Whiteside Mountain

Whiteside Mountain is a USDA Forest Service site in the National Forests in North Carolina. It is reached from a gravel parking area holding picnic tables against a wooden rail fence, with a small stone-walled restroom building and metal bins at one edge; a brown post at the trailhead reads Loop Trail. The trail climbs as packed dirt through dense rhododendron, which arches over the path in stretches, beneath bare hardwoods and across exposed roots. The steeper pitches are built up: flat stone slabs set into the slope in one section, a long timber staircase with handrails in another. At the top the path comes out onto open bare rock. A wire fence strung between wooden posts runs along the cliff edge, and beyond it forested ridges fall away in layers to the horizon, one of them capped by a pale exposed rock face.