
Appalachian Balds - curtis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_balds
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40four
Random to see this here, but I like it! I grew up in Western NC on the edge of
the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so I'm a big fan.

Max Patch is always a nice day trip, and Black balsam knob is one of my
favorite spots period. Fantastic panoramic views, and go in August if you want
to take home a bag full of blueberries. The most seasoned hikers will want to
follow the Art Loeb trail out to Cold Mountain, and climb the summit. But it's
not for the faint of heart! ;)

~~~
bacon_waffle
Or from Max Patch, keep heading generally North following the white paint
marks to wind up on Mt Katahdin in Maine :)

One of my favourite memories from the Appalachian Trail was somewhere up in
New England; someone was on a day hike and asked "how far does this trail
go?", my answer "Georgia" wasn't satisfying to them for some reason...

~~~
SamWhited
I started at Amicalola Falls in 2014 (where I briefly worked as an intern back
in my college days) and thought I'd follow the white marks and see where they
went. It took longer than expected. Jokes aside, I grew up hiking on the AT in
Georgia and it was fun to do the whole thing. I had no idea there was an
entire article on the balds!

~~~
gwright
I thru hiked in 2002. One of my fellow travelers started in Georgia planning
to hike for two weeks, made it all the way to Maine!

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msisk6
These are found in the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas, too.

For a related bit of obscure US history you can read about the post-civil war
vigilante group named after these:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bald_Knobbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bald_Knobbers)

~~~
curtis
My parents grew up in the southwestern corner of the Ozark Mountains and I've
been to Branson, Missouri a number of times, so I have at least a passing
familiarity with the Bald Knobbers. Nevertheless, I had not made the
connection between Balds in the geographic sense and the Bald Knobbers. The
southwestern Ozarks are actually a heavily eroded plateau, and I'm not aware
of any hilltops that look like the Appalachian Balds, but then I have only
actually seen a tiny portion of the Ozarks.

~~~
cossatot
The Ozark balds exist primarily because the tops of hills in the White River
Valley have very little soil, as they're made up of dolomitic limestone that
dissolves in rain water instead of breaking down into clays. The scant soil
that exists is enough to host grasses, but few trees; Eastern Red Cedar can
grow, but before widespread fire suppression, it was pretty contained to fire-
protected rock outcroppings. With fire suppression (which may have stabilized
the soil and limited erosion as well), Eastern Red Cedar and some oaks
(blackjack and post oak) are filling in the balds. This is in constrast to the
Appalachian balds that are mainly a product of climate differences between the
peaks and the lower hillslopes.

The hills to the north of the White River Valley (around Springfield) and
south (south of Harrison) are capped by rock layers that have a relatively
high clay content and produce soil that can more easily support forests.

The Bald Knobber history is pretty interesting. I had always thought of them
as analogous to the earliest KKK (also a Reconstruction-era vigilante group
initially) but I hadn't realized until I read the surprisingly detailed
Wikipedia page that the Bald Knobbers were Republicans who sided with the
North. (Unfortunately, the Bald Knobbers are history at this point, while the
KKK is still quite active in the area, especially Harrison/Boone County,
Arkansas).

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CrankyBear
They are fascinating. I live in Western NC and I've seen many of them. You're
climbing up the mountain, nearing the summit, going through the trees and
then, pop, the trees are gone leaving only a mystery.

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gmllama
Randomly saw a youtube video on Devil's Gardens in Rainforests, where ants use
formic acid to destroy non-symbiotic/competing plants in given areas. Makes me
wonder if this could be something similar.

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seaborn63
I grew up in the Appalachians of South Carolina and I've visited all over
them. I've seen the one mentioned in the article and always wondered why it
was like that

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peterkshultz
Balds are some of America's hidden treasures.

Jane Bald through Hump Mountain was my favorite section on the Appalachian
Trail, except maybe for a few sections in Maine.

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CarVac
I sought one of these out for the 2017 solar eclipse in North Carolina, but
was sorely disappointed when it turned out that while there were no trees, it
was covered quite thoroughly in shrubs and you could not see the sky.

~~~
jdc0589
some of them get super foggy too. e.g. Gregory Bald.

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mirimir
Hypothesis: For thousands of years, people burned them periodically, to
provide habitat for desired prey, and make it easier to see them. Since then,
until recently, people burned them periodically for livestock pasture.

Problem: Forest is expected cover, but now you have endangered plant species
which have migrated uphill, with global climate change, until there's no
uphill left. So restoring forest cover would cause extinctions.

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jefft255
Livestock pasture on top of an Appalachian mountain? Not happening. At these
altitudes on the east coast forests are mostly left alone.

~~~
mirimir
Hey, argue with TFA, not me:

> The character and distribution of Appalachian balds remained stable from the
> time the first naturalists explored the region, until forestry regulations
> no longer permitted annual pasturing of local cattle. How and why a summit
> develops into a grassy bald is unknown; they represent "an ecological enigma
> and a conservation dilemma".[4] Weigl and Knowles note that "the presence of
> both rare, endemic plants and northern relicts requiring open habitat
> suggests a long evolutionary history" and offer a scenario in which grazing
> pressure of the giant herbivores of the Pleistocene retained the open tundra
> habitat as the Wisconsin glaciation retreated far to the north. With the
> arrival of the paleoindians and the disappearance of the megaherbivores,
> grazing pressure was maintained by deer and elk, and then by the grazing
> animals of European settlers.

I do agree that cattle seem unlikely. Maybe "grazing animals of European
settlers" points to sheep? Maybe even goats?

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Xcelerate
In a similar vein, does anyone in the Bay Area know why the Santa Cruz
mountains on the west side of the valley have a bunch of trees, but the
mountains on the east side (near Fremont) have no trees and are mostly just
grass? I would think the climate and elevation are similar.

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lisper
The mountains on the west cause a lot of moisture in the air to precipitate
out as the prevailing winds blow from the west, so they get a lot more rain
than the eastern ranges.

~~~
AlotOfReading
Not only is it drier, but the Diablo range is heavily overgrazed. If it
weren't, it'd be the same chaparral woodland you can still see around
calaveras dam.

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uptime
I thought it was pretty funny that Mt. Eisenhower in the White Mountains was
bald on top. Very little vegetation up there!

