A pullout near Hooper Bald (about 5,400 ft) — one of the strange grassy 'balds,' and the site of a bizarre 1910s wild-game preserve. A short trail reaches the open summit.
Off the road here is Hooper Bald, and if you've got the legs for a short walk, the trail up to it is worth every step — because Hooper Bald is one of the strangest things in these mountains: a bald.
Look up at the high summits around you and you'll notice some of them are oddly bare — grassy, treeless domes sitting up above the forest, like someone mowed the very tops of the mountains. These are the Appalachian balds, and here's the honest truth: nobody knows for certain why they're here. Not the scientists, not the historians. The theories run from Cherokee people keeping them clear for hunting, to old settlers grazing cattle up high, to ancient fires, to climate — and none of them fully explains it. They are a genuine, standing mystery, right here in plain sight.
The Cherokee had their own answer, and Boone will tell it to you — it involves a monster. But whatever made them, the balds are precious now: rare open meadows in an ocean of forest, full of wildflowers and views, found almost nowhere else on earth. And Hooper Bald in particular has a second story, an absolutely wild one about buffalo and wild boar, that Boone has been itching to tell. Stretch your legs if you like, then let's hear it.
Photo: Thomson200 · CC0
