flyminion | Entries tagged with lost cove creek

Today, I returned to Lost Cove Creek for the first time since 2015 to explore the area downstream of Hunt Fish Falls. The last time I visited, I did it as part of a combined hike with the waterfalls of Gragg Prong (a tributary whose confluence is a little less than a mile downstream of Hunt Fish) along the Mountains to Sea Trail (MST). I didn’t check out any other areas of Lost Cove Creek because I assumed Hunt Fish Falls was its only point of interest. However, when I was swimming at Gragg Prong on the return hike, a kid mentioned that there was a good slide just downstream of Hunt Fish Falls, so I’ve always been slightly curious to return and check it out. I subsequently looked on Google Earth, and there did appear to be some possible slides between Hunt Fish Falls and the Gragg Prong confluence. A recent kayaking video on YouTube seemed to confirm this, but it’s hard to tell in high water if a slide is hospitable for butt-sliding in summer flows. There was only one way to find out.

( Click here for the full trip report with pictures and videos )

In summary, I guess Lost Cove Creek is a one hit wonder after all. I didn’t really find anything interesting downstream of Hunt Fish Falls. There were a few small swimming holes, but they were fairly unremarkable. The swimming hole about a mile upstream of Hunt Fish was also nothing interesting. There were three small slide cascades downstream of the falls, but they weren’t suitable for butt-sliding. It’s possible that the kid who mentioned a slide there was referring to the sloped bedrock along the side of the Hunt Fish Falls plunge pool, as opposed to one of the cascades.

Two Saturdays ago (July 26), I decided it was high time for a mountain swimming hole trek. Summer was almost two thirds over, and I still had not made it out of the piedmont. The weather forecast had been looking ideal all week, so I was oping to hit Steels Creek Falls that weekend. Steels Creek is a bit treacherous from what I have read, so it requires a dry day and ideally a buddy or two to save you if you get into a sticky (or slippery) situation. I asked around, but all my friends were booked, so I decided to plan ongoing someplace ostensibly safer. Gragg Prong Falls and Hunt Fish Falls were also on my list of Wilson Creek area swimming holes to check out, and they could both be done in one hike. When I got up on Saturday morning, the forecast had changed from a 20 % chance to a 60 % chance of rain in the mountains, but I had already decided I was going, so I went ahead with my plan. After all, as the tourist industry likes to remind people, “That’s a 40 % chance of nice!”

The directions to get to the parking area were very simple and only required three turns after leaving Greensboro. The last turn took me 6.5 miles down Roseboro Rd, a steep, winding gravel road that leads from Linville to the parking area where a bridge crosses over Gragg Prong Creek. The weather had been decent on the drive up, but it started raining as soon as I parked the car. It was a warm rain, though, and not plan-damningly heavy, so I decided to get started. After all, I was going to get wet anyway, right? Finding my way out of the parking lot was a little confusing. There are multiple trails in the area, and I started off on the wrong trails twice before finding the correct trail on the third try. The correct trail, which follows Gragg Prong downstream, is the blue-blazed Lost Cove Trail (#262), which runs with the white-blazed Mountains-to-Sea Trail (MST) for the portion of the hike that I had planned (total tangent: the MST also runs through the park where I used to work).

Gragg Prong has an upper and lower falls, and a ‘bonus’ waterfall and swimming hole upstream of the upper falls. Since I was hiking downstream, I would come to the bonus hole first. About a half mile into the hike, the trail rose fairly high above the creek bed and then started to go back down again. When I reached the crest of the hill, my GPS indicated that I was adjacent to the bonus hole. There was a fallen tree with a large root span to my right, and I could see a steep side-trail just before the fallen tree leading down to the creek. I scrambled down and came out on a large rock slab overlooking the bonus hole. It was fed by a sliding waterfall, and from there, the creek flowed over the slab I was standing on and under a large rock overhang.

( Click here for the full trip report with pictures and videos )

It was a short walk back to the car from here. The tub in Upper Gragg Prong Falls had easily been the highlight of the trip. I would like to make a return trip at some point to see what Gragg Prong has to offer below the lower falls, and possibly between the lower and upper falls. The round trip from the parking lot to Hunt Fish Falls and back had been about five miles (2.5 each way), and the entire excursion had taken about 5.5 hours. I was ready to head back to Boone and destroy a hamburger.

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Adventures of a swimming hole aficionado

Entries tagged with lost cove creek

Lost Cove Creek walk

Gragg Prong & Hunt Fish Falls

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December 2024

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