Trapped in Elk Park

This is my adventure in Elk Park, North Carolina.

In late September 2024 I started a trip, camping my way North from Tampa. My plan was to head to the northeast, then follow the leaves changing colors, working my way back south. I made it as far as Elk Park, North Carolina, near the Tennessee border when Hurricane Helene caught up with me and stranded me for several days on a remote mountain campground with a couple of locals and no other connection to civilization until we made our way off the mountain.

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On Monday the 23rd, I reached the HideOut campground and pitched my tent at the highest campsite up the mountain trail. I had a couple of decent nights with minimal rain, but Wednesday night was quite wet, even with a tarp footprint and another overtop of the rainfly, the groundwater was deep enough to soak everything on the floor of my tent.

Curtis, the camp owner came by Thursday morning and informed me that the weather report was calling for lots more rain, possibly more than Western North Carolina had ever seen. He then offered me one of his RVs at the base of the mountain free of charge, to make sure I didn’t get stranded in the storm.

At the time, I thought the rain probably wouldn’t be any worse than I’d seen, but Curtis urged me to move off the mountain in case his driveway bridge to the campsites got washed out in the storm. That was a good call, as the driveway was completely wiped out by debris in the flood, which would have left my car stranded at the campsite…indefinitely.

Luckily, I got most of my things and my car off the mountain as the hurricane approached and the river waters rose under the bridges. (The mountain rivers were already maxed out from the steady recent rains.) For Thursday night, I set up in a comfy RV trailer that had cable TV, WiFi, indoor plumbing, and even a couple of rocker recliners. Outside around me, things weren’t nearly as cozy.

The river crested its banks on one side of the field while water also began to come rushing down the road at the entrance on the other side of the field. The river had become two rivers surrounding the trailer. As the rush of water continued to build, it began flowing under the trailer and the other campers down the hill. Soon, the three RVs (and a few cars) were sitting in the middle of a raging flood that encompassed the entire mountainside. With water on all sides as far as I could see, there was nowhere to go even if I could get out of the trailer. The steps and porch were pulled off and the water was flowing fast and two feet deep outside, reaching the door. All we could do was hope the water didn’t get any deeper, lift our vehicles up, and wash them downriver like so many fallen trees.

Even as the rain continued to pour and the grounds flooded that night, the trailer felt fairly safe - until 3:40AM Friday when the power, internet, water, and cable lines that ran through a conduit in the riverbed were snapped by flood debris. Too anxious to sleep, I was in the middle of watching a Law & Order marathon when everything suddenly went black. For the next few hours in the darkness, I could only hear the sound of rushing water and the occasional log that would bump up against the side of the trailer, reminding me that the flooding was far from over.

I’m glad I was unaware that the RV was only supported by cinder blocks stacked under the axles. That information would not have been reassuring, so it’s best that I was in the dark both figuratively and literally on this. By morning light, I was exhausted from sleeping with one ear open. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. However, the water continued to flow under the trailer for hours after the storm, keeping me from exiting until nearly midday, when I first wearily scrambled out the door to see the damage.

While I was awestruck to see that the trailer had lost its fascia and insulation as well as the porch and steps, it wasn’t until I started walking further that I saw the scope of the devastation. The driveway bridge Curtis had been worried about was completely gone - what had been ten or twelve tree trunks across, with asphalt on top, was now reduced to a single log and a couple of cables dangling above the still-raging waters. The house, campsites, barns, trails, and majority of Curtis’s 20 acres sit up that driveway. All of it was suddenly inaccessible by vehicle for the foreseeable future. Everywhere we looked on the campgrounds, the debris and damage, the washed out drives and the trees blocking roads all laid testament to Helene’s destructive power, but the story was only beginning.

We woke Friday, only knowing that we had no power, no roads out, and no communication with the outside world. We didn’t know how widespread the damage was, if anybody knew we were cut off, when things might change, or even if the weather would be bringing more rain. The few of us on Dark Ridge Road assumed we’d be on our own for some time, probably until we found our own way off the mountain. This assumption turned out to be correct, as while we didn’t know it at the time, this disaster was so widespread, there wouldn’t have been enough people to help get us out even if they knew we were stranded exactly where we were. There were just too many higher-priority emergencies. Those people got evacuated by the Blackhawk helicopters we saw and heard overhead. We, on the other hand, had no immediate, life-threatening concerns. We had enough food and water for a few days. We figured we’d eventually get in contact with the outside world and get off the mountain, right? Well, that would be up to us, as I’d soon find out.

Once the flood waters around camp subsided enough to see the damage done to the road, Curtis surmised that no vehicle was going to get anywhere on Dark Ridge Road until the cavernous gullies and boulder piles were at least cleared and smoothed enough to get his 4x4 truck out. However, in order to grade the road surface, he’d need to get his Ford 5000 diesel from the mountain side of his property across the river to the road-access side. This meant fording the river with the tractor.

Task one of Operation Get Off the Mountain turned out to be a feat in itself. After a couple of hours of spinning wheels, running at the bank with the big diesel, and tossing thousands of pounds of rocks into the river to create an underwater road, we watched Curtis finally climb the tractor out of the river to great relief. Curtis then set immediately to plowing our way out of the campground, working his way up the road and around the bend.

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Over the next few days, I traveled with Curtis, and his assistant Nanda to survey some of the damage, deliver supplies and help those we could, and learn a bit about the area, its history, and its current state and future outlook. It was an unexpected, but wonderful and powerful experience that I will never forget.