Читать книгу Carolina Whitewater. A Paddler's Guide to the Western Carolinas онлайн

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The Blue Ridge Mountains are the eastern part of the Appalachian Mountain System, extending from southeastern Pennsylvania across Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Northern Georgia. In North Carolina, the Blue Ridge forms the eastern section of a mountain chain more than 75 miles wide, where cross-ridges connect the Black Mountains and Great Smokies farther west. In this area, known as the “Land of the Sky,” are 43 peaks over 6,000 feet high, and 125 others more than 5,000 feet tall. Mountain valleys here are characteristically narrow, deep, and densely forested with elevations consistently above 2,000 feet.

By contrast, Western South Carolina extends only slightly into the Blue Ridge Mountains, where a small number of peaks not exceeding 3,600 feet rise rather abruptly from the foothills. Where mountains occupy approximately 6,000 square miles in North Carolina, there are only about 500 square miles of mountain terrain in South Carolina. The highest point in South Carolina is Sassafras Mountain (3,560 feet), situated on the North Carolina–South Carolina state line.