A Hiking and Photography Guide

by Kevin Adams

Kevin Adams has taken the best guide to finding waterfalls that anyone ever wrote and made it better.

In August 2005 the updated version of the book was released, with more waterfalls and improved, more explicit directions. Adams took a measuring wheel and hiked to every falls in the book, so there's no estimation involved.

The Thompson River waterfalls present a challenge, and Adams has gone to the extreme to try to help explorers avoid having to make multiple trips to that remote river to find one of its falls. For example, in his new description of the trail to High Falls, his directions include references to 0.65, 0.84, and 0.93 miles. I couldn't find this particular waterfall the first time I went looking for it, and it's considerably more accessible than the downstream falls.

Adams has added a considerable amount of information on the Horsepasture River, including directions to Windy Falls. Alas, even Kevin Adams could not find a way to photograph the falls.

The most significant addition to the book, from the perspective of the Gorges area, is the description of the waterfalls on the Toxaway River. Adams takes you all the way down the Toxaway from Toxaway Falls to Lake Jocassee, as well as to most of the waterfalls in the State Park. In fact, Adams spent the last weeks immediately preceding his publishing deadline to check out the upper reaches of the river below Toxaway Falls since it had just been added to the park.

Just for kicks, Adams even tracks down various rapids and shoals in the eastern part of the state with "falls" in their names, like Upper, Little and Little Falls on the Tar River in Rocky Mount.

If you like waterfalls, you probably already own the first edition of Adams' guide. You owe it to yourself to get the new one.