, he is dead on. When we were running out of vacation days, we stuck mostly to falls that had at least a 5 out of 10. Thanks to his ratings, we didn't waste precious time searching for waterfalls that would be a disappointment. All I have to say about this book is -- excellent job! During our vacation, we spent a few days in PA & NY and looked for a book similar to this one to outline the falls in those states. There was nothing! Once you've had the best, no other book compares.

If you like to get out with your camera and take some excellent hikes and pictures this is a very well rounded book. Good directions, descriptions of the falls and even suggestions for the best way to photograph the falls. Most of these are not road side falls so if you are looking for that, you might be disapointed but that is not the fault of the author, the majority of the "good" falls are not on main highways!