This is my Photo Blog detailing my adventures into the world. From exploring the waterfalls, mountains, and the beauty that is Western North Carolina, urban exploration, to anywhere my lens takes me across the country. Also visit my site The Digital Mirage

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Monday, September 17, 2007

Cathedral Falls NC Day 2 08-26-2007

Nicole joined me in this return trip to the falls. Again we parked in the Living Waters Ministry parking lot and started down the trail. Before we got to the first falls we met three people exploring like ourselves. We shared our limited knowledge of the area and I joined one of them in taking some pictures of the first set of falls. The man taking pictures had a very nice Nikon setup with a wide angle telephoto lens and a square filter mount with a graduated Neutral Density filter. I asked him about the settings he was using and he told me a 3-4 second exposure with an Fstop around 13-16. We all chatted for a bit and Nicole and I took off before them to start walking down stream.

Nicole and I stopped at the same places I had gone the previous day and we took in the sights and the sounds of this beautiful area. Nicole sat at the top of Cathedral Falls while I took some more pics.


I noticed some dark clouds gathering and I rushed her back onto the path so we could get to the base of the falls in case a storm was coming. We got to the base and I rushed her to sit on the bed rock so I could shoot a portrait of her with the falls as a backdrop but I was barely able to set up and snap off 3-4 shots before a light drizzle began. I ran the camera back up to the bag which was under cover of some trees, and grabbed my backpack and brought back down to her. It was still barely drizzling so I popped out a water bottle I had brought that was filled with some wine, poured some into our red plastic dixie cups, and we toasted our new hobby together. We sat there a few minutes and enjoyed the cool mist and light rain.

Suddenly the skies opened up and it started pouring. Nicole found a small area that was sheltered by the massive rock outcropping and made her way there. I ran back up the inclined bedrock to grab the camera bag. On my way back down in my haste I slid standing up about 6 feet or so while maintaining my balance (barely) and made it safely to the semi-sheltered area. We watched as the rain fulled the roaring river and the dry spots where we were sitting quickly started filling up with running water. We stood there for 15 minutes or so and watched the rain, drank the rest of our wine and talked.

When it looked like it was letting up a bit we grabbed our things and made the wet muddy hike back to the car. Just as we were nearing Living Waters the rain picked up fast. When we broke free of the forest cover we made a dash towards the car. Suddenly lightning struck so close the the transformer on the power line not 20 feet from us emitted a flash of sparks. Nicole stood under cover of a small firewood pavilion while I made another mad dash the last 25 yards to the car. We drove down off the mountain and back into Brevard where we stopped and bought some hiking equipment and decided that we would definitely do this again!



The last clip in this series of videos is of Cathedral Falls the rest of the video is the of other falls and cascades along the half mile stretch of river.





Love,


I'm aching to believe


Give me something real enough


Give me somewhere to fall from...

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About Me

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Hendersonville, NC, United States
Check out my professional photography site at The Digital Mirage I post also my photos over at Flickr! Check them out

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