The Climb

PHOTOGRAPHER:

Image Credits Below

Issue:

09/2024

Historic Hikers - John Muir.

The 1800s saw visiting scientists, among them Asa Gray.

Arnold Guyot.

Grandfather Mountain’s profile face, snapped at right in 1906, gave the mountain its name before New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountains was sighted in 1805. Our Grandfather is still gazing west. Sadly the Old Man up north crumbled in 2003.

Adventure Arrives This 1906 summit trail ladder still recalls the challenges Grandfather hikers face today. Five years later, Margaret Morley called her ladder hike “the event of the season.”

Hugh Morton eyes the profile in the 1940s.

A November hiker aims at a high, snowy Calloway Peak.

Author installs sign near Shanty Spring in 1978, replacing a spray painted arrow on the once-overgrown, unmarked trail.

A hiker boulders where Shanty Spring gushes forth (note another painted arrow).

Lower down, a new sign on the newly pruned path, not far from Little Grassy Falls.

Grandfather’s highest summit, Calloway Peak (center, above bird), caps a descending ridge that to many resembles the reclining, skyward-looking face of an Old Man in winter.

The authentic Grandpa, seen page 42 and top right in April snow at Profile View, is the “beard” of the big profile.

Mid-1980s Profile hikers amid Fringed Phacelia.

A flight of stone Profile steps.

RESOURCES:

Photographs by D.R. Beeson, courtesy of Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University, D.R. Beeson Papers; courtesy of Library of Congress; North Carolina Collection, The University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill; Hugh Morton; & Randy Johnson

ISSUE DATE:

Fall 2024

Search form

The Climb

The Climb

The Climb