Granville County Highpoint Trip Report

Date: February 2006
Author: Peter Barr

I'd have to look at a map with street names but this report should help for the northern area. Start from the highway that is east of the HP area. When you are about due east, perhaps ever so slightly north of what would be due east, you'll see a dirt road heading towards the HP area going west. If you take this road, you'll pass an old cemetery to your right. The road is dirt and rough and I only traveled about halfway to the HP before several ditches made me get out and hoof it.

After a very long, dirt and sun-baked straightaway, the dirt road comes to a fork and there is also a metal wire boundary fence-type thing here, posted. I went right as it appeared the left fork would cut south in front of the HP and back downhill. I chose poorly. Take the left fork and follow it to its high ground for maybe a quarter mile, then you'll have to turn off the trail/road and bushwhack through open woods to the obvious HP. There are several rock outcroppings, one of which is the HP. On one of these boulders is Andy Martin's cairn with empty ginger ale can. Right before the HP, you'll have to negotiate big piles of chopped down and burned scraggly trees and wood. As I recall, there seemed to be a faint trail through it all. Don't stop short before this clear area, as there were some rocky outcroppings in the wooded area after immediate turning off-trail and ascending uphill.

If one had 4WD, you could drive to within 1/4 mile of the HP. I chose the right of the aforementioned fork, realized my error and bushwhacked south and hit the dirt road that would have been the left fork. The bushwhack was only a few hundred yards but among the worst I've ever done as far as blood lost and poison ivy gained. Learn by my errors -- don't go in summer, don't go at high noon, and go left, not right. There is a pretty good view from the HP, as it's semi- open. Then again, there's nothing to see from the top anyways. Just remember, look for the cemetery, take the left fork, turn off trail at the high ground, look for the cairn, and you're good to go.

The southern Granville CoHP area is fairly easy. I went from a newly developed neighborhood without houses yet, drove to the end of it where the paved road turns to a gravel road with a gate and mailbox, bushwhacked steeply uphill to the left until I reached a manmade summit clearing with Tallyho BM and 2nd Tallyho BM with arrow pointing to the first one. There is also a NC Survey sign and stake. The BM is in cement, the one with arrow was in a rock, I think. The summit had some big dirt mounds that were manmade from clearing trees and land. The true HP is one of the many rocks and boulders littering the summit near the BM. There was a dirt road 4wd path that came in from the west; you could likely walk this easier than bushwhack but I don't know where it starts.

Granville NC has two areas but, depending on how close they are, I think one could be eliminated since the northern most is a spot elevation and the southern-most has a BM, so exact elevations might be known for both. Since elevation difference is likely less than 5 feet, the differences in boulders and rock outcropping heights is likely unable to be measured since neither reading was likely done on the exact HP.

Hope this helps. Granville NC (the northern spot) actually is among one of the more isolated spots, in terms as distance from paved road, in any of the middle NC counties, meaning non-mountains and non-swamps or farms. Both HPs have definite tells (cairn and BM).