Hiking Glen Burney Falls

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #27
Blowing Rock, NC - Fri, 6 Sep 2024. 2pm

Today we got out of the hotel even earlier than yesterday. Today we were on the road before 10am. 😅

There's a waterfalls hiking trail that starts right in town in Blowing Rock, NC. And it's not just some walk-in-the-park bunny trail, it's a genuine hike with an ascent of over 600' on the return. How cool is that?



The first falls on the Glen Burney Falls trail isn't Glen Burney Falls. It doesn't really have a name. It's not even a falls. It's just "Cascades". Okay, but it's more than 4' tall, like the photo above implies. There's actually a pretty good drop here....



What I usually say about the view from atop a falls not being very enjoyable is different here. These falls— I mean, cascades 😅— are horizontal enough that there's a good view from above. And it's nice with the view of the trail around to the left and the canyon dropping away below us. Oh, and the fact there's no way to stand at the bottom of the falls without trampling a restoration area.



Further down the canyon is the namesake of this trail, Glen Burney Falls. It's taller than this photo (above) gives it credit for. Like the cascades, these falls are horizontal enough that the view from below doesn't show everything. And the water flow today is light. I wonder what this was like 4 days ago, after rain the day before.



There's a bonus falls further down on the Glen Burney Falls trail. It's Glen Marie Falls. This falls is actually the tallest of the three, by fair margin. I figure it's over 60' tall. But it falls in kind of a crooked path over the uneven rock face, and at a low flow time like this it doesn't show well. As much as I don't like hiking in the mud, hiking this trail a day, maybe two, after a rain is probably the best way to enjoy it.

The return hike up the canyon was tough. I felt badly winded getting up past the three falls. The trail gets a lot easier above that, though. Even though there were another 300 vertical feet past that I was able to pick up my pace substantially.

Back at the trailhead we discussed what to eat for lunch. There actually aren't a ton of restaurants in this touristy little town of Blowing Rock. We didn't French cafe food (too French), we didn't want a brewpub (too early for beer), and we didn't want Mexican (too inauthentic— like, they use American cheese in enchiladas 🤢)... so we went back to the pizza place we visited a few days ago. Hawk's rarely in the mood for pizza, but they actually offer a style she enjoys— and the cook nailed it with her special requests. Plus I had a beer, because screw it, it's not that early. 😂

Hezbollah's Exploding Pagers

It's in the news today that members of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah were targeted in a coordinated attack using exploding pagers. Yes, pagers, the small devices a lot of people clipped to their belts or put in their pockets back in the 1980s and early 90s to display phone numbers or extremely short messages from people who called. As of this evening (US time) it's reported that 9 people died and nearly 3,000 were injured.

When I saw an early version of the story this morning my immediate reaction was to chuckle— in disbelief. The idea of an exploding pager sounded ridiculous... and also a bit quaint. It reminded me of the story that the CIA in the 1960s tried to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar. It's debatable that attack even occurred. I mean, exploding cigars where a joke decades ago.  I remember seeing ads in the back pages of magazines aimed at kids for mail-order novelties such as exploding cigars, joy buzzers, and spicy bubblegum.

But this attack actually happened. And it's not a novelty toy.

It got me thinking right away: whoever is responsible for this— Lebanon and Iran point their fingers squarely at Israel— put a lot of planning into this. They would have had to compromise the supply chain all the way back to manufacturing. I mean, it's not like standard pagers come preloaded with explosives that a simple computer hacker could trigger. When Hezbollah ordered thousands of pagers some months ago, the responsible party would have had to 1) find out about the order, 2) design an exploding mechanism, and 3) infiltrate/take over the manufacture to insert the explosive and trigger, before 4) the thousands of pagers are shipped. Subsequent reporting says that the pagers were manufactured by a European company licensed by a Taiwanese electronics brand.

BTW, why were thousands of Hezbollah members using pagers? It's reported that back in February the terrorist group's leaders urged its members to stop using cell phones for communication as it believe Israeli intelligence could track their phones. That's also part of why Israel is suspected of responsibility for the exploding pager plot.

Among the casualties were a few members of foreign governments, including Iran's ambassador to Lebanon. Speaking of pointing fingers at who's involved in what.... Of course, it's no mystery to anyone who pays attention to Middle East politics that Iran bankrolls Hezbollah terrorism. It's just an example of someone getting caught with their pants down— I mean, pager in hand.