Adventure Story
Hurricane Mountain
A peaceful camping trip turned into a test of survival and an eye-opening story of strength and community in the face of disaster.
Chapter 1: Setting Up Camp
In the fall of 2024, I set out to fulfill a lifelong dream of “chasing the leaves,” following the changing foliage, camping, and taking pictures/video of the trip. I’d start in the Northeast and work my way down through the Appalachians, stopping for a few days to camp and hike and document the beauty of nature. The first leg of the journey was making my way north from Tampa through Georgia, North Carolina, upstate New York on my way to Vermont and Maine. Mother nature had other plans for my fall tour of the leaves. I never made it past North Carolina thanks to Hurricane Helene, and it was easily the best “ruined” vacation of my life.
After a night in Juliette, GA on the Towaliga River, I drove into the picturesque mountain town of Elk Park, NC, near the Tennessee border. I pitched a tent at the campsite at the top of the HideOut RV & Campground’s mountain farm for the week of September 23-27, and planned to hike in the area and visit some local falls (Compression is 2 miles away, Elk River Falls only a bit further) and perhaps do a bit of writing and reflecting. I was checking in with family in SW Florida as Hurricane Helene approached them, but I mostly disconnected from society and the internet for the first few days - other than the obligatory Instagram posts of my favorite pictures at the end of each day, of course.
The weather by Wednesday had been less than stellar, and though I had hiked the few miles of trails on the campground property, I’d only driven around the area once and taken a few pictures, and hadn’t had a dry enough day to visit either falls. That night, it rained hard enough my tent took in about an inch of water as the ground flooded. I made it through semi-dry on a cot, but Thursday morning the farmer that owned the camp, Curtis Church, came by on his golf cart and said the weather report looked bad enough that he was worried about me staying another night on the mountain in a tent. I told him that I had survived well enough, but he urged me to take shelter in one of his RV trailers at no charge, just to make sure I wasn’t stranded on the mountain. On top of being a mile from the roads and house, the campsites were up a drive that crossed a bridge over the creek through the property. Curtis was worried the bridge would wash out in the storm and not only myself and my gear (which can be carried), but also my car would be stranded up the mountain with no driveway out.
I took up Curtis on his offer, a rather fortuitous decision. That night Elk Park received more rain from Helene than anyone we talked to could remember, perhaps more than the famous flood of 1940 that the townsfolk all grew up hearing of. As I rushed to pack up in the storm, I had left the tent and tarp up, cot inside, and grabbed everything else to stuff in my car. Somehow that tent was still staked to the ground (though a little wet) when I finally returned two days after the storm. But it wasn’t all rosy further down the mountain where I stayed.
The RV section of the property sits along a babbling, rocky river - a beautiful view on most days. However, being front row to a mountain stream is not a great location during any rainstorm, let alone the first hurricane to penetrate this deep into western North Carolina since Hugo in September of 1989. The river steadily filled to its banks in the misty hours before the heavy storm rains. By the time Elk Park felt the brunt of Helene, the river had already overflowed its banks and submerged the footbridges. An old retention pond filled, then breached its sides, turning the entire hillside of the RV camp into a river two feet deep. The water flowed under the RVs and campers, up to the doors, ripping off insulation and fascia, removing the deck and stairs from the trailer I stayed in, as logs and other flood debris occasionally slammed the walls, reminding me the tiny home is only “secured” by its axles sitting on stacked cinder blocks.
The power went out at 3:40AM as the water continued to rush under the trailer. At some point, and I awoke to the water still flowing, covering the hillside, but perhaps only 8-12 inches deep at daybreak. It would be hours before I could exit the RV, but the sound of the water rushing wasn’t nearly as loud as it had been through the night. Nearing midday, I heard the sound of Curtis and Nanda (a slender Brazilian woman of sixty, who lives and helps on the property) talking outside. The water had “slowed” to a steady stream, newly formed through the yard and driveway of the RV grounds, cutting it off from the road. The road access didn’t matter a bit at this point though -the entire road surface had been washed away for hundreds of yards in both directions from the property. Not even the highest-lifted, big-tired 4x4 vehicles could traverse the cavernous potholes, rocks, and ravines that now took the place of roads. Further down Dark Ridge Road (toward Tennessee), fallen trees and mudslides completely blocked access to the dozen or so homes before the next washed out road. Those homes would have no access, other than by foot from the NC side or ATV from the TN side for many days after the storm, rendering any residents who stayed cut off from not only power, water, cell service, internet, etc., but also inaccessible to emergency services should something else happen if they stayed in their homes.
While many properties in the area serve as second or vacation homes, several families, some with young children, were faced with locking up their homes and leaving or staying and risking being stuck longer as more rain was forecast. Most chose to flee before the next storm, but even that took some planning and a coordinated effort to get residents, their belongings, and transport vehicles together on the accessible side of the road blockages. Over the first five days following Hurricane Helene’s assault on Elk Park, a lot of work would be done simply to get the roads and towns accessible, not quite even functional, and a far cry from inviting tourists back to the region this year.
Follow the people, history, and rebuilding story of one small mountain neighborhood as it starts to recover in the aftermath of its worst disaster in living memory.
(Chapter 2 coming soon)
Hurricane Mountain
This project is lived, written, photographed, and produced by Jon Ray
Getting to know Elk Park
In the days leading up to Hurricane Helene, Elk Park, Avery County was looking beautiful, as fall was just around the corner in the treetops and drifting down onto the wooded paths.
