Much of the Greenbrier watershed has never been logged or roaded. Because of this, it probably contains the greatest stretches of virgin timber in the Great Smokies, which of course, contain most of the virgin forests that are left east of the Mississippi River. The huge poplar above is not the biggest poplar in the Park, but it gives hikers on the Ramsey Cascades trail a taste of what lies beyond the trail. There are some huge trees in Greenbrier, most of which stand off-trail.

Below, the heavily trampled, oft-photographed Ramsey Cascades end-of-trail. The Cascades are a popular destination for dayhikers who hike in on the 4.0 mile Ramsey Cascades trail. For the vast majority of hikers, this is the end of the line. It's beautiful, usually wet (Greenbrier receives some of the heaviest precipitaton in America, rivaling that of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.) and considering the number of visitors that the cascades get, it's usually pretty quiet.

I like roaming the valley above the Cascades. It had been years though, since I last made the trip to the Appalachian Trail from the Greenbrier Valley and when Peter suggested that we do the hike again, I jumped at the chance. The following photos are were made on two different trips, the first to see Drinkwater Pool, an often recurring feature of Harvey Broome's journal, and another to push all the way up the drainage to Mt. Guyot and then on over to Cosby.