Bring along your walking sticks to make going up and down the. Aside from many, many stairs, the trail is relatively easy and has an overall elevation change of 305 feet. Route Type: Loop + spur Difficulty: MODERATE (Petzoldt Rating: 4.20 ) Found at Milepost 418.8 on the Parkway, Graveyard Fields is a high-traffic 2.9-mile trail that leads down into a ravine and past two waterfalls. I love Graveyard Fields.hopefully this album will offer you a glimpse why. With spring greens already spreading over the lower elevations this hike was a nice opportunity to step back a few weeks in time for one last pre-leaf season hike. The trail connects to other trails in the valley and beyond, allowing further exploration for those who want a longer hike. It offers a variety of different plants, shrubs, and trees, as well as bird and wildlife diversity for natural history buffs. Along the way I'd stop at Second Falls and see what spring wildflowers I could find. The Graveyard Fields Loop Trail is a reasonable hiking distance for families, including children, and includes waterfalls. At Dark Prong Gap, where the trail crosses the Mountains-to-Sea Trail (440), the trail will become a roadbed that is open to horses and mountain bikes. There are outstanding views of Graveyard Fields and, on clear days, points as far as South Carolina. On this day I'd be doing the generic loop through the valley with a short side trip up and over adjoining Graveyard Ridge to mix things up a tad. Turn left onto the old railroad grade to continue on the Graveyard Ridge Trail.
A 0.25-mile trail to the right will take you to the bottom of the Lower Falls, which is a moderate descent.
After crossing the bridge, the main trail goes left and upstream. The set of steps to the right of the map is the start of the trail. This cool, cloudy late spring day offered up a last chance for me to get out and walk its trails in relative solitude before the summer crush. A map at the parking area shows the Graveyard Fields trail system. As a result it is absolutely overrun in the summer months, when I tend to avoid it. Today only a few scattered trees and small patches of laurel and blueberry have managed to repopulate the landscape.Ĭontaining two very scenic waterfalls and covered in scattered thickets of laurel and blueberry, Graveyard Fields today is one of the more popular hiking destinations for those traveling the Blue Ridge Parkway. Conditions are harsh at these high elevations so life has been slow to return. Adding insult to injury the fields suffered two catastrophic wildfires in the 1920's and 1940's which further denuded the landscape and even sterilized the soil. It obtained its rather dark name after a combination of winds and logging reduced its thick spruce-fir forest to naked stumps dotting the landscape, resembling gravestones. Graveyard Fields, located at Milepost 418.8 along the Blue Ridge Parkway, is a spectacular high elevation valley lying in the shadow of nearby Black Balsam and Tennent Mountains.
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