After a couple photos, we continued on NC-107 to near the Georgia state line and parked at a school bus sign. A thin strip of Nantahala National Forest leads from the road to Middle Creek. After passing power lines, we turned right on a short path that led to a view of Upper Middle Creek Falls.
It was very foggy and quite a beautiful scene. The rosebay rhododendron were putting on a show. Little did we know that they would nearly be the death of us before the hike was over.
We scrambled down to the creek level for some pictures as the sun started breaking through the fog, making a really cool scene.
After some pictures, we headed back to the split and turned right to continue down along Middle Creek. The trail was overgrown and hard to follow in places, but at least it was a trail. In a quarter-mile or so, we came to the top of Middle Creek Falls.
There's a huge boulder up at the top and some nice cascades, but no way to get further down.
More rhododendron flowering up here as well.
We backtracked 50 feet or so and continued down to a view point of the main upper drop of the waterfall.
The clouds were cooperating and we could get some nice pictures of this beautiful waterfall.
I scrambled down on the rocks down to creek level for one more shot and then we continued on.
There was essentially no trail further down the creek. We found a slightly open path through the dense rhododendron and slowly started making our way down. It took nearly an hour to get down to the very bottom of Middle Creek Falls. I think there used to be an old logging road around here, but we never found it, just incredibly dense rhododendron. We creek-walked a ways to avoid some of the worst rhododendron and heard what we thought was the waterfall, but it was not.
This small waterfall was just above our target and I actually liked it better. More brutal rhododendron and we finally made it to Dome Falls.
It's an interesting waterfall where the water flows over a big rock dome, which splits the flow.
Most of the water was on the river-left side. There was an island immediately down from the falls, but it was too close to get a picture of the whole thing.
Interesting or not, this was excruciatingly difficult and I would not ever want to return. Now, we just had to make the climb back up, which was just as miserable. After a total of almost 8 hours, we made it back to the car.
From here, we drove to Maggie Valley through a big storm. We checked into Stony Creek Lodge and then went to BearWaters Brewing for dinner. They had excellent food and good beer. After dinner, we went back to the room and checked out the swollen creek from the storms. We took a quick shower and then went to bed after a very long and difficult day.
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