Eagle's Nest Trail is a 3.7 mile heavily trafficked loop trail located near Wellington, Kentucky that features a waterfall and is rated as difficult. The trail is primarily used for hiking. Dogs are also able to use this trail.
There are bathrooms located at the trail head.
Take Exit 33 (Slade) off Mountain Parkway. You will make a LEFT at the exit if you are headed east from Stanton and you will make a RIGHT at the exit if you are heading west from Campton. Upon making the exit from Mountain Parkway you will approach Campton Rd. (11) (Shell Station across the road). You will make a LEFT at that intersection and travel approx. 1.5 miles until you reach Nada Tunnel Rd (77) where you will make a RIGHT turn. Down this road (77) you will go through the Nada Tunnel (one lane) and across a metal bridge. It is approx. 5 miles until you approach Sky Bridge Rd. (715) where you will veer RIGHT. You will travel down (715) approx. 6.8 miles before reaching the parking lot for the Osborne Bend Trailhead on your LEFT just before the one lane bridge.
The views are absolutely incredible. The trail itself is horrible. We lost the trail 3 or 4 times. They really need signs, markers, and to clear the trail.
First mile+ along the river & last mile+ are the gems. The rest of the hike is just a muddy trek in the wood
Really fun trail. Definitely read trail descriptions before you go out. I’ll give w few hints here for a counter-clockwise trip. As you’re heading away from the river you will reach the huge ravine area with a fenced off rock shelter near the cliff. As you continue along the rocks you will see a cleft in the rock, or a chimney in rock climbing jargon. You can actually enter this chimney and climb or continue past it. If you continue past it you will see an opening in the rocks on your left but it will be too high to climb. About 5-10 ft later you will pass a rock and the trail will head sharply downhill. Turn left and look behind the rock. You will see a gap that is easy to climb up to the shelf you just passed. Stay to the left up this steep scramble until you make it to the trees at the top. There will be a cliffline trail to your left that will wind to the lookout. I have headed back the way we came, which is faster, and found the old road to Osborne Bend. Finding the old trail required gps and bushwhacking for my group but I believe if you head back to where you first made it to the top of the bluff you can find it more easily. This trail is well worth the adventure. Downloaded maps or preprinted trail descriptions are needed to approach this confidently
VERY hard to navigate. Where the trail according to the map led was nothing but a huge cliff with people actually repelling down it. Was lost off and on pretty much the whole hike even with the offline map downloaded.
Started at the river/Douglas trail end. This route does not lead you to the Eagles Nest outlook. Once you make the steep climb after the water fall (just under a mile in) make a left to stay close to the cliffs and you should find the trail to the outlook. Gps coords: 37.826303, -83.562679
So we did this today. We went backwards from what AllTrails said. The part we were on was wide and pretty well marked, up until you make the sharp turn about 1.8 miles in. We thought it was a game trail. Turns out it was the trail. It is not marked! We walked about 1/4 mile passed it before checking GPS realizing we missed it. After about 100 yards the trail pretty much disappeared. Following AllTrails it wanted us to walk down a wash out littered with blown down trees, swampy mud, etc. even our dogs had a rough time navigating this. Unless you’re part deer or squirrel or raccoon, this part was nearly impossible. I have no idea where we went wrong. The half the trail we were on was heavily wooded. We will attempt this trail again, but following the River first trying to see where we went wrong.