Porters Creek
A gentle 4-mile round trip up Porters Creek in the quiet Greenbrier valley, past old farmstead ruins to 60-foot Fern Branch Falls, with the park's best spring wildflower show along the way.
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- Length
- 4 mi
- Elevation gain
- 700 ft
- Difficulty
- moderate
- Route
- out-and-back
Trail conditions
No recent condition reports. Hiked it lately?
Report current conditions →Elevation
1.8 mi · 707 ft of climbing · high 2,554 ft · low 1,885 ft
Find the trailhead
Parking
Small gravel lot at the end of the Greenbrier entrance road, reached by a slow one-lane gravel drive; a park-wide parking tag is required.
Directions to parkingWeather at the trailhead
75°FOvercast now
Sunrise 6:17 AM · Sunset 8:49 PM
- TodayOvercast86° / 71°F28% precip
- SatOvercast85° / 69°F23% precip
- SunDrizzle85° / 67°F84% precip
Forecast from Open-Meteo. Mountain conditions change fast; check again before you go.
Porters Creek is the Smokies' classic spring wildflower walk: from late March into April the slopes above the creek are carpeted with white fringed phacelia, trillium, hepatica, and bishop's cap, and the trail stays worthwhile the rest of the year for its rushing creek and its history. The first mile follows an old gravel roadbed past rock walls, the Ownby Cemetery, and a junction with the side loop to the preserved Messer barn and Smoky Mountain Hiking Club cabin; beyond the road's end the path narrows, crosses Porters Creek on a long, high footlog that can be intimidating when wet, and climbs gently through old-growth hardwoods to Fern Branch Falls, a 60-foot veil sliding down a mossy face just off the trail. The trail continues past the falls to backcountry campsite 31, but the falls make the natural turnaround. The Greenbrier road is gravel and washboarded, the lot at the trailhead is small, and the footlog crossing is the one real hazard — skip it in high water.