King Falls / Spoonauger Falls
Hiking to King Falls & Spoonauger Falls in Sumter National Forest, South Carolina | Camping on the Chattooga River | February 2024
After things hadn’t gone according to plan the night before, we weren’t sure how we wanted to spend our day. We also didn’t have phone service at our campsite, so we couldn’t do any research from where we were. Since we also needed gas, we decided to drive a few miles South to Mountain Rest, SC, where we found just a bit of cell service to make a plan for the day. We went through all our starred hikes on Google Maps, and ultimately decided to return to Burrell’s Ford on the SC/GA border and hike the trails around there.
We drove back to the campground and trailhead parking lot, then readied ourselves for the walk. For our first hike of the day, we chose to hike to King Falls. We started out on the Foothills Trail, which had a few switchbacks as it descended to King’s Creek, then crossed over the creek and continued on the trail to the falls. The half mile on the Foothills trail was in pretty good condition and easy enough for Charlotte. The trail to the falls followed the creek the whole way started out fine, but got more narrow and rocky as we made our way further back. As we neared the end, the ground became more muddy and the rocks in the path turned into more boulder hopping, so Curtis gave Charlotte a lift for the last bit of the trail. The waterfall was definitely worth the hike though, and we enjoyed rock hopping on the creek to get better views of the falls.
On our way back, Charlotte once again got the princess treatment from Curtis, being carried over the hardest part of the trail. After we made it back to the bridge over the creek, we decided to take a different trail the rest of the way, which made the hike longer but was overall easier than the Foothills Trail. We followed the creek to the road through the campground, then hiked the road back up to the parking lot. This made us even more disappointed that we couldn’t camp here, as the dispersed camping area was clean and looked like a great place to stay, right along the Chattooga River. There were paved roads to all the sites and everything, which begged the question – why was it walk in only? Altogether this hike was just over 2 miles, and you can see our trail recording here.
We made it back to the parking lot and had lunch at the van. Since we were still feeling great, we decided to go for another hike to Spoonauger Falls. We could have driven down to that trailhead and parked along the road, but we decided instead to just walk there, which added a half mile each way to the hike. The trail to Spoonauger Falls follows the Chattooga River Trail for .2 miles before taking a side trail up to the falls. The Chattooga River Trail also looked interesting — it ends at the tri-point between GA, NC, and SC — but it was much too long and challenging for Charlotte.
The trail to our turn off was very easy though, wide and mostly flat with a small water crossing. That is, until we came to the side trail…which came right after a bigger water crossing which I wasn’t comfortable with. Something about crossing louder, rushing water always psychs me out, and knowing that this trail would likely end up being like the trail up to King Falls, it was probably better to not subject Charlotte to it either. So I stayed back with Charlotte and let Curtis go the remaining quarter mile to the falls. Charlie and I made pretty good progress meandering back to the trailhead while he hiked, though we stopped to check out the river at every access point she could find. Once we made it back to the trailhead, we walked a little further down the road to the bridge over the Chattooga just to walk across and say we’ve been to that county in Georgia again, then made our way back to the van.
Once again, we wished we could have just camped here, but we decided that we liked last night’s campground enough to return for a second night. So we made our way back there, set up and enjoyed another quiet night next to the river, for what would turn out to be our last night in the Appalachians.
