Yeah, I didn’t spell that wrongly. It is a play on words. I went on a two-night camping trip with my older brothers and their wives at Gorges State Park in Transylvania County, NC. As the name implies, it has some very rough real estate. In fact, it sits on the SC border where the escarpment drops out of the mountains into the Piedmont. The gorges are not what I usually think of as a gorge (1), however, since there are no cliffs in the park that I saw. Instead, they are steep-sided and steep-graded draws where creeks have worn down to bedrock, leaving cascades and the occasional freefall waterfall. Because of how fast the mountains drop away, Transylvania County has 250 waterfalls. That gets me to wondering how a waterfall is defined (see “Cascades, Not Falls“). What is the minimum height limit? What is the minimum slope of cascades? Does water have to leave contact with the surface in a cascade to be counted? There is little doubt that the various creeks have multiple waterfalls, but how are they counted? One thing that I observed in the Visitor’s Center while comparing labeled pictures of waterfalls and trails marked with waterfalls in the park was that most of the falls in the park don’t have trails to them. That sounds like to me an excellent excuse to go back and bushwhack more. The combination of geology, topography, aspect, and prevailing winds results in significant rainfall and runoff. The average annual rainfall in Upper East Tennessee where I live is about 44 inches. In Morganton, NC, where I used to live, it is 51 inches. In Gorges State Park, the average annual rainfall is 91 inches, making it nearly a temperate rainforest. That is all good for the waterfalls, but the particularly shallow topsoil still causes the tree cover to be predominated by drier slope varieties like pines and certain oaks. However, seeps here and there are lush with a profusion of hornworts, ferns, orchids, and many other wildflowers. Check out all of the gorges lushness at “Gorges State Park.”
- “gorge- a narrow valley between hills or mountains, typically with steep rocky walls and a stream running through it” https://www.bing.com/search?q=gorge+definition&form=ANNTH1&refig=31b0bb6c75e64e7bb332c55d569e5433
CreatorWorship 