I’ve been to the Smoky Mountains many times and I’ve seen quite a bit of the park and trails but until this hike I hadn’t visited Ramsey Cascades. Well I finally made it a point to hike there and see if it was worth the 8 mile round trip.
It was definitely worth it and I’m sure I’ll do this same hike again with other friends at some point. The trail is fairly typical as far as a lot of the Smoky’s trails in that the first part of the trail is wide and gravely but gradually it narrows to single track with the usual roots and rocks. There were a fair number of roots in the trail in some areas that if wet could be a little dicey but I’ve seen much worse. The rocks in the trail aren’t bad either with a few sections being a little more extreme. There were a few bridges as per normal Smoky mountain trails and it just wouldn’t be the same without them. They must have sent a trail crew up this trail recently as well because there were a lot of freshly cut vegetation and the trail had no overhanging vegetation at all. Pretty incredible hike!
Overall, it was a great trail and the waterfall is absolutely beautiful. Hold up, let me correct myself! It’s actually a cascade so that means that it’s slightly different than an actual waterfall. By definition, the difference is that in a waterfall water only moves downward where as in a cascade water moves not only downward but also forward. I’ve seen my share of waterfalls on different hikes and this one was not only tall but also wide. I highly recommend checking it out.
Normally, I would opt for a longer mileage hike because an 8 mile day hike is not a large amount to tackle in a day. However, in this case it worked out great because I rarely do any fishing or actual creek wading when I go to the Smoky’s because usually it’s cold and I’m heading up the mountain. This time I decided to do things a little different. For one thing, I rarely get to fish in the Smoky’s and for two I have wanted to visit Ramsey Cascades for a long time. So, that’s exactly what we did this time – we hiked the 8 mile round trip to Ramsey Cascades and then when we got to the bottom I was able to wade and fish! I didn’t bring my fly rod though so it as a little sketchy trying to use an ultralight spinning rod. I wasn’t extremely confident that I would catch a whole lot but I figured I could scout a little and see if I could learn a few things. It didn’t matter either way because it was a great time just wading and fishing.
I do intend to go back and fish the creek a little lower with a fly rod because there is quite a bit of room to cast. Where we were fishing there wasn’t a lot of room to get long casts due to the trees. Now I’ve fished that same kind of situation with a fly rod before but it ended up being more flipping then casting. I’m barely a novice fly fisherman so it was perfectly okay and I still had fun.
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Cincinnati
still don’t understand why its called fungi. it sounds like fun guy.
Bahahahahaha!