You are standing in the Blackburn Fork River, water swirling around your knees, with the muffled sound of a seventy-five-foot waterfall growing louder as you round a bend.
That is the reward for the adventurous souls who secure one of the daily permits to hike the river to the base of this hidden swimming hole, a spot once called by locals simply “the falls”.
The cascade tumbles in two stages, first a fifty-foot plunge into a shallow pool, then a twenty-five-foot drop into a large, deep swimming hole…