LEAF on the Horsepasture River.

Leaf took a week off from the music scene and headed off into the North Carolina Mountains for some adventure and inspiration. We drove 11 hours in the big truck, wishing we had a Nissan leaf http://www.nissanusa.com after our one way gas bill of over 200 bucks... WHOA! I wonder by the way if Nissan plans on unveiling a truck version of their LEAF. Now that would be something I would just have to have! In any case we arrived safe and sound and ready to hit the trails.

We entered Gorges State Park to find out that they had changed the entire layout of the old trails and added miles and miles of new ones. While this excited me, it also made my day a little harder as tourguide of the Horsepasture river. Once down to the river, it soon became obvious that we were downstream of Rainbow Falls and were forced to ascend almost as far as we came down to the river just to get back up to the base of Rainbow Falls. (see slideshow) You see the trail used to just send you down to the top of Rainbow falls, but now it sends you way below the base of the falls and about a half mile downstream. Leaving hikers plenty of work to get there. I must say i like the new setup alot.

Well after we reached Rainbow Falls and took our picture for LEAFJAM.com, we headed back downstream to begin our search for Windy Falls...

Several dead ends and a few safety breaks later LEAF had arrived at the top of Windy Falls. We set up camp after a quick safety check of our gear and in no time we were exploring the upper parts of the falls. It seemed an endless chain of waterfalls and swimming holes lay in front of us as we gazed up the steep Gorge. We jumped and chilled and smoked and soaked up nature until we could take no more. The day began to close and as light faded we made plans to descend into the Gorge as far as we could go the next day. Then we retired to our tents and to our dreams.