Linville Falls Visitor Center — Attraction in North Carolina

Reference to the photos I posted of the map.

If you start at the visitor center the best way to do all the hikes in one go is to start at the End of the Dugger's Creek Loop (yellow). It is not marked at the back end, but very easy to locate. If you park at the far end of the parking lot on the left side you can see it. If not I would suggest doing this one first. You gain access to the beginning via the Plunge Basin trail (red) and you will go left which is marked on the sign. It reads on the sign "20 min walk." It is supper easy & take like 10mins if you are an experienced hiker. Then you can start the more difficult trails. If you do take the back end of the yellow trail it will take you straight to the Plunge Basin Trail. That way you don't have to back track. Once starting the Plunge Basin Trail, it will break into two paths once on the red trail. 1.Plunge Basin Overlook 0.5 mi Top view of the falls 2.Linville Gorge 0.7 mi Bottom base of the falls Then you can turn around and head back to the Visitor Center and take the Erwin's View Trail (green). FYI the only place they have bathrooms (Port-a-potties) is located here at the Visitor Center. After your bathroom break you have to go across the bridge over the river to start the Erwin's View Trail. We had originally parked at a different parking lot location to gain access to the Linville Falls trail. Which once starting the green trail you will see the two paths coming together to lead to the Upper Falls Overlook. Once you are there you can see people in ridges at the top which I believe is the top of the Chimney View. Inorder to go there you simply head back to where the two trails meet and instead of going left to the Overlook you continue to go up hill (there is a sign posted marking the different ways of the trails at this point). I would imagine it is similar along the rest of the Erwin's Trail. Just keep going up along the trails and it will lead you to the rest of the views. Unfortunately we only ended up doing the the Upper Falls Overlook trail from the first parking lot. Then our family split up and they had took the car to the Visitor Center parking lot. From here we did the Dugger's Creek Loop. We had older family members with us, but out of these trails those are the two easiest. Would definitely come back to do the more difficult trails. Also dogs are allowed, but only on leashes. Our dogs had a blast. Once you get close to the Upper Falls Overlook there are bunch of signage stating the fines of unleashed pets and also absolutely no swimming of any kind in the water. Highly recommended parking at the Visitor Center. Easiest way to access all the...

First things first, the falls were beautiful. The trail to the falls was well maintained and relatively easy to navigate, but there are some areas that might be a bit tricky for some people. Our complaint is that the signage is not at all clear. We saw a sign on the left at the 2nd entrance of the parking area that said Linville Falls Trailhead/ Pisgah National Forest. It doesn't have an arrow indicating that that's the trailhead parking area. We proceeded farther up the hill thinking we were heading to the falls. When we got higher up, there was another parking area and a "visitor center" that was closed. The map there wasn't particularly clear either and several cars were proceeding higher up, so we drove further up the hill until the road became virtually impossible for us to proceed in our car. Fortunately, we found a place to turn around before we bottomed out our car and went back down the way we came. Ultimately, we stopped at the lower parking lot where we finally saw a tiny white paper sign indicating that was where the falls trailhead was. I think that people should be made aware of the difficulty in navigating the road up the hill in a standard passenger car as bottoming out in the ruts is a real possibility. There's no signage indicating this. Also, adding a left pointing arrow to the sign marking the falls trailhead would be helpful to those unfamiliar with the area. I did notice that there were 2 posts on the right side of the road where it appears there should have been a sign, but there...

Linville Falls is a beautiful place. The Visitor Center is a great welcome spot, situated at the end of the parking lot and at the starting spot for three trails to the falls.

Most of the visitors we talked with upon our arrival said that they did all three trails that day. We were arriving in the late afternoon, so we consulted with the park employees at the visitor center. They were very knowledgeable and helped us to decide on one trail for the day. We chose GREEN because it had three different views of the falls. The Upper Falls View allowed us to get close to the water; Erwin's View was the full falls as seen from a distance. We were hiked out and it was getting close to sunset so we did not go to the third view.

The Visitor Center was close to closing when we arrived, so we did some souvenir shopping before hiking. In addition to souvenirs, they have snacks and drinks, maps, hiking supplies, and for anyone who collects stamps or coins of the various parks, those are available, too. It's a small shop but well stocked.

Just across from the Visitor Center are restrooms which were still open when we returned from our hike, long after the Visitor Center had closed.

Another perk of the Linville Falls Visitor Center is that it is right off of The Blue Ridge Parkway, my all-time favorite road in the US.

Buying tickets before? Free admission; no...