On New Year’s Day 2026, Rock Sprite and Badger launched the year with a challenging off-trail hike, ascending a full mile through the raw, jagged expanse they’ve named the Chestoa View Scar—a massive landslide scar triggered by Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic rains and winds in September 2024.

Originating directly at the base of the still-closed Chestoa View Overlook (Milepost 320.8 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, part of the long-shut sections due to Helene’s widespread damage), this once-inconspicuous, unmarked creek exploded into a wild chasm on a spur of Humpback Mountain. Its walls tower over 30 feet in spots, with crumbling sandstone and earth littered by razor-sharp rocks, massive boulders, uprooted trunks piled in chaotic debris jams, and exposed root systems dangling from eroded banks. Yet amid the stark winter bareness – skeletal trees against a crisp sky – signs of rebirth emerged: vibrant crimson and emerald leaves on hardy plants pushing through the rubble, fuzzy woolly mullein rosettes thriving on disturbed soil, and fresh green shoots signaling nature’s quiet comeback. The steady crunch of ice and loose gravel, the earthy scent of exposed soil, and the awe-inspiring scale (best appreciated from a Boots-on-the-Ground perspective) delivered a profoundly humbling, adrenaline-charged start to the year.

One unexpected silver lining: sweeping new views toward the majestic Linville Gorge Wilderness are now visible from the base of the Chestoa View mountain. Helene’s torrential forces stripped away dense stands of trees that once blocked the sightlines, opening dramatic vistas across the rugged gorge that were previously hidden – a bittersweet gift from the storm’s destructive power

En route, we enjoyed a playful debate on naming conventions. Badger repeatedly dubbed it a “landscape scar,” prompting Rock Sprite Kitty Myers’ initial correction: “It’s a landslide scar—precisely what Helene’s deluge created.” Badger floated, “it’s a geological event” as a neutral alternative, and Rock Sprite ultimately conceded that “landscape scar” or “landslide scar” both fit conversationally and epistemologically. We both agreed that Helene created an undeniable geological event that played out across countless locations, reshaping the Southern Appalachians.

The Chestoa View Scar’s story carries an extraordinary thread of grace tied to local history. At its lower reaches, a towering 40-foot-high debris field – roaring down the holler “like ten freight trains,” as survivor Ben McCall described – miraculously altered course in its final moments. This shift spared the seventh-generation family cabin in Cedar Cove, home to Ben and his family, tucked in below Humpback Mountain between North Cove and Linville Falls. (Their ancestors’ original cabin was lost to the Great Flood of 1916, making the site’s presumed safety all the more poignant.) Old cars, campers, and farm equipment staged uphill for removal threatened to become part of the torrent, yet the debris field miraculously shifted course just enough to spare the cabin – creating what Ben has called ‘The Miracle at Cedar Cove.’

In a powerful three-part video interview from October 21, 2024 (with North Cove resident Andrew Tye joining and Badger at the helm), Ben recounted the terror and gratitude of surviving Helene’s fury – a testament to nature’s raw power and occasional mercy amid the storm’s heartbreaking toll.

While standing in the scar fifteen months after Helene, Badger admitted he wasn’t sure whether to smile or cry. No lives were lost in this particular slide, but the terrain was forever altered. Helene has etched another profound chapter into Badger’s Act III of life, fueling his commitment to see the recovery through via the Heart of North Cove 501(c)(3). I can’t think of a more worthy purpose for a true Son of Appalachia.

Many of the HoneyBadgerImages are on display at instagram.com/honeybadgerimages.

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