Blue Ridge Mountains

The Blue Ridge rises here near the Roan Highlands, a chain of high summits along the Tennessee and North Carolina border. Roan Mountain reaches more than six thousand feet, with spruce and fir on its heights and open grassy balds along neighbouring ridges. Catawba rhododendron grows among the mountain's distinctive plant communities. The wooded valleys below separate these summits from other ridges of the southern Appalachians.