Craggy Pinnacle overlook and endangered plant habitat

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I went up to Craggy Pinnacle yesterday, off the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. It’s famous for its 360 degree views and also for the many threatened plants that grow there. The National Park Service has actually recommended closing the trail entirely and rerouting it up to Craggy Dome due to the damage done by visitors who refuse to obey the laws, going off trail and damaging and picking plants.

Craggy Pinnacle is a heath bald. From “Wildflower and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont”:

“Heath balds are dense shrublands that grow at mid- to high-elevations on exposed peaks, on narrow, sharp ridged and on adjacent slopes with rocky, acidic soils…Up close, the vegetation is anything but smooth, often consisting of a tangled mass of branches that makes off-trail hiking nearly impossible. A striking feature of this community is its low species diversity: a typical heath bald has just 10-20 vascular plant species, mostly shrubs belonging to a single plant family, the heath family.”

Most of Craggy Pinnacle is covered by Catawba rhododendron.

There’s a lot of signage asking visitors to respect the environment, but I saw so many people off-trail, picking at plants. It was infuriating.