There are birders, peak baggers and there are waterfallers – people who collect waterfalls. Carolina Mountain Club has a waterfall challenge, the WC100.

But a hundred waterfalls barely scratches the surface.

In the third edition of North Carolina Waterfalls, photographer Kevin Adams describes 1,000 waterfalls in the state. Adams is a nature photographer who exhibits, sells his photographs, and holds photo workshops.

He is considered the waterfall expert in North Carolina.

What makes his waterfall books exceptional is Adams’ attention to details. For each waterfall, he cites the accessibility (trail, bushwhack or even driving, I guess), elevation, landowner (park, forest, or private), hike distance and difficulty, and more facts.

But my favorite is the beauty rating. Of course it’s his book and his ratings.

So I looked at Window Falls, a beautiful  waterfall in Hanging Rock State Park in the Piedmont on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.

Adams gives Window Falls a Beauty Rating of 4. I’m surprised that the waterfall is even here. It’s probably the last waterfall on the MST, going east.

Then I looked at the waterfalls in Dupont State Recreational Forest, in Transylvania County, the Land of Waterfalls. His highest rating for the waterfalls in the forest is Triple Falls, Beauty Rating – 9.

So I reread his criteria.

These are subjective beauty ratings (1 to 10), independent of where they’re located. So waterfalls in the Western North Carolina mountains are bound to get higher ratings than those in less mountainous regions. But like I said, the ratings are his. I’m sure that he’s always asked what his favorite waterfall is, like I’m asked what my favorite national park unit is. As if you could have one favorite with a thousand waterfalls.

Adams was out to document every single waterfall that he could in the whole state. So he lists waterfalls on private land. He also has “secret falls” even on public land. That’s a different approach from my outdoor writings. In all my writing, I make sure that readers can do everything I write about – given enough time and energy, of course.

Waterfall safety

Adams says correctly, that “waterfalls don’t reach out and grab people and fling them over the top.” People get too careless, climb up when they should stay below, and sometimes slip and fall. As I write this, the headlines in the Asheville Citizen-Times reads:
                     Woman falls 160 feet at Rainbow, dies.
The victim was on top of the waterfall, a waterfall that ironically is rated a 10.

Here are the details:
Published by John F. Blair Publishers
ISBN: 978-0-89587-653-9
Paperback, $29.95

8” x 10”, 560 pages, 310 color photos

PS Kevin Adams will be the featured speaker at the Carolina Mountain Club annual dinner on November 5. I can’t wait to meet him.

Join CMC and save the date.