South Harper Creek Falls - cliff view

5-17-08  South Harper Creek Falls is about 3 miles up creek from Harper Creek Falls. You can go to my Harper Creek Falls page, start there and continue up the trail to the base of South Harper Creek Falls. The trail crosses the creek several times and you'll probably have to get your feet wet more than once, but it's a fairly easy to moderate trail totaling about 5 miles one way. The shorter hike is to come in via the trail head on FR58 which reduces the hike to around 2 miles one way.

Directions: From MP 311.3 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, turn south on SR1518 (Jonas Ridge Rd) and drive 1.7 miles to a church on the left. This section of SR1518 has recently been paved. Turn left (more like straight) on the gravel FR464 and drive 2.5 miles to FR58 at some primitive car camping sites. Turn right on FR58 and drive just over 4 miles to the parking area on the right. The Harper Creek Trail #260 starts right across the road.

Follow this trail for just over a mile to a clearing on the right. The trail is hugging a private property boundary at this point. Stay to the left and in less than 15 minutes come to an intersection. Stay to the left here also and in an other short distance come to another junction. If you want to explore the waterfall, go left which is a continuation of the Harper Creek Trail which will eventually take you to Harper Creek Falls. Go right to get to the cliff view. In a short distance the trail crosses Harper Creek and you may have to get your feet wet - be prepared! Once across, look for a fainter side trail up the creek a short distance to this smaller cascade.

Come back to the trail and follow it up the mountain staying right at the first 2 forks - watch for the blazes. When the trail meets an obvious gully at just under 1/2 mile from the creek crossing, take the gully down a very few minutes to the viewing spot. Looking back up at the 1st picture you can see the waterfall is in 2 sections. It's steep but as you can see in the next shot, a person can safely get out on a section of rock at the middle of the 2 sections. Don't go out here if the rock is wet.

Back at the previous point in the trail before you crossed the creek, if you continue down the Harper Creek Trail for a short distance you'll see where you can get out on the rock at the top of the falls - if it's dry! The view is up towards the cliff view across the gorge.

Make your own determination as to how far down the rock you can safely go. Keep small children away from this area - people have died here. Go back out to the trail and continue down to the obvious place where that guy got out on the rock. It's mostly safe on a dry day. Just stay away from the edge! To get to the base, go back out to the trail and continue down. The trail and the creek bend to the left. There's no trail to the base, so you'll have to look for the best place to scramble down to the creek. Then you'll have to rock hop and/or wade back up to the base.

back to Wilson Creek page