I flew to Asheville last night to wrap up the Appalachian Six-Pack, only to learn that the wind gusts on Mt. Mitchell were topping 100mph and the summit was intermittently closed due to inclement weather. The wind’s supposed to die down tomorrow afternoon, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to do some kind of evening hike there before I leave on Monday. But this left me with a challenge: What hike should I do in the meantime? Wind speeds at the top of Black Balsam Knob are allegedly just as high right now. So I headed south to Sassafras Mountain, South Carolina’s high point, which I’d hiked once before in late 2020.

Sassafras is similar to Mitchell in that you can drive your car to the summit (or in the case of Sassafras, close to the summit) and then do a “backwards hike.” I was eyeing a round trip to another summit called White Oak Mountain, and started off in the trail in the early afternoon. Unfortunately, as I descended to Sassafras Gap (the low point), signs indicated that I was now on NC game land (Sassafras straddles the state line), and it’s big game hunting season in western NC. I own blaze orange hiking gear, but stupidly hadn’t packed it on this trip, so I wasn’t comfortable going any further.

Luckily, White Oak wasn’t my ultimate goal. So I turned around and hiked back uphill and then past the parking lot to the summit of Sassafras. Not as much as exertion as I was hoping for, and the summit is taken up by a huge observation deck so it’s sort of underwhelming, but I got it in. And the fall colors were fantastic!