Wayne and Erika Pfeiler

I was looking through pictures I took on the way back from Tennessee and I found this one. I took this along I-74 north of Winston-Salem without knowing what it was. Turns out this thing is called Pilot Mountain. It's a technically a quartzite monadnock that stands about 1400 feet above the surrounding ground, and it's part of the Pilot Mountain State Park. People can't climb on top of the "Big Pinnacle" because some endangered birds use this as a nesting grounds. If you click on the photo to enlarge it twice, you can see a bird flying near the left corner of the mountain. I read there used to be a series of metal ladders on the side that people could use to climb up to the top. Just imagine what the view was like. Supposedly, this was the source of the fictional "Mt Pilot" on the Andy Griffith Show too.