Accessibility – Hard
Height – See table
Distance – 5.0 miles (shuttle)
Beauty – Varies
Photo rating – Varies
Solitude – 8
GPS Info: LAT See table LONG See table
Last Updated – 12-23-2025
Home Alphabetical Listing Numerical Listing Location Listing NC215N
Where to start: Yeah, it’s one of those hikes. There is no trail. We parked a car at the gate where FR97 meets NC215, and we drove the other up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Other than a short walk on the Parkway, and 1.8 miles on FR97 at the end, the rest was dead-reckoning, following the easiest path, be it in the creek or in the woods. The start and end points will be specific, but the rest will be vague. The waterfall names are simply the ones I assigned to differentiate them. I was planning to call them Little Beartrap 4595 Falls, using the drop’s elevation to demark them, but those names are lame.
Where to park: Leave a vehicle at: 35.37331, -82.93828, which is where FR97 meets NC215. We parked the second car on the side of the Parkway at: 35.34381, -82.97203. You can park closer to where we plunged into the woods, not that it matters, but you can save yourself 0.5 miles of easy road walking if you park closer.
The hike: The hike left the Parkway at 35.35096, -82.97402, which was thick and overgrown close to the road, before it opened up on the top of Little Beartrap Ridge. The woods were easy to navigate, and the hike was mostly uphill for the first 0.5 miles from the Parkway. On the backside of the knob, the descent began. My friend had a projected route, but it was way too thick, meaning it was time to improvise. Little Beartrap Branch was off to our right, and we kept it there after finding a tributary, which I described as “Dribbly as fuck,” since it would take an hour to fill a water bottle due to the meager flow.
The lack of water didn’t matter as much as the creekbed was open and easy to follow; better still, it curved to the right, eventually meeting Little Beartrap Creek. The other thing it did as it meandered down to the bigger creek was pick up feeder creeks, giving it a decent amount of flow when we reached the first of two waterfalls on the trib, appropriately dubbed Upper and Lower Dribbly AF Falls. The upper was about 15 feet high, dropping over a vertical ledge onto a step. It was an amazing bonus waterfall, and pointed to a good day. The lower was 16-18 feet tall, flowing down a sloped rock with nice color variations. For a stream that began as a punchline, it delivered two nice waterfalls.
We were about 1.8 miles into our adventure with two waterfalls in the bag, and we hadn’t even gotten to the creek we came to explore! Getting into Little Beartrap Creek seemed like the way to go, but very quickly, we were on river left, beating the bushes. It was 0.2 miles from Dribbly that we reached our next two waterfalls, which were close together, with one of them just upstream of a huge rock that I climbed on to take a picture. The other one flowed out from under the rock, hence my naming convention. Both falls were in the same height range, but we had a bigger problem. Thunder!
And so came the rains, making the next 0.4 miles a slog either in the creek or river left, and in time, we had to swing wide to get around the next drop, which was the best one. It was jammed in a crevice, and there was a large tree lying on it, which had to go. As you can see from my picture, the overhanging tree is no more. The drop was about 20 feet, with a small cascade below, making for a great setting. We kept to the river left from there, occasionally getting in the creek, but the woods were relatively open, so it wasn’t that bad, other than the pouring rain, which kept my Nikon in the bag when we got to the base of the next drop, which stinks because now I have to go back to get a good picture!
| Number | Name | Height | GPS |
| 1062 | Upper Dribbly AF Falls | 15 ft | 35.35615, -82.95802 |
| 1063 | Lower Dribbly AF Falls | 16-18 ft | 35.35611, -82.95776 |
| 1064 | Above the Rock Falls | 16 ft | 35.35676, -82.95563 |
| 1065 | Under the Rock Falls | 12 ft | 35.35682, -82.95549 |
| 1066 | Nice One Falls | 20 ft | 35.35631, -82.95242 |
| 1067 | Three Ledge Falls | 35 ft | 35.35616, -82.95112 |
| 1068 | Cluttered Falls | 12 ft | 35.35632, -82.95035 |
| 1069 | Ledges Falls | 18 ft | 35.35615, -82.94991 |
| 1070 | Big Drop Falls | 60 ft | 35.35616, -82.94893 |
More river left followed once we moved on from Three Ledge Falls, but the ground was getting steeper, and it forced us to get further from the creek to bypass the next bunch of waterfalls. It took a while to get from Three Ledge Falls to the next drop, which was about 15 feet high and cluttered. The rain had let up, but it didn’t warrant a DLSR shot. It was another series of wide swings to the left to get to the base or a decent vantage of the final two new drops, but with the rain coming down, all I could do was snap a few cell phone pics. One day, I’ll hike in when FR97 is open, make my way up to Three Ledge, and take better pictures of these lower drops. For now, these are the best shots I got of the lower 3 drops.
We stopped by Little Beartrap Falls, but I didn’t bother with a picture since I’d taken one a long time ago. From there, we finally reached the trail that would take us to FR97. The 1.8 miles on the road isn’t bad, since it’s all downhill, but I’ll be sure to plan my revisit when the road is open to save the 1.8 miles each way. Not sure how much this helps, but it’s more than we had when we walked into the woods up on the Parkway.