Just over the Georgia border in the southwest corner of North Carolina you’ll find Highlands Outpost and the Scaly Mountain Screamer coaster. This Wiegand mountain coaster opened in November of 2021 and is currently the longest mountain coaster in North Carolina with over 3,800 feet of track. The coaster features two lift hills, a beautiful forests and a surprise Bigfoot encounter!

Highlands Outpost is a place of outdoor fun nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. In addition to the mountain coaster Highlands Outpost also features snow tubing, ice skating, extreme tube sliding (summer tubing) and gem mining. The area is quite beautiful with several picture spots like a small pond, water features at the mining area and other rustic outdoor scenes. They also make snow starting in November for tubing! Highlands Outpost and the mountain coaster have one of the best operating calendars for a rural mountain coaster, operating essentially everyday with the exception of some Tuesdays in October/November and a few other random days. I was able to stop around lunch on a random weekday while school was in session in September while passing nearby on a business trip to Asheville, NC. It’s priced on par with most other mountain coasters at $18/ride or 3 rides for $40.

The coaster station is a nice wooden structure off to one side of the property and actually has its own parking lot although it is an easy walk from the main parking area. The Scaly Mountain Screamer logo is a fun drawing of a bear on a mountain coaster and this logo is everywhere. The coaster station itself is quite modern on the inside with your now typical iPad waiver stations , TV screens for safety videos and cameras. The crew was super friendly and being a weekday afternoon there was zero wait.

I like the design of the coaster very much in that it feels more like the design of a traditional coaster, starting with a lift hill and coming into the station hot. Recently I’ve ridden several mountain coasters whose stations are at the top of a hill where you start with a drop and the ride concludes with a long anti-climatic climb back up to the station. In many cases this is not the coaster designer’s fault as the rest of the complex is located on top of a hill as well after something like a cable car ride up, so there’s then nowhere to go but down. However, for me this takes away from the experience and the anticipation a climb can bring, so it was great that the Scaly Mountain Screamer has this more traditional structure.

The ride itself is sort of a “paint by numbers” mountain coaster, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You start with a nice long lift followed by several s-turns and ending the first half with a 360 degree turn. Nothing here is really high speed, but it’s fun and scenic. A good chunk of the first half of the course is on the back/top of the hill and not visible on the lift which adds some mystery too. You then head up a second lift before finishing out the second half of the course which is much faster with a 360 degree turn, some more higher speed s-turns, a pass by Bigfoot (more on that in a bit) and coming in the station hot. I was able to comfortably go near full throttle the whole course, but I was also alone on the track with no traffic to worry about.

Probably the signature moment for this coaster is toward the end where there is a Bigfoot statue. Maybe it’s a yeti or Sasquatch? Is there a difference? Regardless of what you call it, there’s a radar gun nearby that records your speed and you can see this on the photo screens at the station (and of course purchase if you’d like). I topped out at a little over 18 mph and bought the photo as a fun souvenir.

The Scaly Mountain Screamer is a great mountain coaster and you can easily argue it’s the best mountain coaster in North Carolina (although there are only three currently). Although I can’t point to any single standout moments or unique elements (other than the Bigfoot speed camera), its a fun and everything you could want and love in a mountain coaster. If you find yourself in the Asheville area or the Appalachian Mountains in general it could be a worth a quick diversion to the Highlands Outpost to check it out!