Accessibility – Hard
Height – 30′
Distance – 6.0 miles (lollipop loop)
Beauty – 8
Photo rating – 8
Solitude – 9
GPS Info: LAT 35.57009 LONG -81.79839
Last Update: 12-27-2024
Home Alphabetical Listing Numerical Listing Location Listing South Mountains
Where to park: The parking for the start of this hike is 0.1 of a mile from Bollinger Gap Street, which is the road that intersects US64 at the Energy Fuels Gas Station. The GPS for the parking is: 35.59143, -81.81332. The land along the access road is an easement, and both sides are private property, so the only place to park legally is once you are in the South Mountains Game Lands.
The hike: You better be ready for a long day, for getting wet, and dirty and scraped and beat-up. The total hike we did was 6.0 miles, but it was slow going, technical in places, steep, and great fun. From the parking area, walk around the gap and pick up the logging road into the woods. It’s in decent shape and easy to follow as it climbs slowly while paralleling Silver Creek. Half a mile into the hike, Silver Creek will be on your right, and there is a very nice waterfall that is worth checking out. We bypassed it on the way in, but on the way out, we climbed down the bank to check out Silver Creek Falls. If I had it in me, I would have pulled more of the crap off it, but I moved enough to make it presentable. Check out Silver Creek Falls.
It’s really the only landmark on the early part of the hike and from it, there is only a steady climb over the next mile. At this point, an old road goes to the left, but we’re not going to take it. I had pinned it, and when we were making out way out, and I saw where we were, I realized we could pick up that road. We ended up on it, lost it, and ended up on it again. It made getting out much easier. Since the road is for later, head down the steep hillside toward the bottom of the valley, but don’t go too far to the right. Devil’s Fork comes in from the left, and the waterfall is on the cliff line you can see on the way down. The scramble down the bank is steep, and the climb up to Devil’s Fork Falls is even steeper. The creek is low flow, and there was a lot of downfall.
Retreat down the slope, following the curve of the creek. It wasn’t too bad, and we picked up some pieces of trails along the way. We didn’t stray too far from the creek, following it downstream to the 1500 ft elevation where it joined up with the creek we needed for the rest of our waterfalls. We were 2.5 miles into the day when we started up the unnamed tributary of Devil’s Fork. We were on river right, and stayed for the next 0.25 miles until reaching Lower Resurrection Falls. The drop was nice and the rock had great color, but the narrow area was a collection point for dead hemlocks. From the base of the falls, we had to backtrack and climb up the bank on river right to get around the lower falls. Not even a tenth of a mile further upstream, we came to Resurrection Falls. It is a really amazing waterfall, that I understand now has a huge tree lying on it, although I haven’t seen this for myself.
From the base of Resurrection Falls, continuing upstream requires backtracking and swinging way up the bank to get above it. It was one of the more challenging parts of the hike, and after being forced high up the bank on river right, we remained up there and intersected the creek around a quarter of a mile upstream at Bisection Falls, which was easier to access and much smaller than the waterfalls downstream. It was a nice bonus, and it was beyond the scope of what we had planned to check out. Our intent had been Devil’s Fork and Resurrection Falls, but we had time and elected to keep heading higher up.
We had come this far, and none of us relished backtracking so we decided to press onward and keep following the creek. Now that we were into more open land and it wasn’t as steep, using the creek as a guide wasn’t a bad idea. A quarter of a mile later, we encountered yet another waterfall that we hadn’t expected. It was a taller one, with lots of ledges and lots of stuff on it, but for something we didn’t expect, it wasn’t bad. Insurrection Falls is at the 1920 ft elevation and getting to it and around it wasn’t an issue. We came in on river right and left on that same side when we resumed heading up the creek. The ground began to flatten out and the water was getting lower, and with nothing on the next stretch of creek, we decided to start making out way back.
By this time, we were at the 2000 ft elevation level and there was no way I wanted to go back downstream to knowing we would have to climb back up again. There was a wide ridge on river right, and with the woods open, we headed higher and intersected a logging road a tenth of a mile later. The road went left and right, but seeing the way it curved around led us to believe it was the road we had seen before the bushwhacking began. We made the left, and it didn’t take long before the gently sweeping righthand turn had us heading in the right direction. The road vanished at one point, and then reappeared, which became a common theme. A couple of times, we had to work around washed out areas and downfall, and this became more of a problem as we neared Devil’s Fork.
We had to make one huge detour where the creek had washed out the road in the decades it hadn’t been maintained, and when we reached the creek, the sound of falling water drew me up the embankment to check it out. Satan’s Spoon Falls didn’t have a ton of water on it, but the detour barely amounted to a few minutes. Once we cleared the Devil’s Fork drainage, the road was in much better shape, and 0.3 of a mile later we were back at the intersection with only the road walk along Silver Creek remaining. My plan is still to head back this way in 2025 when everything is green, but I’m not sure what I’m going to find.