Mark's Photo Travels

I've been on a number of waterfall hikes since Thanksgiving, mostly with Meetup groups. Since I don't take many photos when hiking with the Meetup groups, these hikes weren't really worth a post on their own. I did post a few photos to my Instagram account, but if you don't happen to Instagram then these hikes will be news to you. I'll summarize the visits below. Wildcat Wayside On December 11th, I led a small group to Wildcat Wayside , a roadside wayside park located by US 276/SC 11 near Cleveland, South Carolina. First we hiked a trail to visit Lower, Middle, and Upper Wildcat Falls on Wildcat Creek. Then we went down to a trail by Slickum Creek to visit Last Falls on Slickum and Sweet Thing on Slickum. As a bonus, I then led them past a parking area where US 276/SC 11 split to a bushwack up to Spider Tunnel Falls , the top of which is visible from US 276 during the winter. My photos from this trip are in the album Wildcat Wayside and More - Dec 20...

Over the years of hiking in the mountainous part of South Carolina, I've come across the ruins of old moonshine stills, mainly rusty old sheet metal barrels, or rusty metal bands by themselves. For my second adventure this week, I thought it would be interesting to actively seek out ruins of old moonshine stills and see how many I could find. I selected an area of the Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area near Wildcat Wayside between US 276 and Persimmon Ridge Road. One, because it's a short drive and two because the area is relatively undisturbed even by hikers. My plan was to explore up the unnamed creek with Spider Tunnel Falls from U.S. 276, then over to the base of Heritage Falls, then back down Slickum Creek to Wildcat Wayside, then back to U.S. 276. While I wasn't waterfall hunting today, Spider Tunnel Falls is too just good to ignore. Part of this waterfall can be seen from U.S. 276 during the months when trees are leafless. A faint path leading uphill is o...

January 17, 2015 Some time ago while perusing the Facebook group The South Carolina Project , I came across an intriguing photo album, Spider Tunnel Falls , by Darrin Hardin. That album's photos show off a beautiful yet obscure waterfall just off U.S. 276 near where it joins/splits with S.C. 11. This waterfall was just too good looking to keep to myself, so I went with Eric Cunningham, Ed Clem and his son. I picked up Eric and met Ed and his son at a nearby parking area. We exchanged greetings and headed off to find our waterfall. The waterfall is located on a creek, and this creek is the dividing line between public property on the right and private property on the left. We followed an ill-defined trail up the right side of the creek, and found a nice view of Table Rock. We tried to stay as close to the creek as possible, but a cliff forced as off to the right away from the creek. We continued upstream and found a waterfall, but not the one we were looking for: Nearb...