Big Creek hiking trail: best fall colors for November

The Smoky Mountains are one of the best places to go hiking and what could be better than hiking and seeing the best fall colors? Right now the Big Creek Hiking Trail is one of the last hiking trails to have great fall colors.

The Big Creek Hiking trail in the Great Smoky Mountains national park is very popular year round especially in the summer. Big Creek is less than an hour away from Pigeon Forge and even closer to Gatlinburg Tennessee and it offers regular and horse camping, a pretty picnic area near a river with beautiful water worn huge boulders.

The most popular hiking trail in Big Creek is the Big Creek Trail which is a very wide trail that was originally a railroad bed and logging road so it is although it climbs continuously in elevation the deeper you go in, the elevation gain is very gradual and the trail is very easy.

The fall colors start very early on the trail and can be seen on both the left hand side of the trail in the valley alongside the river that the trail follows and up the mountainside on the right among the huge boulder and rock faced cliffs.

Here you will find along the trail and up the mountainside there are tall trees that have bright yellows, gold and various shades of reds and still come purple wild flower in the aster family and ground cover and low under story plants in various fall colors.

Once you have gone in about a mile and a half the fall colors do decrease but they or more golden and the hiking trail is ankle deep in colorful fall leaves. Even though there is less colors there is still good reason to keep hiking on this trail even if you don't want to hike the full 5 miles in.

The first stop off to make on the Big Creek hiking trail is the Midnight Hole swimming pool by the Midnight Hole waterfall. 2 years of drought have lowered the water levels of the rivers and creeks in the Smokies and Midnight Hole is no exception.

In the summer midnight hole is filled with people swimming, floating on the water or diving off the large boulders across the stream. Even in the summer the water is very cool and now in the fall no one would dare swim here in the fall.

Since there are no swimmers here, this is a great spot to sit on one of the rocks and watch the colorful fall leaves floating in the water. There are a few colorful trees here but midnight hole is mostly surrounded by evergreens who keep their deep green leaves year round.

Just slightly after the 2 mile mark on the left hand side you will see a well worn path around some trees and rhododendrons and here you will look out over the river and across from you is Mouse Creek Falls one of the prettiest waterfalls in the entire Great Smoky Mountains national park.

Mouse Creek Falls is surrounded by evergreens so year round it looks very similar. Of course in winter there are touches of snow and ice sometimes and in the spring there are a few wildflowers blooming near by, but most flowers are closer to the trail.

Mouse Creek is a tributary of Big Creek and is usually never dry. The waterfalls have an upper and a lower falls with a total drop of more than 50 feet before it reaches Big Creek below.

The next stop you are going to make will not be for the fall colors which are still showing yellows and golds at this point on the trail.

This is something very special that you will near hear about or read in any of the guides for the Smoky Mountains. There is a huge rock on the right hand side of the trail further up the trail pictured here that acts like a giant amplifier.

If you stand by this rock you will hear how amplified the sound of Big Creek is. Try having one of your friend make noise further away and if you find the sweet spot you will hear it amplified here.

I don't know if this rock broke naturally as many of the boulders along this trail have or if this one of the boulders blasted with dynamite by the railroad or the Civilian Conservation Corp when they built this trail.

It worth going up the few more tenths of a mile past what I call Listen Rock to the big bridge that crosses Big Creek to at least take a picture.

On the right there is still fall color here now with some bright splashes of red. At this point in the trail there are far fewer leaves in the trees and even the ground cover has lost most of its color.

This is still a fantastic trail to hike further up on (keep your eyes open for the bricks in the trail) but if you have come to see the best fall colors on a hiking trail in the Smoky Mountains you have already seen them.

Big Creek: Great Smoky Mountains National Park