Ashe County, NC
Southern Blue Ridge Ecoregion
A walk around Bluff Mountain offers scenic beauty, unusual landforms, and amazing botanical variety. Although relatively small in size, Bluff is one of the most ecologically significant natural areas in the Southeast. Hiking on Bluff, in just a few dozen steps you can walk from a Carolina hemlock forest to a dwarf red oak/white oak forest to a rare flat rock plant community. A broad, high plateau containing an unusual wetland, a southern Appalachian fen, adds to Bluff’s unique character.
Bluff Mountain lies in the Blue Ridge division of the Appalachian Mountain Range in Ashe County. It is part of a local mountain chain including Three Top (discussed in this guidebook) and Phoenix Mountains that is characterized by a substrate of mineral rich rock called hornblende gneiss. The gneiss is unusually rich in minerals such as calcium and potassium that provide important nutrients for plants.
A fertile home for over 400 species of plants, including Indian paintbrush, Gray’s lily, fringed gentian, spreading avens, and sundew, Bluff Mountain is known for its changing floral show from April through October that includes 25 endangered, rare, or threatened flowering plant species. The high-elevation hardwood forests of Bluff provide ideal nesting habitat for many neotropical migratory bird species such as black-throated green warbler, veery, rose-breasted grosbeak, scarlet tanager, and blue-headed vireo. During field trips in the spring, you may hear the distinctive drumming of ruffed grouse. Elusive bobcats den in the shelter of rocky outcrops, while ravens are often seen soaring over the cliffs.
Bluff Mountain’s inaccessibility has protected it from major disturbances. Shortly after the North Carolina Chapter office opened in 1977, the staff began working with the mountain’s owners, the Wyn Edwards and Mac Edwards families of West Jefferson, to explore a way to protect the fragile area for conservation. The Nature Conservancy purchased 701 acres of Bluff from the Edwards’ family in 1978. The chapter continues to work protect this entire natural area, having expanded the preserve as recently as 1998.
Hiking/Birding/Wildflowers
For more information, please contact:
TNC of North Carolina
P.O. Box 397
Saluda, NC
28773
(828) 749-1700
or email at: estifel@tnc.org
