854 – Renzulli Falls (Bracken Preserve)

Accessibility – Easy

Height – 10′

Distance – 3.0 (out and back)

Beauty – 3

Photo rating – 4

Solitude – 2

GPS Info: LAT 35.24743 LONG -82.67435

Last Updated – 01-12-2023

Last Visited – 11-26-2021

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854 – Renzulli Falls is a small waterfall in Bracken Preserve. If not for the monument in front of it on the trail, I would not have looked twice. I suppose Bracken Preserve wanted to have a waterfall on the ammenities list. To me it isn’t one, but since it is so named, and I happened to walk past, here it is.

If you’ve come to Bracken Preserve solely for this waterfall, you’ve wasted an opportunity to enjoy a wonderful place to hike that is minutes form downtown Brevard. As I said, I happened upon this “waterfall” during my circuit of the preserve. I tell you the way I went, and you can decide what you want to do.

The parking was problematic on my visit, and I don’t know if it’s been improved. There is a gravel parking area at the end of Pinnacle Road, which is close to the Brevard Music Center. I parked here 35.24083, -82.75597. The hike starts past the kiosk on the Bracken Mountain Trail. If you do the loop that I did, the first part is going to climb steadily. At 0.7 of a mile, the trail will come to a fork at a monument. I went left to hike the loop, but if you are chomping at the bit to see Rezulli Falls, you can make a right and 0.8 of a mile you will be there. The waterfall is on Brushy Creek, If you’re here to enjoy the hiking, make a left to stay on the Bracken Mountail Trail. The route is well marked, and it spend some of the time on a roadbed, and the rest on a trail. If you stayed with the Bracken Mountain Trail and didn’t cut any of the segments out by taking different trails, at 3.5 miles you will come to an intersection with 475C (which you have been hiking on splits off of the way you want to go to finish the loop. You could do a shuttle hike from Bracken to the Fish Hatchery on FR475. This is also a junction with a connector trail to hit the summit of Cedar Rock Mountain.

The pink blazed trail up here isn’t as nicely maintained, and it is this trail that takes you to the summit of Burl Mountain. I have no idea why the Bracken Mountain Trail doesn’t go to the summit of Bracken Mountain. The summit trail heads down the other side and runs you to a junction with the Brushy Creek Trail and the Mackey Ridge Trail. Take the left onto the Brushy Creek Trail. From that split it is 1.8 miles to Renzulli Falls and another 1.5 to the car. My hike map and the “waterfall.” My loop was about 8.5 miles

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