Today's adventure comes from page 449 of Kevin Adam's excellent NC waterfall guide book. Down at the bottom of the page he mentions a waterfall to the right of Devil's Courthouse on Whiteside Mountain. There are actually trails and forest roads on public property that will take you right to the base of the falls! Turns out that 2 of Bernie's waterfall buddies - Norm Arnold and Phil Mayer - had found this waterfall years earlier by walking up this section of creek until they reached the falls. Thus the name Norm's El Grande. Working with that information, Bernie scoped out a different way in. Cathy came out of hibernation and joined Bernie, Harry and me on the adventure. If you want to go you will probably have to have a GPS and load up these waypoints.

We parked somewhere else with permission as a short cut, but you can park in the public parking area at Whiteside Mountain off of Hwy 64 near Highlands. Go behind the bathrooms and look for a trail heading away from the parking area. Go down this for less than 1/4 mile and bear right at a fork. This is very close to private property, but just follow this obvious well traveled trail to waypoint 001 on the map. This trail goes through a deep gully at one point. At this point do a GOTO for waypoint 002 and look for a fainter trail heading off to the left that will drop down to another road. There should be a house down to your left, but you need to drop down through the woods straight ahead to the next road down and to waypoint 002. 003 is the head of the trail that takes you down to the base of the falls. It gets steep down towards the waterfall, but is very doable for the average adventure seeker.