Ramsey Cascades

After breaking camp, we headed to the Greenbrier area of Great Smoky Mountains National Park for one last waterfall before heading home. The road in is initially paved then turns to another scary gravel road for about 5 miles to the trailhead. The road includes a couple of narrow, one-lane bridges that made me a bit nervous, but we made it to the parking lot at the end. Starting out on the trail, a bridge crosses the river and the trail follows an old road bed for about a mile and a half. Although the trail has steady elevation gain, it is pretty easy at this point.

At 1.5 miles, there is a "traffic circle" and the Ramsey Cascade Trail now becomes more narrow and steeper. The trail follows the Ramsey Prong of Little Pigeon River closely for the most of the way up.

There are numerous cascades as the river flows next to the trail and so plenty of opportunities to stop for pictures. This part of the trail also goes through the largest old-growth forest left in the park with some enormous trees.

Towards the end, the trail becomes very steep going up stairs of big rocks.

Despite the steepness, the temperature dropped a bit at this elevation and the going was actually more comfortable than before.

Finally, we made it to the top.

Despite the rather challenging 4-mile hike to the waterfall, there were quite a few other people here. We took some photos and walked around in the waterfall basin. It was shallow, but slippery.

And the water was very cold, but I took off my boots and socks and walked around in the pool a bit. Then we headed back down, much more quickly going down. Almost immediately after getting back to the car, it started raining - great timing, since some parts of the trail would have been treacherous in the rain. And then time to head home after another great weekend.