Quiet Beauty: DuPont Lakes Hike

As we have mentioned before, Chet and I set ourselves the task of completing Conserving Carolina’s White Squirrel Challenge by October 2022. By this point, we’ve been to DuPont State Recreational Forest many times, but I’ll be honest – we’ve usually gone to enjoy the waterfalls. The waterfalls are wonderful, but there’s so much more to enjoy in the quieter areas of this state forest. That’s one of the points, I think, about Conserving Carolina’s choice to include a “lakes” hike in their challenge this year. Conserving Carolina has a special tie to DuPont. It got its start as a land trust when the group that was then called “the Natural Heritage Trust of Henderson County” joined forces with The Conservation Fund to buy and preserve 7600 acres of land when DuPont Corporation closed down their local plant. We will be forever grateful to them for preserving this treasure! The hike for the challenge takes in two of the lakes on the property, Fawn Lake and Lake Julia, and visits the now unused airstrip as well. We drove over on a gorgeous fall day to the Fawn Lake parking area, off Reasonover Road. This parking area is a large gravel lot, with an informative kiosk and port-a-potty on one end. From the kiosk, we turned left and went uphill along a wide gravel track. Soon we came to a sign warning us about wearing orange during hunting season. We’re not hunters, so we never really know when “hunting season” is, and besides it seems like any time we’ve checked, it’s hunting season for something, so Chet trekked back to the car to snag our orange blaze. Better safe than sorry.

Fawn Lake Parking Lot

Fawn Lake Kiosk

Fawn Lake Road

Orange Blaze Warning

Pack and Map

It was a pleasant walk on a fairly gentle grade. After about .5 mile we arrived at pretty little Fawn Lake. This small lake was built as part of a planned housing development that (thankfully) never got built. It has a small dock with a covered gazebo area. The day was perfect for getting photos of fall leaves reflecting in the still water.

Fawn Lake

Fawn Lake with dock

Fawn Lake

After we took about a million pictures (hoping to capture just the right one) we headed on down the gravel road across the earthen dam that forms the lake and through a powerline cut to a tee intersection with Conservation Road. Here, we turned left to climb up to the airstrip, where the route mapped out by Conserving Carolina had us simply crossing the airstrip to continue on down Conservation Road, but who can resist walking down an airstrip in the middle of nowhere? Besides, we could tell that the views from the end of the half mile runway looked pretty spectacular and they were. The airstrip was built by Bert Camp, owner of the Summit Camps that once ran on this land, and was later used by DuPont executives to fly private planes in and out. Today, it’s only used for emergencies and Forest Service training. We tried out a new app that identified the mountains and hills we were looking at, then retraced our steps to the “real” route.

Dupont Airstrip

View from airstrip

Mountain labels

The walk from the airstrip is downhill past what I assume is a ranger’s house, then right at Lake Julia Road to a building that one trail description calls the main park office. It wasn’t marked in any way, and seems to be undergoing some renovation. There are steps down to the lake on the far side of the building that lead down to a dock with a great view of Lake Julia, which is a 100 acre lake built for the Summit Camps. After enjoying the view from there, we continued on down the road to the Lake Julia Pier and picnic area, which we thought made an ideal place to have our lunch and enjoy even more pretty lake views.

Steps down to Lake Julia

Lake Julia

Lake Julia Pier

Lake Julia

Lake Julia picnic areea

After our picnic, we took Camp Summit Road back up past the ranger’s house and from there retraced our steps back to the intersection with Fawn Lake Road. To change things up, we decided to take Conservation Road all the way back to the parking lot instead of going past Fawn Lake again. Honestly, there wasn’t a lot to see going that way. Next time, I’d go past Fawn Lake again! All in all, our GPS track put us at 4.3 miles. These are easy miles on mostly wide gravel roads, and though I hear the lakes are frequently used for swimming in the summer, we had the area almost entirely to ourselves on our trip. Thank you Conserving Carolina for helping to preserve this beautiful area, and thanks for this suggestion of a hike in the quieter parts of the forest!

A Lovely Bit of Squirrel

Back in our 2021 year in review post, I mentioned that we had finished the Conserving Carolina Flying Squirrel outdoor challenge, and were working on the White Squirrel hiking challenge. Our last completed hiking challenge was one we set ourselves back in 2012 — to hike all of the official trails on Land Trust of North Alabama preserves. At the time, there were around 50 linear miles of trails, and it took us 74.9 miles to cover the distance, what with backtracking on out-and-back trails or having to cover some stretches more than once. I see that the Land Trust has made a checklist for folks who want to try the same thing in 2022. In those ten years, the linear mileage has increased to now over 70, so it’s amazing to see that in 20 years the Land Trust has upped their trail mileage by around 40%. Having worked on a few of those new and old trails, I’m not totally surprised at this, but it’s terrific to see how much progress has been made, most of it clawed out of the landscape by dint of loppers, pulaskis, and McLeods wielded by volunteers.

I thought that we might elaborate a little on the Flying Squirrel challenge, since it’s a relatively easy way to familiarize yourself with the efforts of Conserving Carolina. This organization serves parts of western North Carolina and a little bit of the upstate South Carolina, with most of their land preservation activities centered in Transylvania, Henderson, and Polk counties in North Carolina. To date, they have protected nearly 46,000 acres in this region, and developed numerous trails and preserves, as well as spearheading efforts to add to existing state forests and parks and assisting in the creation of community parks and greenways.

Conserving Carolina has been holding hiking challenges for a while now, with the White Squirrel challenge as number six in that series. The hiking challenges usually require you to hike a fixed list of trails, scattered across Conserving Carolina’s service area. And of course, being hiking challenges, you must hike to complete them.

The Flying Squirrel Outdoor Challenge is a little different. First, there’s that crucial difference in its name — “outdoor” vs. “hiking.” The idea behind the Flying Squirrel challenge is to highlight properties that may be more easily accessed – shorter and flatter routes that are more ADA-friendly. Think greenway trails instead of summiting mountains. These activities are accessible to a wider range of age and fitness levels.

The second difference is that you have flexibility in which activities you complete. For the Flying Squirrel challenge, completing any 8 of 13 potential activities will make you a Flying Squirrel champion.

The third difference is that the Flying Squirrel allows for different types of activities. Some of the destinations can be enjoyed by bicycle. Several of them are easy walks of 1-3 miles on paved trails or even a boardwalk. One option involves floating on the French Broad River. There are a couple of options that include Conserving Carolina events — serving on an outdoor volunteer day or going on a guided forest bathing walk. So there are a number of ways to complete the challenge.

However, like the hiking challenges, the Flying Squirrel outdoor challenge must be completed in a specific time range. Though I haven’t seen an end date defined yet, only activities completed after January 1, 2021 can be counted. Because we got kind of a late start, we jumped on this and finished our eight activities between August-December 2021. With a little prior planning, you could probably knock off the entire challenge in 2-3 days.

Claiming your prize for completing the challenge is on the honor system. There’s a page on the Conserving Carolina website where you log your activities as you complete them, and an online roster that shows your progress to date. As of publication date, on that roster there are 31 Flying Squirrel champions, with 90 folks posting at least one completed activity. Shortly after we completed our eighth activity, since we are Conserving Carolina members we got our official certificates and a nifty patch in the mail!

In summary, this is a terrific little challenge well within the capabilities of most folks, even if your fitness isn’t great. It is also a solid introduction to the variety of projects completed or in progress by Conserving Carolina.

In our case, we selected the following eight activities. More details about each destination and directions can be found at the Flying Squirrel Outdoor Challenge page.

Sassafras Mountain

We hiked to the top of Sassafras Mountain, the highest peak in South Carolina, and right on the border of the Carolinas. It’s just a few minutes from our house, and is an easy walk to some amazing views. One route to the top is paved but perhaps a little steep for wheelchairs. A second trail has a more gradual incline, though most of it is not paved so it could be challenging for wheelchairs.

The Park at Flat Rock

We walked the longest single trail (about 1.3 miles), which winds around the perimeter of The Park at Flat Rock, a former golf course turned into a community park. Additional trails wander into the interior of the park, with King Creek running along the north boundary and several ponds dotted throughout. The trails are all easy, flat, and graveled.

Connestee Falls

We walked the very short boardwalk to view Connestee Falls in Brevard. To be fair, the best views of this 85-foot waterfall are from the other side, but from the boardwalk you can see the top of Connestee Falls and get a decent view of Batson Creek Falls.

The French Broad River

We had been looking for a chance to do some kayaking on the French Broad River, which originates just down the road from us in Rosman and runs 218 miles to its confluence with the Holston River in Knoxville, TN. We did our own shuttling, dropping a car at Westfeldt Park, right by the Asheville Airport, and put in at Lazy Otter Outfitters in Mills River. The nice folks at Lazy Otter had a reasonable parking fee, and their launch site made it easy to get on the water. The stretch to Westfeldt Park is about seven miles, with only a few minor rapids, easily handled. Along the way we passed Conserving Carolina’s Mud Creek project, where a floodplain restoration is underway.

Vaughn Creek Greenway

The Vaughn Creek Greenway is a 0.8 mile unpaved greenway near Tryon that winds along Vaughn Creek, passing Siller’s Falls and a marker tree along the way, until it ends at a tunnel under a railroad grade.

Hooker Falls

The most difficult part of this 0.3 mile trail in the DuPont State Recreational Forest is finding parking. There are a couple of intersecting large parking lots for Triple Falls and Hooker Falls, and another large lot to the north for Lake Imaging. If you’re there on a weekend during prime hiking times or at any time during the summer, odds are very slim that you’ll be able to park in any of them. But if you get an early or late start, or go on a weekday, the walk from the Triple Falls/Hooker Falls parking lot is an easy amble on an old road, with only a little bit of elevation change. The waterfall is only 12 feet tall, but the Little River is relatively wide at this point so the waterfall has quite a nice flow. There’s a popular swimming area at the base of the falls, though swimming is at your own risk. Incidentally, Conserving Carolina echoes an incorrect statement found on one page in the Friends of DuPont Forest website when it says the waterfall has an observation deck. This is simply not true. But you can observe it quite easily from the base and walk right up to the ledge.

Carolina Memorial Sanctuary

This was perhaps the most surprising of our outings. Usually when we’re thinking of a hiking destination, cemeteries don’t normally come to mind. But the Carolina Memorial Sanctuary in Mills River is an 11-acre conservation burial ground, forever preserved in a natural state, with a meandering stream, wooded patches, and wildflower meadows. Though we didn’t visit the sanctuary during one of its peak seasons, it was peaceful and tasteful, and has given us much to think about. The gravel walkways are accessible, though the natural topography of the sanctuary has some gentle grades.

Brevard Bike Path

This was an easy one for us, as it was right in town. The Brevard bike path is nearly 6 miles, mostly paved, and mostly on the north side of town, with plans to expand through the downtown area and stretching south to Brevard High School. We’ve hiked most of the segments at one time or another, with one highlight being the 0.8 miles that run next to the Davidson River into Pisgah National Forest. The segment, also known as the Eastatoe Trail, links with the eastern trailhead of the 30-mile Art Loeb trail. For purposes of the challenge, we walked a segment from near Highway 280, behind the hospital, past the athletic fields, past the dog park, and along Ecusta Road. This stretch notably has a spur that heads over to the Oskar Blues taproom, marked with a simple handmade sign that says “Beer,” with an arrow pointing the way. Later, we walked the Eastatoe Trail a couple of weeks after a huge snowfall, and it was pretty much solid ice for the shaded stretches.