78 Big Creek

This may be the perfect hike for inexperienced or first-time backpackers, as well as for day hikers. It’s an easy creek-side walk, but long enough to make you feel as though you’ve done something. It provides wonderful scenery and the campsite is among the finest in the park. But just because the walk to the campsite is easy doesn’t mean this hike is for weenies. Several options make it as demanding as you want it to be.

(See map for Hike 77: Mount Sterling.)

Start: Big Creek Picnic Area

Distance: 10.6 miles out and back

Hiking time: About 5 hours—day hike or overnighter, with options for extended trips

Difficulty: Easy

Trail surface: Old forest road

Best season: Early spring for the wildflowers

Other trail users: Equestrians

Maps: Waterville, Cove Creek Gap, and Luftee Knob USGS quads; Trails Illustrated #229 Great Smoky Mountains; Trails Illustrated #317 Clingmans Dome Cataloochee

Special considerations: If planning to camp at Campsite 37, make reservations as early as possible. This is one of the most popular rationed sites in the park.

Other: Parking space is rarely a problem except on weekends during summer and Oct. A restroom building is located at the parking area, but it is closed in winter. Portable toilets are available when the restrooms are closed.

Finding the trailhead: Take the Waterville exit (exit 457) off I-40 and cross Pigeon River. Stay to the left after the crossing and follow the road 2.0 miles to an intersection, passing the Walters Power Plant on the way. The intersection marks the community of Mount Sterling. Go straight, and enter the Big Creek section of the park. Follow the road 0.8 mile to where it ends at the picnic area and campground entrance. Big Creek Trail begins to the right, just before the parking area. GPS: N35 45.073' / W83 06.605'

The Hike

Begin by walking back up the road a few feet and turning left at the gate and trailhead sign. The hike is on an old motor road built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s. It’s wide, well graded, and never steep. Much of it follows the old logging railroad grade. Logging occurred in nearly all of the Big Creek watershed prior to park establishment.

After about 1.0 mile on Big Creek Trail, look to the right to see Rock House, a towering rock cliff a few hundred feet off the trail. Supposedly, the rock overhang served as temporary shelter for loggers and settlers. Less than half a mile beyond Rock House is Midnight Hole on Big Creek. The entire flow of the creek squeezes through a narrow chute and drops 6 feet into a deep, dark-as-midnight pool.

Mouse Creek Falls drops directly into Big Creek.

At 2.0 miles you come to Mouse Creek Falls on the left, indicated by a horse-hitching rack. The 35-foot cascade drops directly into Big Creek, creating a grand scene for hikers and photographers. Shortly beyond the falls, you cross Big Creek on a bridge and keep steady company with the creek for the remainder of the hike.

About 0.75 mile beyond Mouse Creek Falls, you pass a well-known landmark on the left side of the road. Back during the logging days, a logging train engineer placed a brake shoe on the dripping bank to collect the water, similar to the function of pipes you see at many backcountry campsite springs. Brakeshoe Spring, as it became known, was a regular stopping point for loggers and then hikers for more than fifty years until some bonehead stole the shoe in the early 1970s.

From Brakeshoe Spring, you have an enjoyable creek-side walk of 2.5 miles to Walnut Bottoms at Campsite 37. The campsite is one of the best in the park, with secluded tent sites beside Big Creek. If the creek-side sites are taken, you can camp on the other side of the trail under a stand of buckeyes.

Campsite 37 marks the end of the hike if doing it as a day trip. Backtrack from here.

Miles and Directions

0.0Start on Big Creek Trail on the west side of the road, just before the parking area.

2.0Mouse Creek Falls.

5.1Junction with Swallow Fork Trail on the left. Continue on the old road.

5.3Arrive at Campsite 37. Return the way you came.

10.6Arrive back at the parking area.

Options: Many people hike to Walnut Bottoms as a day hike, and many others camp at site 37, but few take full advantage of the opportunities available. A great plan is to hike to Walnut Bottoms and camp for two nights. On the second day take a day hike to a scenic cascade. You continue on Big Creek Trail about 0.5 mile to Camel Gap Trail at Campsite 36 (horse campers only). On Camel Gap Trail you go about 0.6 mile and turn left onto Gunter Fork Trail, making a crossing of Big Creek (dangerous or impassable in high water). At about 1.5 miles on Gunter Fork Trail, you pass a pretty cascade on the right. At 1.8 miles you reach a long, sliding cascade known as Gunter Fork Falls. Backtrack to Walnut Bottoms from here for a day hike of about 5.8 miles.

A more ambitious plan is to make a day-hike loop that takes you over Cosby Knob on the Appalachian Trail (AT). For this hike, you climb Low Gap Trail from Campsite 37 to the AT in 2.5 miles. Turn left onto the AT and hike about 2.4 miles to Camel Gap, skirting the summit of Cosby Knob along the way. At Camel Gap turn left onto Camel Gap Trail and follow it 4.7 miles down to Big Creek Trail, 0.5 mile above your campsite. Total round-trip for the hike is 10.1 miles, making for a good workout, considering the grade. (The map for Hike 80 shows the trails for these options.)

Another option is to use Campsite 37 as only the first night’s stay on a longer backpacking trip. Hike 79 outlines that option.

CCC Boys

It’s safe to say that had the Great Depression not hit, Great Smoky Mountains National Park would not have much of the infrastructure that it does today. As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal economic program, the Civilian Conservation Corps set up twenty-two camps in the newly formed park. Some 4,000 young men worked in these camps between 1933 and 1942, building roads and trails, constructing visitor centers, picnic areas, and campgrounds, and reclaiming logged forests. The CCC’s Big Creek Camp, built on the site of a former logging camp, stood at the current location of the Big Creek Horse Camp, beside the Big Creek Picnic Area. Workers from this camp constructed miles of hiking trails, built several bridges over Big Creek, and constructed the fire towers atop Mount Sterling and Mount Cammerer. It’s impossible to hike in the area without seeing the hard work of the Big Creek CCC camp crew. In fact, it’s impossible to visit most anywhere in the park without encountering the work conducted by the CCC boys from one of the Smokies’ camps.