There’s one thing you have to ask yourself when you visit the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area: What can I not do while I’m here?
Big South Fork supplies almost everything the outdoors can offer. You can day hike, backpack, kayak, canoe, raft, climb, mountain bike, horseback ride, four-wheel, hunt and fish.
Knowing just as much about the park than as I do about brain surgery, I decided to go backpacking for the weekend with seven people from school.
We began hiking on the John Litten Farm Loop trail on Friday at about 7 p.m., just as it was turning dark. I had never night hiked before, and the weather was perfect. It was a clear night, so the half-moon lit the trees in a mellow, silver glow.
We only had a mile or so before we reached our campsite at Fall Branch Falls. It was a small site, barely fitting our four tents, and it was situated right next to Fall Branch Creek and the waterfall.
We quickly set up camp and hurried to make a hot dinner to ward off the cold. The temperature was what I classify as “Pretty Freakin’ Cold,” (otherwise known as mid 20s). We made a nice mixture called “Tuna Delight,” and a unique blend of teriyaki lo mein and jalape_o cheese Lipton noodles.
After dinner we gathered around the fire, exchanging Zen-like quips. Dave, our trip leader, took on a sensei quality with, “But Grasshopper, if the stick is broken, is it not then two sticks?”
This led to an early night. Saturday morning we hiked for a couple miles, passing some awesome caves and rock formations. We crossed on to the Fall Branch Falls trail, where it became time to play “Dodge the Pine Tree.” Big South Fork’s pine trees have been attacked by the Southern Pine Beetles, causing trees to be down everywhere across the trail. This tree-hopping led to me pondering the allegory between the hurdles I was going over and the hurdles I’m trying to jump in my life. And then I realized I’m not ever going to be another Robert Frost.
Since almost all the pine trees were bare, we had beautiful views of the plateau we were headed for. In fact, one sign warned us of “High clifts ahead.” (I looked up “clift” in Webster’s, and there is no such word.)
We crossed on to Grand Gap Loop, and then got to our campsite pretty quickly. So after setting up camp, we day hiked until it started to go dark. The plateau offers three or four beautiful views of the blue-green Big South Fork of the Cumberland River far, far below. The most popular overlook is Angel Falls, one of the class four rapids on the river.
After sitting on the overlook for a while, four of us decided to hike down to the river so we could have a better look at the water. We took the Leatherwood Ford trail to the bottom, and passed through some beautiful rock shelters along the way.
Big South Fork is known for its rock formations, rock shelters and caves. Once we got down to the riverside, we rock-hopped along the bank and stretched out on one of the huge boulders that line the river.
Dinner consisted of a fulfilling meal of black bean, rice and chicken burritos with salsa and cheese. After eating this, my roommate and I were excited at the thought of going home to a cabinet full of ramen noodles. After dark, we headed back out to Angel Falls Overlook and checked out the moonlit view. It was starting to cloud over, but you could see the reflection of the sky in the silver river below. When the snow started falling, we decided it was time to head back to camp.
Sometime during the night, the skies opened and the rain began to fall. And fall. And fall. The rain stopped long enough to eat breakfast, but started again when we started hiking, and didn’t stop for the entire six-point-something miles we went. To add to the wetness, when we were about half a mile away from the van, the wind started blowing icy rain.
As terrible as the weather was, this hike is great, especially for beginner backpackers like me. It has a fairly low gradient, without any huge uphill hikes. The only downfall is there is no water on the plateau, so if you’re doing an overnight, you have to carry extra water.
But the views are definitely worth it.

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