GATLINBURG, Tenn: Hikers and backpackers love Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The 522,427-acre park on the North Carolina-Tennessee line features more than 800 miles of trails and 17 peaks that top 6,000 feet.
You can see peaks, mountain views, grassy balds, mountain streams, old-growth forests, historical farms, waterfalls, elk herds and some of the best wildflowers anywhere on the park’s 150 trails.
Only two national parks have more trail miles: Yellowstone and Yosemite.
Great Smoky Mountains is the most-visited national park with 9.4 million people. In 2016, it will celebrate its 100th anniversary with events all year.
The Cherokees called the mountains the land of blue smoke. The settlers called them the Great Smoky Mountains.
The “smoke” comes from evaporation and transpiration. High peaks trap clouds and that produces up to 90 inches of rain per year. The moisture soaks into the thick vegetation, then evaporates, rising in a vapor that looks like smoke.
Many visitors head for Clingman’s Dome, the highest spot in the park at 6,643 feet and the most easily accessible. You can drive to the top. An observation tower offers vistas of the mountain ridges.
Some love Ramsay Cascades, the tallest waterfall at 100 feet. It is an eight-mile round-trip hike. The falls are a steep plunge down a series of ledges in a spectacular setting. The falls produce clouds of mist at high water.
Grotto Falls, a 30-foot beauty, sits off the Trillium Gap Trail. It is a 2.6-mile round-trip hike from the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, a 6-mile drive-it-yourself tour. Rainbow Falls is one of the park’s most-visited, a 5.6-mile round-trip hike to the 80-foot-high cascade.
The park with 2,000 miles of pristine streams has lots of verticality and features resistant Thunderhead Sandstone in many of its waterfalls. Peak flows are typically in March and July.
Many of the falls require hiking. Only a handful can be seen from the roads.
For quiet, head to the northeast corner for remote and rugged Cataloochee Valley. It is off the beaten path but filled with a good dose of history and wildness.
Others love the mysterious grassy mountain balds that offer long-distance vistas that are otherwise hard to come by in the heavily forested park.
There are about 20 balds or treeless knobs and ridges, including eight-acre Andrews Bald near Clingman’s Dome and 14-acre Gregory Bald above Cades Cove with 175 species of plants. Berry pickers love balds in the late summer.
My favorite spot is Cades Cove, a six-mile-long valley flanked by the mountains outside Townsend, Tenn. I have driven it. I have hiked it. I have pedaled it. It just has a charm that never grows old.
Visitors follow a one-way, one-lane road on an 11-mile loop at low speeds past 19 historical sites, plus occasional black bears, white-tailed deer and wild turkeys.
There are log cabins, three churches, a grist mill and farm buildings from the 19th century. It is one of the most complete collections of restored buildings in the Southern Appalachians.
The 6,800-acre valley was called Tsayahi or the place of the river otters by the Cherokees. Cades Cove was settled by pioneers about 1820. About 125 families once lived there.
The valley’s 2,400 acres of meadows and grasslands make it a prime spot to see black bears. Look for them especially in the late summer and early fall, in the early morning and at dusk. Bear traffic jams are common in Cades Cove. The park has about 1,800 black bears or two per square mile. There are more on the Tennessee side; no one knows why.
Be warned that Cades Cove can get overcrowded in the summer and in the fall when leaves are changing. It is the No. 1 spot in the park for tourists, typically 2 million a year.
For hikers and backpackers, Mount LeConte, the third-highest peak, is a very popular destination.
There are five trails to the top of the 6,593-foot peak. It is topped by LeConte Lodge, a collection of rustic wooden cabins that is accessible only by hiking in and it’s booked months in advance. Meals are provided by a concessionaire.
The hikes to the top range from 5 to 8 miles each way on the Alum Cave, Trillium Gap, Bull Head, Boulevard or Rainbow Falls trails.
The Chimney Tops are a popular attraction. The twin spires of quartzite and hard slate rise above the Sugarland Valley. It is a 4-mile round-trip hike.
For wildflowers, Great Smoky Mountains is at its colorful best in April and early May. It’s home to 1,600 species of native flowering plants, more than any other national park in the United States. North of the tropics, only China can match the Southern Appalachians for diversity of flowering plants.
Spring wildflowers attract big crowds just like the multitudes of leaf peepers that arrive in the fall.
From May into July, the park is abloom with flowering bushes: rhododendron, mountain laurel and flame azalea.
The federal park will host its Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage April 19-23 to showcase those flowers and the park’s biodiversity.
The event includes guided walks, hikes, drives, programs and lectures on wildflowers, nature and cultural history. Online registration begins in February at www.springwildflower pilgrimage.org.
There were 146 indoor and outdoor events last year. A 28-page guide shows what’s scheduled. The pilgrimage headquarters is the Mills Conference Center in Gatlinburg.
The fee is $50 for one day, $75 for two or more. For high school and college students with ID, it’s $15 for one or more days. Children under 12 are free accompanied by paying adults.
The park was established in 1934. Congress decreed that no admission would be charged. There are three visitor centers, 300 miles of roads and lots of wild country. Newfound Gap Road (U.S. 441) is the main way north-south across the park. It is a pretty drive, but can be slow.
The southern edges of the park are less crowded than the more-developed northern side, with gateways in Gatlinburg and Townsend.
For park information, call 865-436-1200 or go to www.nps.gov/grsm. For information on the Great Smoky Mountains Association, go to www.smokiesinformation.org or call 888-898-9102.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.