Shining Rock Wilderness (pt 1)- Cold Mountain
Edition VI
Arthur J Loeb was born in 1914 and settled in Brevard, NC in the 1940’s to become a general manager of a chemical corporation. What began as a quest for better health became a passion for hiking which led him throughout the Pisgah National Forest. As a member of the Carolina Hiking Club, he helped to create and connect many trails in the area. Art Loeb died unexpectedly of a brain tumor in 1968, at the age of 54. A year later a 30 mile stretch of trail that he helped blaze was named in his honor, the Art Loeb Trail.
I have not followed the Art Loeb trail end to end, but I have seen many sectons of it over the span of many years. It is one of my favorite trails, crossing a great variety of ecosystems and cresting several dramatic bald Appalachian peaks.
This past week I went on a 2 night backpacking adventure in the Shining Rock Wilderness of Western North Carolina. I started this trip at the northern terminus of the Art Loeb Trail, at the Daniel Boone Boy Scout Camp
The trail here rose suddenly in a brutal climb up Cold Mountain. You might remember a novel and a movie by that name, set in this area, from the early 2000’s. The story is epic, but does not highlight this incredible land. In fact, the movie was filmed in Romania.
Early June was an excellent time to visit the wilderness. It was wildflower season, and it did not disappoint. The trail pushed up through hardwood forest towards Deep Gap. Along the way the forest presented its bouquet of Mountain Laurel and native Flame Azalea blooms. I came to see the Catawba Rhododendron blooms. Last month I backpacked the nearby Middle Prong Wilderness, but it was much too early. Here, at the higher elevations, I found them!
More than 5 miles to the summit and thankfully I was able to find a camping spot near the top. Cold Mountain is not a bald, but there are numerous rock outcroppings that provide views to the south. This was where the work began!
On this trip I worked with a new camera technique I have learned about. For years I have shot in Manual mode. Here, I tried shooting in Aperture Priority mode and using exposure compensation to expose to the right. For each composition I took one test shot at f16. Then, with the same brightness settings, I took several shots at f11 with different focus points for focus stacking in post processing. Focus stacking would be an overall much sharper image, but I was unsure I could pull it off with the summer foliage and wind at elevation. Any slight movement between the images makes them impossible to line up for stacking.
This is a focus stacked image at f11. Photoshop did a terrible job at blending the images and I had to work on it quite a lot to make it presentable. The areas around the leaves in the upper right and the edges of the rhododendrons in the bottom left had to be manually blended. The same photo at f16 did not provide nearly enough sharpness on the close ridge and beyond.
I’ll be adding some of the finished photos from Cold Mountain to my portfolio soon. Check it out here-
I tried my best to make a video of the trip. It turned out pretty long at almost 20 minutes, but if you have the time and interest check it out here-
Next week I’ll write more about day 2 & 3 of this trip. It was a wild ride with great changes of temperature and weather. On the map this trip measured 17 miles, with 5000+ ft of elevation gain. All of this with a full backpack plus tripod, camera, and lenses.
This is not something I could do without year round preparation in fitness, outdoor skills, and photography study. It is an enormous investment of time and effort, and to what end? Is it for the photos I came back with, which I’m very proud of, of things and places almost no one else has visited and seen?
I propose that this process is much more than that. Its a inward journey as well, to push limits in every direction. It is a drive to find out what I can accomplish going beyond the discomfort. The art is a life well lived, and every step on the trail brings me closer to the person I want to become.
Find what drives you and pursue it relentlessly. The journey is the reward.