(((Went hiking up to Huckleberry Bald yesterday--5,000 ft high. Balds exist only in the Southern Appalachians and their origins are a mystery. I always heard Indian curse.)))
Link
"In the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, balds are mountain summits or crests covered primarily by a thick layer of native grasses or shrubs occurring in areas where heavy forest growth would be expected.
Balds are found primarily in the Southern Appalachians, where the climate is too warm to support an alpine zone— upper areas where trees fail to grow due to short or non-existent growing seasons— even at the highest elevations.[1] The difference between a treeless summit, such as Mount Washington in New Hampshire, and a bald, such as Gregory Bald in the Great Smoky Mountains, is that a lack of trees is normal for the climatic conditions of the former (i.e., high elevation and colder latitude) but abnormal for the climatic conditions of the latter (high elevation, but warmer latitude). One notable example of what makes southern balds paradoxical can be found at Roan Mountain, where Roan High Knob (el. 6,285 ft/1,915 m) is coated with a dense spruce forest, whereas an adjacent summit, Round Bald (el. 5,826 ft/1,776 m), is almost entirely devoid of trees. Thus, despite having nearly identical climatic conditions (high elevation, warmer latitude), one summit is forested whereas the other is not.
Why some summits are bald and some are not is a mystery, although scientists have come up with several hypotheses (see below)"
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