James Karpinos a student at UNC Asheville fell to his death off of Windy Falls in Transylvania County while hiking this past Saturday with his girlfriend Lindsay Mirkin. Both of them have extensive outdoor experience and met while working as troop leaders for the University’s outdoor program.
Mirkin, a teacher at Reynolds High, said the couple arrived at Windy Falls about 11:30 a.m. with two dogs in tow. He had wanted to take her to the falls for weeks, she said.
They hiked through the first few falls, stopping to swim in a pool at one point. He had never hiked to the fourth and fifth falls, so they decided to continue, she said.
Mirkin stopped to rest, while Karpinos continued to walk along the rocks.
“He kissed me, and I said, ‘Be careful,’” Mirkin said.
She had her head down, raising it just as he slipped on a large rock, she said. He was able to stop himself for a moment but eventually fell into the water below.
Mirkin rushed over the rock that bore tracks of mud from the Crocs shoes he wore. She said the rocks were very slippery.
“I couldn’t find him, and I saw his shoe floating at the bottom,” she said. She thinks he fell about 4 p.m.
“My legs wouldn’t work, and I had to crawl on hands and knees up the mountain” to find cell phone service, Mirkin said. She got through to emergency workers at 4:30 p.m.
According to news reports it took rescue workers a half a day to get into the base of the falls. According to the World Waterfall Database Windy Falls drops 720 feet;
Windy Falls is a long series of cascades on the Horsepasture River. There does not appear to be any vertical portion of the falls over 20 or so feet, and the tallest individual cascade is only around 80 feet tall. The falls drop just over 700 feet in about 1/2 a mile’s stretch of river, and thusly appear to be nearly impossible to see in entirety from one place.
I’ve read a number of hiking and outdoor travel sites about this particular waterfall and almost all of them urge extreme caution while hiking there because of the dangers. We who love the outdoors sometimes forget how unforgiving nature can be if the worst case scenario befalls us. James Karpinos funeral will be latter this week in his hometown of Chapel Hill North Carolina.
Story by Dan McLaughlin AKA Moose
