[2] The park features hiking trails for all skill levels, views of the Devil's Head balancing rock, and a 404-foot (123 m) waterfall, Hickory Nut Falls.
Its most notable feature is a 315-foot (96 m) gneiss monolith named Chimney Rock, which is accessible by elevator and provides views of the park and surrounding countryside.
The area provides habitat for rare flowers, diverse forest communities, endangered bats and salamanders, unique cave-dwelling invertebrates, and birds such as peregrine falcons and migratory neotropical species.
[9] They found that the region of Chimney Rock State Park and Hickory Nut Gorge is generally underlain by Ordovician, Henderson Gneiss.
Ancient movement along the Sugarloaf thrust fault has transported the strata of the Poor Mountain Formation westward and over the top of the Henderson Gneiss.
Along the Tumblebug thrust fault the Henderson Gneiss lies on and has been transported westward and over poorly-foliated, light-gray, medium-grained, Ordovician-Silurian, biotite-granite-gneiss.
It also exhibits a pronounced NE-SW-trending mineral lineation defined by quartz ribbons, elongate orthoclase porphyroclasts, and flakes of biotite and occasional muscovite.
[6][10] The massive and largely unfractured nature of the Henderson Gneiss is directly reflected in the scenery of Hickory Nut Gorge and Chimney Rock State Park.
The exfoliation surfaces, locally called balds, rim the valleys of Hickory Nut Gorge and Chimney Rock State Park.
[7][9] As previously discussed, the Poor Mountain Formation outcrops structurally above the Henderson Gneiss in the Chimney Rock State Park area.
Outcropping between the amphibolite-hornblende gneiss and the Sugarloaf thrust fault, the garnet-mica schist and quartzite is purplish-red, to brown, to light-gray in color depending on its variable mineralogy and degree of weathering.
They are generally coarse-grained and composed of quartz, plagioclase, microcline, and muscovite with minor amounts of biotite and garnet and lacking in spodumene and other valuable minerals.