Whiteside Mountain

The mountain

Whiteside Mountain stands at 4,930 feet on the Eastern Continental Divide in the Nantahala National Forest. The Chattooga River rises at its base and runs south to the Savannah. The Forest Service guide describes the rock as a granitic gneiss, blue-gray with white streaks of quartz and feldspar, that began as molten rock.

The south face is bare cliff, about 750 feet high by the Forest Service’s figure. A 2001 bill in the North Carolina House called them the highest cliffs in eastern North America, which settles the question as far as the legislature is concerned.

The Forest Service guide sorts the vegetation by exposure. The north slopes carry northern hardwood forest of yellow and black birch, hemlock and Fraser magnolia. The dry south-facing cliffs hold a thin rock-face community of spikemoss and wildflowers, pale corydalis among them. On the summit the Forest Service describes old-growth northern red oak, bent by wind and ice.

Falcons

North Carolina began releasing young peregrine falcons in 1984. The Forest Service dates their return to Whiteside to 1985. Nesting on the cliffs was first seen in 1988, and by the count Smoky Mountain News reported in 2006 the birds had nested there every year since and fledged 39 chicks in eighteen years, more than at any other site in the state. The rock face is closed to climbing and rappelling from February 15 to July 15 while they nest.

Ownership

Whiteside was Cherokee land until the treaty of 1819, by the Forest Service’s account. James Mooney recorded its Cherokee name as Sanigilâ’gĭ and placed it in the story of Spearfinger, who set out to build a bridge to it from the Hiwassee. The mountain was later a private estate and a tourist stop. It was logged in 1947, and the Forest Service bought it afterward. The Forest Service keeps a two-mile loop trail on it, rated more difficult for its steepness.