Virgin Falls 5.29.2021

 The hike leader had the privilege of taking three intrepid hikers on their first trip to one of the strangest waterfalls in Tennessee. As we carpooled up to Sparta and then around to the trailhead, the temperature was in the low fifties and it was raining. As we got out of the car, it stopped raining! We had almost perfect hiking weather. This was so much better than the sweltering days we’d been having in the past week, with highs in the nineties. The NINETIES! In MAY! Luckily for us a storm passed through and dropped the temperature 40 degrees!

 The trail is flat for a while, which is apparently why there were several signs near the trailhead with dire warnings that the trail is strenuous. Indeed it is strenuous, as it becomes rocky and fairly steep as it heads downhill along a beautiful creek which has not one but two fine waterfalls. This creek also provides more evidence that Tennessee is hollow: at the bottom of both waterfalls the water disappears into black holes. Yet each time, the water mysteriously reappears, gurgling along as though popping in and out of the ground were a perfectly normal activity for a creek. Hmmph. It’s too much to handle for Google Maps, which shows no trace of a creek along the trail.

 Most of the way down to the bottom of the creek, we turned right and traipsed down and up for a while, until a final uphill toward Virgin Falls. Yet there is no water coming down from the falls. Don’t waterfalls have to have water? Well actually, waterfalls do not have to have water, as any summer hiker can attest. Yet streams typically leave some sign of their passage, usually rocks. Our hike up the hill was devoid of any signs of a stream—for the simple reason that Virgin Falls doesn’t have a stream below it! At least not a visible stream. The beautiful 110-ft waterfalls spends its last 30 to 40 feet dropping into a giant hole! Not only that, the water coming over the falls comes out of a cave less than 50 feet from the lip of the falls! Our case rests: Tennessee is hollow. Expect a sinkhole in your back yard any day now.

 There were also other odd developments on this trip. For one, we found that the trip back to the parking lot was at least twice as long as the trip in. No one had an explanation, even though someone’s GPS showed that we hiked about 4.3 miles in and ended with a total of about 9 miles. But hey, can the GPS be trusted? It didn’t even know about the creek we saw (at least some of the time). The next oddity occurred as we drove out of the parking lot: it started raining again. There hadn’t been a drop of rain since we got out of the car, just as the rain stopped, about seven hours earlier.  Da de da daa . . . were we in the Twilight Zone?

If you would like to see a few photos taken during this hike, You can see photos by clicking here.  

If you are trying to view the photos from this hike on the TTA website and having trouble, please go directly to the blog at www.sdctta.blogspot.com.