After seeing pictures of the falls at the South Cumberland Visitor Center, Jackie wanted to go and take pictures of Foster Falls. So we had a Saturday off together and went. Foster Falls is a TVA Small Wilderness area. At the parking area there are picnic tables and restrooms. The parking area is also one of the trail heads for the Fiery Gizzard Trail, the other trail head is the Grundy Forest parking area.
Foster Falls Sign
The Foster Falls trail head is to the left of the state sign, pictured above. There is a nice metal and wood walkway built up to take you over a creek and the top of the plateau. The bridge ends at the overlook. THe overlook provides some good, albeit distant, views of the falls. Jackie and myself took several pictures from here. We took Mia with us on this hike.
Foster Falls from the Overlook
The trail to the base of the falls begins at some steps that lead down from the overlook. The trail starts off as a road along some power lines. After going about 30 yards, there was a sign on the right that points down off the plateau. There are steps that help get you down over some rocks. After that, the trail disappears into the rocks. To follow the trail you must look for some flat rocks and white blazes on the trees. The trail isn't that hard to follow, but care must be taken over the rocks. We both stumbled several times.
Once at the bottom of the plateau there is a bridge across the creek. You can either go across or thread your way over rocks along the base of the plateau and over rocks along the base of the overlook to see the falls. We decided to jump the rocks first. I fell once, holding Mia and Jackie's extra lenses for her Cannon camera. We got some good pictures here. We also found a side waterfall that started under the overlook. The falls were beautiful. There had been some rain the week before and the falls were running at full power.
Jackie and I retraced our steps and crossed the bridge. The trail ran to the right and to the left. We went right, but Jackie was later told by a classmate and I found in 40 Hikes in Tennessee's South Cumberland Third Edition book that the trail to the left made a loop back to the parking area. There is a beach a the end of the trail, but the bottom the bottom was filled with rocks. Not good for bare feet swimming. We got some more pictures here. It was a nice spot. We went back to the bridge and took some more pictures. After those pics were done we went back to the car. The climb up was tough, read steep, and the rocks didn't help much. There were a lot of people on the trail that day.
Foster Falls from the end of the trail followed by the Swinging Bridge
Total Miles Hiked: .8
If we had followed the loop it would have been 2 miles
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