Looking Glass Rock

Looking Glass Rock in Pisgah National Forest as the sun goes down and the fog starts to rise.

Friday, July 7 2026 - Pisgah National Forest & Brevard, North Carolina

Granite Hearthstone

When you traverse the higher regions of Pisgah National Forest or the surrounding areas, you’re sure to see a notable landmark. It’s a huge granite monolith which wears the surrounding forest as a cloak. It’s a notably bare, steep rock face that functions as a centerpiece for this portion of Pisgah. It’s the namesake of countless businesses, trails and even a nearby waterfall.

This big rock is special to me. Looking Glass Falls is one of the first places we visited when Conor was still small, before our daughter Violet was born. It was one of the first places we went when moved here. It was the namesake of the bike packing trip I had to bail on the night before that my friends went on without me. We have spent a lot of time in Brevard, camping at Davidson River Campground and exploring the area. There’s an incredible view of Looking Glass from the summit of John Rock Trail, which was one of the first trails I hiked there.

Every time we would visit, we would see Looking Glass Mountain off in the distance and I knew I wanted to get a good photo of it. It was my hearthstone, and it beckons me back to Pisgah every single time.

On a summer day after some light rain, we found ourselves driving around looking for some photos. First, we stopped alongside the road in Brevard to catch a vivid rainbow hanging above a small farm with the mountains looming in the background. You can’t tell from the photo, but the rainbow was actually set in front of the mountains, and we almost felt as if we could run through the field and find a pot of gold on either end.

After that, we drove to the Cradle of Forestry Overlook and stopped to catch a couple sunset glimpses of Looking Glass Mountain as the fog began to rise after the rainfall.