DO GO CHASING WATERFALLS

 

 

For me, there’s nothing more satisfying than “discovering” an unknown, undocumented waterfall.  A couple of months ago, I was scanning the topo map that covers the area around Rocky Bottom, in Pickens County, SC.  I spotted several places that had the potential for waterfalls.  One was particularly compelling.  An unnamed tributary of Rocky Bottom Creek starts near the summit of Sassafras Mountain.  It runs for less than a mile before plunging over a 400’ cliff.  The terrain certainly suggested the presence of a waterfall.  The only question was whether the stream would be large enough for it to be worth a visit.

 

Last week my job sent me to the Anderson, SC area.  I brought along my camping gear, with plans to camp Friday night and hike on Saturday.  By doing that, it would eliminate the need to drive home to Charlotte on Friday evening and back to the mountains on Saturday morning.

 

Initially I considered a number of hiking options.  By mid-week, the weather forecast indicated that there would be nearly 24 solid hours of rain starting on Thursday afternoon.  I wanted to check out the tributary of Rocky Bottom Creek when the water was up, since it looked like a low-volume stream. This seemed like the ideal time for a visit.

 

By mid-week I’d managed to talk Brenda into joining me.  I also invited Bernie.  He hadn’t explored the area, but he already had other plans.  However, he did pass along some helpful information, including the location of a good parking area on the Van Clayton Highway and a trail that seemed to lead from there in the correct direction.

 

On Friday afternoon I drove up to Burrell’s Ford on the Chattooga River to camp.  I was surprised to find 4 or 5 cars in the parking lot despite the wet, chilly weather.  Fortunately the rain had ended, so I only had to deal with a cold night for camping.  I had to make two trips to get all of my gear down to the campsites.  That wasn’t too bad though, since the access trail is an easy old roadbed that is about ¼ mile long.  The camping area features quite a few campsites, picnic tables, fire pits, toilets, trash cans, and bear cables.  That is a lot of amenities for a free campground.  There were a few other folks camped there, but they were all down at the sites closer to the river.  I took one next to King Creek, at the upper end of the campground, for privacy. 

 

After setting up I took a short hike up to King Creek Falls.  It is one of the nicer waterfalls in South Carolina, but I’d never gotten good photos of it.  This time the results were much better, though there is still quite a bit of deadfall at the base of the falls.  Those fallen trees have been there a long time, and they probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

 

I made jambalaya for dinner and tried to start a fire.  Unfortunately I forgot to bring a fire starter, and I couldn’t get the wood I’d purchased to catch.  Everything around was soaking wet, and I didn’t have kindling, either.  I went through an entire newspaper and half a roll of toilet paper before giving up.

 

I was reading book 3 of Game of Thrones and enjoying a beer when a noise startled me.  I looked towards the picnic table, and saw two yellow eyes glowing back at me.  At first I thought it was a bobcat, but its behavior seemed too aggressive.  I got up and walked towards it.  The animal scattered, and as it ran off I decided that it was probably a raccoon.  He came back two more times that evening, but finally gave up after I hung my food bag and cooler on one of the bear cables.

 

I slept great that night, and got up at first light on Saturday despite the chill.  I made oatmeal and coffee, broke camp, and hiked back to the car.  The first item on my agenda for the day was Station Cove Falls.  It’d been years since I’d last visited that waterfall, and I wanted to check on the early spring wildflowers. 

 

The GPS on my phone wanted me to drive all the way back to Walhalla to get there, but I didn’t like that plan.  Instead, I drove Chehohee Road, a dirt forest road, down the mountain.  I had a little trouble finding the trailhead since I was coming from a weird direction, but I stumbled upon it after a couple of wrong turns.  It was already 9am when I arrived, but the parking lot was empty.  This was a surprise, since it was a sunny morning that was warming rapidly after a sub-freezing start.

 

I made the hike to Station Cove Falls in less than 15 minutes.  I took a few photos, even though conditions were poor.  The sun was already shining on the falls, despite my fairly early start.  The wildflowers were coming along nicely.  There were lots of toadshade trillium up, and some were already in bloom.  There were also quite a few hepatica, which were just opening back up after a cold night.

 

I had the falls to myself, but passed several groups on my way back.  Apparently my timing had been good, though I hadn’t been early enough for waterfall photography.

 

I had tentatively planned to meet Brenda at the lower trailhead for Twin Falls at 10am.  It was after 10 when I returned to my car, so I went on the plan B.  I drove the Cleo Chapman Highway anyway, mostly to scout out the upper Twin Falls trailhead.  That trail is fairly new, and it runs to the top of Twin Falls.  I spotted it easily, less than a mile down from the junction with highway 178 at Bob’s Tavern.  I did note that there is only limited parking there.

 

I drove up to the junction of highway 178 and Horsepasture Road and waited for Brenda.  She arrived a couple of minutes later, having come from Twin Falls.  From there, it was on to the main event of the day.  I followed her to the Van Clayton Highway, which we drove out of the valley.  After maybe a mile, we pulled off into a wide parking area on the left side of the road.  There was a large RV parked here, but there was still plenty of room for our cars.  The parking area is just below the 2,000’ elevation, and the trail we were looking for is directly across from the upper end of the parking area.

We started our hike a bit after 11am.  We crossed the road and found the trail, which immediately crosses a stream on two wooden bridges.  Those bridges have the look of private property, but the area was not posted.  I had intended to check the property lines on the Pickens County GIS website before the trip, but I never got around to it.  I knew the area with the potential waterfall was on public land, but I wasn’t entirely sure about our approach.

 

We followed an old roadbed beyond the bridges.  Before long we reached an overgrown roadbed heading left up the ridge immediately to the east.  We initially started that way, but it didn’t appear to be heading in the correct direction.  This was my first navigational error.  After we returned, I concluded that this road would’ve offered the easiest route.

 

We backtracked to the original road and reached another junction immediately after the first.  We turned left and curved around the ridge.  This led us into another drainage with a tiny stream.  This wasn’t the correct creek – we were still one valley too far to the west.  We headed up it anyway, hoping that the road would contour around.  Before long the next ridge to the east reared high above us.  We would have to get over it, and I was afraid that it would just keep getting bigger as we headed north up the drainage.  So we doubled back a bit, crossed the stream, and bushwhacked up and around the nose of the ridge.  We were partially around the ridge when we spotted another old roadbed below.  We dropped down to it and followed it south, hoping it would lead us in the right direction. 

 

A couple of minutes later a pond and a bunch of houses came into view.  Oops.  This was obviously private property, so we backtracked a bit before climbing the ridge to the east.  The next stretch of the hike was highly unpleasant.  The vegetation was thick, and the single broad ridge shown on the map was actually bisected by numerous gullies.  We continued to climb higher in an attempt to avoid them.  We eventually reached the crest of the ridge, and found numerous houses down the slope below us.  Trees along the crest of the ridge were marked with pink ribbons, which marked the boundary between public and private property.  We followed the crest of the ridge, until we finally emerged from the undergrowth onto an old roadbed.

 

We continued up the roadbed, which was a huge improvement over the bushwhacking.  Before long, we began to approach the unnamed tributary of Rocky Bottom Creek.  We abandoned the roadbed, which was beginning to fade, and dropped down to the creek.  From that point, we just had to follow the creek upstream to around the 2,600’ elevation contour.  That is about the point that I expected to find a waterfall.

 

First we found some unusual rock walls.  There are at least 8 parallel stone walls along here, about 15-20' apart, perpendicular to the stream.  The walls are small, only a couple of feet high, and not very long.  I've seen lots of stone walls on hikes, but never ones arranged like this.  It looks like it could've been a terraced garden once upon a time.  I imagine there was a cabin or something here previously, but we didn't see any sign of one.

 

We headed upstream from there.  Before long we crossed the creek, which enabled us to stay in more open forest.  We ended up on a narrow ridge a bit east of the creek.  The hiking was easier here, though we eventually had to work our way back across a couple of ridges and gullies.  Beyond the rock walls, we saw one or two pink ribbons early on, but no other hints of a trail or any other sign that anyone had ever passed this way.   

 

We worked our way back to the creek, and began a grueling climb upstream through a boulder field.  Thorns and fallen trees were profuse, but I was determined to stay close to the creek to ensure that we didn’t miss anything.  Later, on our return, we once again found the going much easier a bit east of the creek.

 

As we climbed, we could just make out part of the waterfall high above.  At first I was relieved that there was something up there, but then I felt disappointment.  All we could see was a narrow flume of water spilling over a cliff.  Based on that first glimpse, I figured it would be a place to take a couple of photos and eat a sandwich before heading back.  Later, Brenda told me that she’d thought the same thing.

 

We were way too close to give up though.  I struggled up the final pitch, working my way around two massive fallen trees.  I finally reached a bench that was on the same level as the base of the falls we had spotted.  I traversed towards the creek, scrambled up some rocks, and found myself at the bottom of an impressive cliff.  It was only 40’ high or so, but perhaps 50 yards wide.  The creek fanned out as it spilled over it, creating numerous miniature waterfalls along the breadth of the cliff.  The main flow was in the center, where it freefalls before striking a smooth rock shelf.  From there it slides over another 15’ drop.

 

It was a bright, sunny day, which is normally terrible for waterfall photography.  That was somewhat true here, but the sunshine actually added a lot to the experience, too.  The blue sky beyond the falls was wonderful, and the sun turned each individual segment of the waterfall into a series of sparkling jewels.  There was a rainbow at the base of the cliff, too.  Most significantly, there were only a handful of spots in that whole area that weren’t inundated with constant spray.  Luckily it was warm enough that the spray was actually refreshing.

 

Brenda caught up to me, and we had lunch there.  Afterwards, I decided to cross to the other side of the falls for more photos.  I thought about crossing the creek directly above the final 15’ slide, but the rocks looked slick.  Instead, I followed the very base of the cliffs and passed behind the falls.  I still caught some spray along the way, but for the most part I avoided getting drenched.  On the far side I was able to back up under an overhanging section of the cliff, which offered a cool perspective.  Later I worked my way down to the base of the final 15’ slide for more photos. 

 

The map suggested that there was a whole lot more to the waterfall than what we could see.  The cliff is 400’, and we were at the very bottom of it.  What else was above?  I followed the cliffs to the left (northwest) side of the waterfall to see if I could find a route up.  I ascended gradually, but the terrain forced me farther away from the waterfall.  I may have eventually found a place where I could climb higher, but at that point it would have been difficult to get back to the creek.  I abandoned that approach and rejoined Brenda.  At that point we had been at the falls, which I’m calling Sassafras Falls, for over two hours!

 

We descended the slope a bit east of the creek.  The forest was more open there, and it looked like climbing higher from that point might also be possible.  The thinner vegetation also allowed us to catch glimpses of at least 2 additional large drops higher up.  The highest one was turned at a 90 degree angle from the bottom drop, so the creek twists as it falls.  I definitely want to go back again and see what else we can find up there.

 

The return hike was quick and easy.  We followed the same route back to the garden walls.  There, we picked up another old roadbed.  This one took us west, contouring around ridges and gullies close to the 2,000’ elevation line.  Eventually it became overgrown, shortly after we turned south along a prominent ridge.  At that point, I peered through the trees to the west and spotted the road and our cars!  If we had continued ahead, I’m pretty sure we would’ve ended up back at that first junction we had encountered that morning.  Instead we decided to bushwhack down to the trail we had started on. 

 

Before heading down the slope, I spotted a playing card tacked to a tree.  It was the King of Hearts.  Just beyond, tacked to another tree, was a Joker.  We see the weirdest things when we hike off trail!

 

The descent to the trail was easy.  We reached it, turned right, and walked a short distance to the bridges we’d crossed that morning.  A minute later we were back at the cars, less than an hour after leaving the falls.  Needless to say, this was a much easier route that the one we had followed that morning!  Brenda’s map with the GPS track can be seen here:

 

http://www.brendajwiley.com/gps/rocky_bottom_tributary.html

 

We have several ideas for additional hikes in the area.  I definitely want to go back to Sassafras Falls and climb higher.  Also, the Foothills Trail passes quite close to the top of the cliff high up on Sassafras Mountain.  I’ll be there is a good view from up there!  I’d also like to explore the upper reaches of Rocky Bottom Creek.  The portion of the creek upstream from highway 178 is surrounded by private property, but farther upstream the land is public.  It may be possible to access that part of the creek from the garden walls area Brenda and I found, or from the Foothills Trail.




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