Blue Wall Weekly: July 26, 2021

The folding hills of the Southern Blue Ridge Escarpment tell us where rain is this early evening: heavy over the Whitewater Gorge and heavy over Toxaway. We veer west over Lake Jocassee, heading into the Devils Fork in hopes of getting behind the worst of the downpour. Motoring into the edge of misty rain we cross the front threshold of the Brevard Zone, where once upon a long time ago, one continental plate slowly -- over eons of time -- crunched into another in the birth of the Southern Appalachians. Bands of sharp-edged schist jut in acute angles out of old, worn gneiss. We round the bend into a deep cove and float along sheer cliff rock into a narrow hall flanked by rhododendron. Underneath is the confluence of two small mountain creeks, one tumbling straight down the west face, the other spilling north-east out from under a cover of dense heaths. The remains of an old tree stump are visible just underwater, its thick woody roots hugging the mountainside like octopus arms. The rain  moves off around the bowl of mountains, freshening waterfalls and leaving shreds of cloud hanging between ridges. Rainforest perfect. ~K

DID YOU KNOW?

The Brevard Fault Zone is a thrust fault that extends from the North Carolina-Virginia border, runs through the north metro Atlanta area, and ends near Montgomery, Alabama.  It is  part of a much larger system of faults at the base of the Appalachian thrust sheet that played a key role in uplifting the Appalachian Mountains. Geologists have discovered that the Brevard Fault Zone has undergone both thrust and strike-slip movement.