Waterfall Hikes // Blue Ridge Parkway
Weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Day 2 || Featuring Roaring Fork Falls, Tom’s Creek Falls, Montreat, and the Blue Ridge Parkway || Sunday, July 3, 2016
The day after our big hike, we decided to take it easy and do a driving tour around the Pisgah National Forest. Curtis had gotten in contact with a local letterboxer that recommended several letterboxes on short hikes, so we planned a route around those. Honestly, we knew there would be so many hikes within driving distance for the day, our only problem would be narrowing it down and knowing which to choose. On days like this, it helps to have letterboxing to both inform us of what trails there are and what to expect, and they also give us a little reward at the end. Curtis saved several clues, we packed a lunch and set off on another day’s adventure.
If you’ve ever been to the Appalachians, you know that these mountains are anything but lacking in waterfalls. In fact, it seems like it’s harder to go for a hike and NOT see one! However, everyone knows this, and so the real challenge is finding peace and quiet at a waterfall, where the only thing you can hear is that calming sound of water falling from a high drop or more quietly cascading down a series of levels. Finding longer and more remote hikes will help to lighten the crowds, but the best tip we have is to START EARLY. Even just getting on the trail between 8 and 9 gives you a much better chance at having a hike all to yourself. Unfortunately for us, this tip only worked for the first hike of the day – but for that one hike, it was completely worth it. 🙂
We followed the same highways that we had taken the day before toward Black Mountain Campground, but once turning onto Toe River Road, we went left to the trailhead for Roaring Fork Falls. As we arrived, we saw 2 other hikers beginning the trail, so we stalled a bit to give more space between us. We then set off on the .7 miles one way trail.
The trail started off wide for the first half mile, with a high overhead covering of trees, and our hiking boots were soon wet from the morning dew. We let Charlotte wander, and she did a great job staying beside us, besides stopping to check out an old shelter that sat beside the trail. I loved seeing her curiosity as she ran to the side, jumped up on the platform, and peeked inside. I stopped to watch her check it out until she was satisfied, then we went on our way.
We soon saw the hikers that went before us coming back the opposite way, and when we reached the falls, we had them all to ourselves. That fact alone made them our favorite for the day! (But keep reading anyway because we still managed to have fun for the rest of the day 😉 ) Roaring Fork Falls is a huge cascading waterfall. The best view in my opinion is on the water side, but we still wandered up the obviously used path that led steeply up the side of the hill to the right of the falls and tried to see where others may have found different views from other angles. (Well ok, Curtis was also searching for the letterbox. He and Charlotte went all the way to the top together!) While we stamped into the logbook, Charlotte showed off by jumping from rock to rock in the stream and ended up sitting down on one right in the middle and just looked as cute as can be. Oh how we love our hiking pup!
Our friend Lars had been with us up to this point, but after this hike we parted ways for the rest of the day while Curtis and I set off to find more letterboxes and waterfalls. As we neared the beginning of the trailhead, we saw several other groups starting to make their way up. It’s honestly amazing that we had it all to ourselves for the whole half-hour that we were there, considering there was a campground so close to the trail. We drove on highway 80 to Marion, then went North on highway 221 until we came to Huskins Branch Road, which we took to the trailhead for Tom’s Creek Falls. This one was only a mile on a well-used trail to the falls and back.
We made it to the falls rather quickly, and after taking in the first view, we took the trail up to the top of the falls to find a letterbox and a quiet place to enjoy them. There weren’t a lot of people here (we passed several groups heading the opposite way) but there were some people camping at the bottom of the falls and I wasn’t able to get any good pictures of the entire waterfall without the tents and such blocking the view. There’s nothing wrong with that, it just made us feel awkward wandering around their campsite trying to find a place to sit and take it in. Still, these were amazing falls, with a few cascading pools at the top and a longer drop for the main waterfall. We made our way up to the top to enjoy one of the pools on our own.
Not only was Charlotte being absolutely ADORABLE walking around in these falls, she was also posing and letting me take her picture!! Isn’t her smile so cute in that last picture?? I love my baby girl so much! She seemed so happy whenever we came to stream crossings or stopped to sit by a waterfall. She would jump around the rocks, drink some water, and would end up just standing in it and cooling off. It’s safe to say this was her favorite day of vacation.
Following Tom’s Creek Falls, we drove South back to Marion, then West on highway 70 to Old Fort. Here, Curtis had planned another waterfall hike, and we thought it wouldn’t be too busy because it was on a longer road out of the way…but upon arriving, we realized we were definitely wrong in that assumption. The parking lot for this one was HUGE and already quite full, while cars were continually arriving and people were all over the place. We parked, and while I Googled the falls (Catawba Falls) to see if the pictures made it look outstanding or significantly different than any other waterfall, Curtis looked at the trail details on the letterbox clue. The verdict was it wasn’t anything spectacular, and it was only a mile long round-trip, which we realized would mean that we would be constantly surrounded if there were this many people on such a short hike. The biggest factor in this decision though was when we looked up and saw an older person with their family carrying a big bag of KFC on a stick (like a hobo stick type of thing) and we knew right away that we didn’t want to be around anyone here. Haha.
It was past 1 in the afternoon by now, but we definitely didn’t want to call it quits yet, so we headed West on I-40 to the town of Montreat. We took highway 9 North through the town and into the Montreat Conference Center. Montreat is basically a mountain retreat area, right up at the base of the Black Mountains and offers lots of outdoor activities – but of course, we were just there to hike. I’m not really sure how to describe the place, we just knew about it from letterbox clues, but it’s free to visit and was definitely a happening place on this holiday weekend. It was super busy around a park/water area, so we just took the main road as long as we could until it became a gravel road and we came to a trailhead for Greybeard Mountain. Altogether, the trail to the top of the mountain is 8 miles round trip, but now that it was around 2 in the afternoon and was becoming rather hot and humid, my mind was already made up that I didn’t feel like doing the whole thing. Curtis suggested going up to the waterfall which would be around the halfway point, and so we began our last hike for the day.
Looking back, I wonder if the hardest part of the trail was all at the beginning – after about a half mile of relatively easy hiking, it started ascending steeply, and Charlotte and I were quickly growing tired. Maybe our biggest mistake was that we hadn’t eaten lunch yet – it was already well past noon and we had said we would eat at the falls. It had also started to heat up though, and the only parts of the trail that felt pleasant were when we were crossing the stream. Because of this, I made us stop when we came to a scenic vista, and we stopped to take pictures and finally eat some lunch. I had every intention of ending our hike here, but with a little convincing Curtis got me and Charlotte to continue to the falls. At that point, the trail was less steep as it evened out into long zig-zags (if you look at a map of the trail, that’s exactly what they are) but even with the easy trail, I didn’t want to add another 4 miles to get to a peak. We made it to the falls, then turned back and got back to the car around 4. I’d say that if you’re going to do this hike, do it for the peak because the falls alone weren’t worth it after the others we’d seen! If we had done this one as our first hike for the day, then our chances for going the whole way would have been way better. Oh well!
We decided to end our day here by driving back to Burnsville via the Blue Ridge Parkway. I loved this drive so much, just for the sake of the expansive views and many pullouts where we could take it all in. The desire to drive the entire length of this road was strong! We had to settle for going only 40 miles, but they were so worth it. We even made it to a visitor’s center literally 2 minutes before they closed, just enough time to grab some stamps and a map to plan our next visit. 😉 I could tell Charlotte wanted to sit and take it all in with us, but she was just so tired that she passed out on my lap, snoring the rest of the way home. We ended this great day with Chinese food back at the cabin…for the second night in a row…haha!
