INTO THE WOODS …
Posting will be light this weekend as our founding editor Will Folks embarks on a three-day trek into one of South Carolina’s few remaining pristine wilderness areas.
Where is he headed? Jocassee Gorges.
This gorgeous escarpment represents the rugged demarcation line between the Palmetto state’s Piedmont and the Blue Ridge mountains – a 2,000-foot climb through picturesque ridges, waterfalls and rock formations.
Jocassee takes its name from a Cherokee maiden who lost her lover in a battle of rival tribes. It translates to “place of the lost one.”
The area served as one of the backdrops for the 1972 movie Deliverance – starring Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight and Ned Beatty. Of course the area where the movie was filmed is now several hundred feet underwater thanks to the Jocassee Dam – an embankment dam constructed the year after the movie was released.
Located on the border of Oconee and Pickens counties, the dam created Lake Jocassee – a remote, undeveloped body of water which is fed by the Horsepasture, Thompson, Toxaway and Whitewater rivers.
A favorite of botanists, hikers, hunters and anglers, Jocassee Gorges was recently named by National Geographic magazine as one of the fifty “last great places” on the planet.
We’ll be sure to pass along pics from Sic … assuming he makes it out alive.