This is not Yellowstone as in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Yellowstone Prong is in the Great Balsam Mountains of western North Carolina, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. It flows through a high-altitude valley known as Graveyard Fields, and along with another stream known as Dark Prong it comprises the headwaters of the East Fork of the Pigeon River.
The name derives, or so I assume, from the colour of some of the rocks found here.
If you're thinking that Yellowstone Prong looks and sounds like a trout stream, you'd be right, and that was a big part of the reason Jessa and I were here. The fish on the upper reaches are small but gorgeous, southern Appalachian brookies at their finest.
I enjoyed the changing character of the prong: sometimes pouring over bare rock, other times across pebbles and cobblestones; now overhung with dense vegetation, then opening up like a Western trout stream. Pretty everywhere.
Brook trout aside, we documented fauna such as slate-coloured juncos and northern water snakes (note that yellow rock again)...
...but the glory of Yellowstone is surely in its flora. Start with a background of mosses and ferns...
Add in a few violets...
...and bluets...
...and soon the rocks themselves seem to come alive.
Then add mountain specialties like galax and painted trillium...
...growing together in the shade of mountain laurel and Catawba rhododendron...
...and you can begin to understand that trout are just an excuse to spend time in the Graveyard Fields.
All photos by Jessica Farrell-Churchill.
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