I returned from my latest trip two weeks ago tonight. Yet I only got caught up on my backlog of email yesterday, I haven’t even touched my snail mail backlog, and there are a few things I had intended to do in December that I still haven’t gotten around to. So, in the interest of getting caught up on crap, today’s ThrowBack Thursday post will be a short one.

I believe I first discovered South Mountains State Park in June of 2014. I went out to drive somewhere (I don’t remember where), and the drive turned into an impromptu exploration of areas west of Charlotte. Eventually I saw a sign pointing the way to South Mountains State Park, which I had never even heard of. I decided to go check it out. When I arrived at the parking lot, I noticed a sign at one of the trailheads announcing that this was the way to High Shoals Falls, which I had also never heard of. The first half (roughly) of this trail is easy: wide, smooth, and relatively flat. Then it becomes a beast! Almost continuous “stairs” take you up and up and up and up some more. I put the word “stairs” in quotes because in many places they’re closer to being ladders than stairs. But I suppose that just made the waterfall seem more rewarding. Sadly, since this was an impromptu trip, I didn’t have a camera (not even a phone) with me. I’ve been back to South Mountains State Park at least twice, but always tried out different trails, so I never made it back to High Shoals Falls.

One of those return visits happened at the end of August 2015. On this occasion, I tried the High Shoals Falls Loop. This trail provides another, longer was to get to the falls. I figured being longer would mean the uphill would be more gradual than the infinite stairs. And, yeah, it was more gradual. But still pretty step, and more of an overall elevation gain than I had remembered. In the end, I didn’t complete the loop, and thus didn’t make it to the Falls. This was largely due to the advance of Parkinson’s during the intervening 14 months: I was feeling much weaker than on my first visit. But I at least made my way up to a scenic overlook, and found some things to photograph right there on the trail. Take a look…

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Alrighty. That’s it for this week’s ThrowBack Thursday. Come on back next week to see a BIG waterfall and multiple smaller ones, and to visit the spookiest county in North Carolina! By name, anyway.