Appalachian Balds

Ha! That's great. I forgot the AT passes through right there.

Good to see another AT hiker on here!

Quite a trip seeing the names of all those mountains I walked over. This is an interesting factoid I wish I'd known on my hike, I was always curious why there were no alpine zones in the southern Appalachians.

I started at Amicalola Falls in 2014 (where I briefly worked as an intern back in my college days) and thought I'd follow the white marks and see where they went. It took longer than expected. Jokes aside, I grew up hiking on the AT in Georgia and it was fun to do the whole thing. I had no idea there was an entire article on the balds!

Absolutely. The main area near the parking lot can get a little hectic sometimes, but once you get away from there you're good to go!

I love 'The Narrows' stretch right before the base of the Cold Mountain summit. If you want a true test of mettle, instead of starting from Black Balsam knob, drive over to Canton and find Camp Daniel Boone boy scout camp. There you will find the Art Loeb trail head.

To get to the summit and back is 10.5 miles round trip & 3000 ft total elevation gain. Don't try this if you're not in shape haha! One of the most difficult hikes I know of in WNC but the feeling sitting on top of the rocks at the summit is magical. Very satisfying!

The backpacking group at my university used to do the Art Loeb in one day as a feat of strength of sorts. One time a group got lost in a sudden rainstorm and had to be rescued by rangers.

Never did it myself, though I'd still like to, and I have hiked the section from Sam Knob/Black Balsam to Cold Mountain a few times. The Narrows is definitely the best part. The Appalachians aren't as impressive as mountains on the west coast, but being out them is just as satisfying -- I just wish they were closer to the urban areas.

We called the woods (all pines with no underbrush, perfect for camping) around Black Balsam the "enchanted forest", because, well, they were.

The Ozark balds exist primarily because the tops of hills in the White River Valley have very little soil, as they're made up of dolomitic limestone that dissolves in rain water instead of breaking down into clays. The scant soil that exists is enough to host grasses, but few trees; Eastern Red Cedar can grow, but before widespread fire suppression, it was pretty contained to fire-protected rock outcroppings. With fire suppression (which may have stabilized the soil and limited erosion as well), Eastern Red Cedar and some oaks (blackjack and post oak) are filling in the balds. This is in constrast to the Appalachian balds that are mainly a product of climate differences between the peaks and the lower hillslopes.

The hills to the north of the White River Valley (around Springfield) and south (south of Harrison) are capped by rock layers that have a relatively high clay content and produce soil that can more easily support forests.

The Bald Knobber history is pretty interesting. I had always thought of them as analogous to the earliest KKK (also a Reconstruction-era vigilante group initially) but I hadn't realized until I read the surprisingly detailed Wikipedia page that the Bald Knobbers were Republicans who sided with the North. (Unfortunately, the Bald Knobbers are history at this point, while the KKK is still quite active in the area, especially Harrison/Boone County, Arkansas).

Hey, argue with TFA, not me:

> The character and distribution of Appalachian balds remained stable from the time the first naturalists explored the region, until forestry regulations no longer permitted annual pasturing of local cattle. How and why a summit develops into a grassy bald is unknown; they represent "an ecological enigma and a conservation dilemma".[4] Weigl and Knowles note that "the presence of both rare, endemic plants and northern relicts requiring open habitat suggests a long evolutionary history" and offer a scenario in which grazing pressure of the giant herbivores of the Pleistocene retained the open tundra habitat as the Wisconsin glaciation retreated far to the north. With the arrival of the paleoindians and the disappearance of the megaherbivores, grazing pressure was maintained by deer and elk, and then by the grazing animals of European settlers.

I do agree that cattle seem unlikely. Maybe "grazing animals of European settlers" points to sheep? Maybe even goats?

It happens. I'm reading a book on Cades Cove that mentions Gregory Bald in the Smokies being used to graze cattle.

Here's an online source:

"The Bald is named after Russell Gregory, an early homesteader in the Cades Cove area. He and other cove residents used the meadow to graze cattle during the spring and summer when cove fields were used for growing crops."

http://www.hikinginthesmokys.com/gregory.htm

You are not correct

Source - I've been licked by ponies and cattle more times than I can remember at Grayson Highlands VA. I've also camped at a former highland cattle "sale" pasture where ranchers herded their cattle for sale in Western NC. Not really done anymore, cattle is too $$$ to raise there when chilled railroad cars exist, but it was a thing.

Not only is it drier, but the Diablo range is heavily overgrazed. If it weren't, it'd be the same chaparral woodland you can still see around calaveras dam.