Trailhead
Grotto Falls
Grotto Falls - Trillium Gap Trail
I hiked a portion of the Trillium Gap Trail to the Grotto Falls. This hike is a 2.6 mile out and back hike. I reached the trailhead by driving on the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, which is a one way five mile route that leads to a number of trail heads and beautiful views.
From Hwy 441 in downtown Gatlinburg, turn at stoplight #8 onto Historic Nature Trail-Airport Road. At the intersection, continue straight on to the right. This is a very confusing intersection, but you will want to go straight along the rightmost road. You will pass the Bud Ogle place on the right, and should see a sign that will direct you to the narrow one lane nature trail that eventually leads to the trailhead.
I went during the morning on a Friday, and the parking area was filling up fast. When I left, there were even more cars and trucks that had to park off to the side of the road. I would recommend hiking this trail to the falls early.
The Trillium Gap Trail runs for 6.5 miles, and you can reach the lodge on Mt. LeConte. I did not have time to hike the rest of the trail to Mt. LeConte, and I turned back after taking a lot of photos of the falls.
There is a Llama train that re-supplies the Mt. LeConte Lodge. There was a mention of this in Kevin Adams' book, so I was not completely freaked out when a saw a long stretch of odd looking animal dung in the middle of the trail. I had already "Googled" bear dung, and saw enough photos to know that I had not come upon evidence of a black bear. I was not sure of the Llama train schedule, but from the looks of the dung, the Llama train must have come through recently. Kevin mentions that you might want to reconsider trying to filter any water from the stream near the trail. I wish I would have caught a glimpse of the Llama train. The book has a neat picture of the Llama train passing behind Grotto Falls.
Unfortunately, my camera's memory card got corrupted, and I lost a number of photos and movie clips that I took. This is the second memory card that I have had from the Micro Center that has done this to me. I was able to recover a lot of the photos using a program called CardRecovery. I tried BadCopyPro, which only recovered one photo. I guess when I buy cheap memory cards, I get what I paid for. I'll stick to the name brand ones from now on.
The trail climbs toward the falls, and is an easier trip back down. There is really not much of an elevation gain toward the Falls. It might be 200 ft. or so. Had I had time to hike up to Mt. LeConte Lodge, the elevation gain would have been over 3000 feet.
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