Carolina Environmental Diversity Explorations
Lonely mountains · By Dirk Frankenberg
North Carolina's lonely mountains
On this field trip, we'll visit Pilot Mountain, Hanging Rock, Crowders Mountain, and Stone Mountain. (U.S. Geological survey map with labels added. More about the map)
One of the most striking sights on North Carolina’s inner Piedmont is the solitary peaks or ridges that loom above the plateau’s average elevation. Some of these are among the state’s most visited parks: Hanging Rock, Pilot Mountain, Crowders Mountain, Stone Mountain, and South Mountains. Many of these peaks are within sight of the Blue Ridge mountains further west, but all are separated from this range by 25 to 50 miles of rolling hills typical of the Piedmont. The dramatic topography and unusual geology of these mountains combined with the mixed mountain/piedmont biota that they support makes them well suited for both virtual and actual field trips.
Although the geology of these lonely mountains can be quite different from one another, they all share one characteristic: The rock that crowns their heights is far more resistant to erosion than is the rock that underlies and surrounds them. Hills or mountains of resistant rock rising above a peneplain — a level, surface produced by erosion — are called monadnocks after Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, which is typical of these features, and was the first mountain ever climbed by your author. North Carolina’s monadnocks are varied and quite beautiful both for the views from their tops but also for the varied geology and ecology of their flanks.
