Andrew Marshall hiked this route in 2020
The Great Smoky Mountains 127-mile loop is a challenging route in the popular Great Smoky Mountains National Park that can be completed in 8-10 days.
Region: Middle South / Deep South (Great Smoky Mountains National Park)
Length: 127 miles (10-15 days)
Physical Difficulty: Difficult
- Steep terrain
- Daily drastic elevation change combined with lots of rainfall
- Roots/rocks/mud/frequent stream crossings
Logistical Difficulty: Moderate
- Permits required
- Loop trail
- No opportunity for food caching or resupply
Season: Spring, Summer, Fall
Elevation (average): 3,954
Total Elevation Gain: 34,725
Days to Complete
Hiking the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-Mile Loop
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-mile loop is a moderately ambitious route made of seven or eight different trails through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s not a formal route. Rather, it is a sample route we designed to showcase a variety of Smokies terrain and elevations while being completed in 8-10 days. We encourage you to view this loop as a jumping-off point in designing your own route through the Smokies. Or, you know, just hike ours! We’d be flattered (and we think it’s fun).
Hikers unfamiliar with the Southern Appalachians might find this route surprisingly challenging despite its relatively low elevation. Steep ascents and descents (and almost no switchbacks) challenge the knees, while large amounts of rainfall, high humidity, and lots of stream crossings keep you and your gear wet almost continuously. Hiking east from the car, you’ll hug Fontana Lake for a few days before swinging northeast into the mountains proper, and from there you’ll ascend and descend over the central spine of the park several times before taking the Appalachian Trail back down to the trailhead.
Higher elevations in the Southern Appalachians (such as Clingmans Dome, which you’ll hike over on day five of this itinerary) are technically temperate rainforests. In short, you can count on getting rained on, no matter what time of year you do this hike.
Another thing to keep in mind when hiking this route is that views are few and far between—and likely to be obscured by clouds and mist even when you find them. It’s best to focus on the small gems of this landscape. Time-lapse photographers will love the gushing streams, deeply shaded hollows, and dripping moss. The Southern Appalachians have the most varieties of salamanders of any ecosystem in the world, and you are sure to see a few on your hike. In the spring, the mountain laurel and rhododendron burst into bloom, while smaller, less-ostentatious (but no less beautiful) wildflowers decorate the trailside in the summer and early fall.
A final small pleasure is the variety of bridges that cross the various larger streams. These bridges range from old trail trestles to single logs to everything in between. And as you might expect from an area with such rainfall, you’ll be fording a lot.
How to Get to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-Mile Loop
Closest Major City: Knoxville, Tennessee (55 miles)
We designed this loop to be accessed from the southern end of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Bryson City and Fontana Dam.
Lakeshore Trailhead West (where you’ll begin and end your hike) is only 90 minutes southeast of downtown Knoxville. Asheville, North Carolina, is about twice as far away (101 miles), while Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (just south of Atlanta) is a 2.5-hour drive (185 miles).
Parking is somewhat limited at Lakeshore Trailhead West, especially if you arrive at the trailhead in the afternoon when day hikers are accessing the trails. Best to get here first thing to make sure parking isn’t complicated. This parking area is monitored daily by rangers. Don’t leave any food in your car to tempt the bears, and you should be fine.
When approaching the trailhead, your best chance for a variety of food and beverage before embarking is definitely Bryson City, North Carolina, although the Wildwood Grill in the Fontana Village Resort and Marina serves a mean burger and an inexpensive glass of beer. The restaurant is open to the public, even if you don’t have a room at the resort.
When to Hike the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-Mile Loop
Fall is a lovely time to hike in the Smokies, especially if you are a leaf peeper. The deciduous forests of the lower elevations display a variety of golds, ambers, and scarlets difficult to find elsewhere in the South. Fall also happens to be the season of lowest precipitation in the Smokies. Every other time of year, including the late spring (our other recommended hiking window), you can count on 10 to 15 days of precipitation a month, meaning you’ll get rained on about once every 48 hours or so (or more).
You can count on almost six inches of rain in July, with similar numbers in the surrounding months, especially looking backward into the spring and winter. That’s quite a lot of moisture, considering that the average annual precipitation in the US in 2017 was 32.21 inches.
We certainly aren’t saying you can’t hike this loop in the summer. But just know what you’ll be getting into: heavier crowds (this is a national park, after all), muggy, chafing-inducing air quality, frequent thunderstorms, and (probably) a near-constant drizzle.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park Terrain
This loop traverses a well-traveled and popular national park, even if most of those visitors never get out of their cars. The upshot is a well-maintained trail system that is remarkably free of crowds, especially once you get deep into the park and away from tourist attractions like the Clingmans Dome overlook and gift shop. The park rangers do a great job of keeping the worst blowdowns sawed away and overhanging bushes and rhododendron from overtaking the trail, but with over 800 miles of trails in the park, they’ve got their work cut out for them. Expect to push past some nettles and branches, and navigating over, under, or around large blowdowns is not uncommon.
When it rains (which, as we’ve said, it most absolutely will) much of the trail will be indistinguishable from creek beds. Rocks, logs, and roots are plentiful and slippery. The many bridges in the park are also extremely slippery. Use particular caution when fording creeks, especially during the spring and early summer.
Some of the trails in this loop have a steep grade, yet another reason to use caution when walking in the rain or just after a rain.
Logistics: Camping, Resupply, Permits, Water, Bear Cables, Land Designation
Camping: Camping along this loop (and in every part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park) is only permitted at established sites. See our permit section below for more info on reserving a camping site. We spaced the campsites on the route according to our own pace and desires. Feel free to do the same, or deviate from our route as needed depending on your hiking style.
When camping at a campsite with shelters (similar to what you’d find on the Appalachian Trail), you must stay in the shelter. Our loop avoids shelter campsites, but if you modify it you may end up staying at some. Each campsite has a max number of campers allowed, capped during the permitting process.
Resupply: We completed this route without resupply, though it did make for fairly heavy packs in the first few days. On this route, there are no areas to cache food or buy a meaningful supply of dinners or breakfasts. There is a small gift shop half a mile of road walking down from where the route crosses over Clingmans Dome. They might have some candy bars for sale, depending on how COVID-19 affects their hours of operation. When the route crosses through the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont (an educational facility that runs residential programs for school-aged children) a sharp-eyed hiker might spot some vending machines that are open to the public. Come prepared with dollar bills, because these machines don’t take soggy tens or twenties. Trust us, we tried.
Permits: In order to backcountry camp in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you’ll need both a reservation and a permit for each campsite. The system is calendar-based and fairly easy to navigate—we had no problem figuring it out, though you’ll want to have identified your desired campsites prior to beginning your reservation using this map. If you run into trouble, call the backcountry office at 865-436-1297. We found them to be friendly and responsive as we were planning our route.
Backcountry reservation fees will cost you $4 per person, per night, and cap at $20 per person. You can make reservations up to 30 days in advance, or as late as the day your hike begins (though this could severely limit your options). You can only book seven nights at a time; after that, you must check out, pay, and begin a new reservation. You can stay up to 30 nights in the park. You can’t stay at any one campsite for more than three nights, and you can’t stay at any shelter for more than one night. When you are ready to book your sites and obtain your permit, click here.
Water: Water is extraordinarily plentiful along this route, with the exception of the few times the route follows the Appalachian Trail. Because the AT mostly sticks to the ridge leading up to and away from Clingmans Dome, water sources are more sparse in this section. Still, we comfortably completed this route with only two liters of water storage capacity.
As always, we recommend treating your water via chemicals, UV light, or filtration. That goes double for the water in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which is hemmed by densely populated areas and sees a lot of yearly visitors. Water in the park is cold, so keep that in mind if you are using something like Aquamira to treat your water (cold water needs to be treated for longer).
Something else to note about water: Great Smoky Mountains National Park forbids the use of camp soaps to wash dishes—even the biodegradable kind (and this restriction also includes castile soaps like Dr. Bronner’s). This is a small price to pay for protecting the salamanders.
Bear Cables: Every campsite along our route has functional bear cables. The black bear population in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is dense, and you can certainly expect to have a negative bear encounter if you don’t store your food and other smellables properly at night. This system is great news for those who hate carrying bear canisters (and, really, don’t we all?). Click here to see proper use of Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s bear hanging system.
Land Designation Our route is entirely enveloped by Great Smoky Mountains National Park. National parks have some of the strongest protections of any land designation. Note that dogs, drones, and mountain bikes are all prohibited inside the park. Find out more here.
Know Before You Go
Moisture and Humidity: We’ve talked at length about the rainfall you’ll likely encounter on this route. It’s also worth noting that dense vegetation and constant moisture make for a very humid environment. Don’t expect wet socks to dry out, even if you put them on the back of your pack for a day. Once your gear is wet, chances are it will stay that way, more or less. For this reason, we recommend using synthetic insulation bags and outwear on this loop. We’re also fans of non-waterproof, highly drainable trail runners instead of heavier Gore-Tex “waterproof” footwear on this route.
Hypothermia: In the spring and fall (and occasionally during the summer) it won’t be unusual to encounter constant rain paired with temperatures in the 40s and 50s. This is classic hypothermia weather, so use caution, and bring well-tested rain gear. We also recommend bringing along a separate tarp for this trip so that you have room to stage your gear, cook, and lounge outside your tent when it is raining.
Because of the hypothermia danger, we recommend bringing a classic canister stove that can heat liquids quickly and reliably (and that can function in the rain). This is no place for an ultralight wood-fired stove.
Wildlife: You are likely to see bear sign (footprints, scat) on the trails, and don’t be surprised if you catch a glimpse of a black bear staring at you through the dense understory. Use common sense black bear precautions (make noise every now and then, remove all food and toiletry items from your shelter at night, never approach one, and stand your ground if one charges) and you’ll be fine.
In recent decades elk have been reintroduced to the Smokies. Keep your eyes open, though you are much more likely to hear one bugling than you are to see one!
Clouds and Mist: A little research of the Smoky Mountains will turn up the classic Southern Appalachian view—layer upon layer of soft, low hills vanishing into the horizon. And indeed, it’s possible you might see that view on this route. But it’s much more likely that your view will be obscured by clouds and mist. You should embrace this—it’s just the way it goes in the Smokies!
Smoky Mountains Resources
Great Smoky Mountains National Park Backcountry Regulations
Smokies Backcountry Camping Map
