Karen Chávez, Asheville Citizen-Times, 25 August 2016 – Jake Blood likes nothing more than a hard, calf-burning climb up a high mountain peak, the more patches of wild blackberries and need for bushwhacking, the better.

That’s why he finds such satisfaction in a hike amid the Black Mountains, which buttress Mount Mitchell and its sky-scraping elevation of 6,684 feet, the highest east of the Mississippi..

READ MORE