Blue Ridge Railroad Historical Trail

Awesome trail, easy to hike and historic

Not a lot to see on this hike. The waterfall is right at the beginning and stumphouse mountain is cool. But the hike itself is not very scenic. Plus we had ticks on us during and after the hike. Not sure I would do the hike again but would go see waterfall and stumphouse tunnel again.

moderate only in some areas great views when done in the winter

Good bike trail. Rode bike most of the way. Learning markers(plants, trees, mine site) along the way.

Trail has a few spots with decent mountain views. It was marked okay but does get somewhat dense close to the end. We stumbled upon this trail by accident looking for Yellow Branch.

We really enjoyed this trail. We had driven all the way to Walhalla hoping to hike Yellow Branch, but the road was closed when we arrived so we drove across the street to the Stumphouse Tunnel and Isaqueena Falls park. WE ended up on this trail by accident, thinking it was leading to the lower part of Isaqueena falls. The trail is marked by yellow blazes painted on the trees and it was very well marked. The first section was very strenuous. We had to maneuver obstacles such as roots, fallen trees, rocks and steep uphill climbs but once you get onto the wider trail (it is very wide and mostly flat) we had no trouble at all, it was actually very peaceful and we did not encounter any other hikers. WE stopped at Middle Tunnel and Saddle Tunnel, you cannot enter either one ( I guess you could crawl into Middle Tunnel, but it was pretty creepy!!) Saddle Tunnel was very low and full of water. The trail seemed to lead a little beyond Saddle Tunnel, but it was not as obvious so we stopped and turned around at Saddle Tunnel (we only knew the name of the tunnel from maps online, it is not marked.) There is a rather large sinkhole on the left side after Middle Tunnel and Before Saddle tunnel that would be extremely dangerous if you were not paying attention. We saw 2 whitetail deer high up in the trees just after the sink hole. There isn't much to see on this trail other than the tunnels, which were more like caves than anything, but the forest was beautiful and there were occasional views (through trees) of the surrounding area. All in all I really enjoyed this hike and would probably do again.

The ticks were terrible in June 2012 and we had no less than 50 ticks on 2 dogs and 2 people! 1/2 way in the ticks were falling from the trees!