DuPont State Recreational Forest caught my attention since it was large enough to get state forest status and has waterfalls. Even better I’d gotten into the habit of purchasing National Geographic hiking maps online before trips, and there was one, which implied that this must be a major destination. Something highly important to know immediately is that this a day use only state forest in North Carolina. When I figured that out I made plans to camp nearby, but obviously not in the forest. This is the sort of place with a few main parking lots that people cram into and the trails are highly packed, so you’re not getting any of that natural solitude goodness. Reminded me a bit of being at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in some of the popular areas people wise.
I started my DuPont adventure at the visitor center. There’s no fee to use the park, and the visitor center doesn’t even sell merchandise. The guy there was quite happy to talk to me about whatever I wished to know about the recreational forest, and they have free maps, so I completely wasted time and effort buying a map online before arriving. Even better for those of us who hunt waterfalls is that they have pictures of them all in the visitor center and can show you on a park map where to find them. I decided some of them were not worth using my limited time there for, but here’s the list of what there is:
- High Falls
- Triple Falls
- Hooker Falls
- Bridal Veil Falls
- Grassy Creek Falls
There are also several other features within the DuPont State Recreational Forest such as some shoals, a covered bridge, lakes, etc. For my purposes I wanted to see High Falls and Triple Falls which are part of what is known as the “High Falls Loop” and then Hooker Falls which you can take a spur from that trail to or just drive down the road and get to it from an alternative trailhead. Doing all of this is only a few miles of hiking, and I opted out of some of the other falls because the reward for hiking a lot farther wasn’t going to be as great and hey, sometimes you have to make choices what to see due to limited time.
High Falls was the first thing I came across hiking on a loop trail counter clockwise from the visitor center beginning at the High Falls Trailhead. There are two views for this. The first one is on the trail as an overlook. After you pass High Falls you’ll quickly come to a spur that goes down to the base (which is well marked, don’t panic) and you can get a much closer view. I managed to walk all the way out to the waterfall even though some snow and ice were in my way. I’ve been to many falls bearing this same name, but this one was the prettiest thus far.
Further along the High Falls Trail loop there are three different views of Triple Falls. Triple Falls is named very appropriately since there are three section. For the first view there’s a little path and some stairs that take you to the middle fall and let you stand on it while looking at the top fall simultaneously. For the next view you continue on the trail until finding a spur that heads to the lower fall, but before you get there all three falls that make Triple Falls can be seen at once from random spots, so enjoy that. Lastly the same spur takes you all the way past the base of the lower fall. Just hike a few hundred feet up following the water to come to the base of the lowest fall. This is where a scene from The Hunger Games was filmed. Some locations in this same forest were used to film The Last of the Mohicans as well. They’ll happily show you materials about that in the visitor center if you’re a movie buff.
Hooker Falls is easiest if you just drive to the trailhead for it and park, making it almost a nothing effort to hike in. This was the last fall I spent time on at DuPont, but it was pretty too.
