Grandfather Mountain is worthy of your time. Let’s talk about a few things before you take off on your next adventure. (Actually, feel free to take off anytime you want.)*
*Grandfather Mountain reopened Oct. 23 after a temporary closure in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Grandfather Mountain used to be called by a different name. The Cherokee looked up at the sharp angled granite near the mountain’s summit. It was a whole group of them staring in awe. Then someone broke the silence with one word. Tanawha. The mountain had become a hawk.
How High Up (Elevation) is Grandfather?
It’s 5,946 feet above sea level to the summit of Grandfather Mountain. It’s the highest peak in the eastern escarpment of the Blue Ridge, another way of describing the point where the mountains slope down into the flatlands.
On certain days at Rough Ridge Lookout on the Tanawha Trail, you can see it. That sharp hawk’s beak of granite is the only thing visible through the cloud-enveloped summit.
It looks like it’s soaring and trying to escape the Southern Appalachian Biosphere Reserve, which is not a Cherokee phrase, actually. That hawk has been soaring for a longtime.
How old is Grandfather Mountain exactly? The mountain is roughly 300 million years old, which isn’t surprising since it’s in one of the world’s oldest mountain ranges. And the people who lived there in its shadow, whom the Creek people eventually named the Cherokee, only lived there 11,000 years.
That’s 11/300,000ths of the age of Tanawha, which might also now be the word for a hawk on whom a grandfather falls asleep.
What Do People Do at Grandfather Mountain?
Hiking trails can take you to grandfather’s summit. It doesn’t cost any money to go that way, but it will take some time. There’s always Grandfather’s Road, which winds up Grandfather Mountain, which probably would astound the white settlers who arrived in the mountains of North Carolina ten millennia after the Cherokee ancestors.
Those European settlers came all rough and rugged from Scotland and elsewhere in wagons and on foot to settle in the hilly country to hide away and feel at home. They took one look up from their tired horses and remembered how the old men would rest on a bed of stones. The mountain had become a grandfather’s bed. The whole escarpment became known as the High Country. The Scottish Highland Games are held near the base of Grandfather every year. Thousands of people gather in the grassy flats of MacRae’s meadow each summer to celebrate the Scottish culture that shaped the area so mightily.
Hiking on Grandfather
Two trails will take you to the top of Grandfather Mountain. There’s the hard way (Daniel Boone Scout Trail) and the other hard way (The Profile Trail) The trailhead for The Profile Trail through Grandfather Mountain State Park is at 4198 N.C. 105 N., Banner Elk, NC 28604. There’s paved parking and nice restrooms there.
One of the best places to see the profile of the sleeping grandfather (the way settlers did presumably) is to drive north out of Boone up toward Foscoe on that same road (105 N). Just look up through your car windows as you roll into Foscoe and keep looking up but don’t wreck your car. You’ll see it.
It’s the profile of the old man. Beard, nose, prominent forehead. His torso was taken either by trampling in prehistoric herd of giant elk or by 100 million years of erosion, though.
The Profile Trail is one of the best hikes in the High Country. It’s certainly our preferred way to get to the top of Grandfather. Nothing will give you the closeup experience of the mountain’s many moods like this 7.2-mile up and back mountain adventure.
The 16-plus ecosystems of Grandfather are a unique delight that you’ll likely not experience anywhere else.
The wonders of this mountain continue.