Elk in Cataloochee - GSMNP

We drove up to the Cataloochee area to see some elk and scout the area for future fishing and hiking trips.  We came from I-40 via the Waterville exit and took a left at the entrance to the Big Creek area toward Mount Stirling.  The road narrowed and turned into a single lane gravel road that went up and over the mountain.  At the bottom of the mountain, about 14 miles later, we stopped for a while near one of the trestle bridges and checked out the creek to see if it would be worth a visit with a fly rod in hand.  It looked good.  It had been raining off and on and there was some color in the water, but it looked like a good creek to fish.  I hope to give it a try here soon, but that wasn' the only reason we wanted to visit Cataloochee.  We wanted to see some Elk. 

Once we got down the mountain we dove into the valley.  It was beautiful.

As we neared the Cataloochee campground we saw two Elk.  We saw one huge Elk eating next to the road and he was soon joined by what looked like a smaller female.  His antlers were huge!

We sat and watched these two Elk for 15 or 20 minutes.  They didn't seem to mind us sitting in the car on the side of the road watching them, but they got agitated when 2 folks came walking up the road.  You could tell they were watching them pretty closely.  When those folks got about 25 yards from the Elk the Elk started to move into the treeline.  They didn't move totally out of our view, but they made it harder for us to watch them.  We decided that we had enough pictures of those 2 Elk so we left them and drove on down the road where we saw three more Elk in a clearing.

We then drove on down into the valley past some of the old home places that still exist and parked at the trail head for Rough Fork trail where we saw 3 wild turkeys about 100 yard out in the surrounding field.  Rough Fork creek runs parallel to the trail and I wanted to see if it was fishable also.  We hiked about 1/4 mile up the trail and saw a young Elk about 75 yards off the trail that appeared to be alone.  We observed her for 10 or 15 minutes and never noted another Elk in the area.  We didn't want to disturb her or make her momma mad so we moved back on to the trail and hiked up to the old home place 3/4 of a mile up the trail to check it out.

Along the way I observed that Rough Fork creek looked like it was large enough to hold some trout although it did look a little tight in places.

We also noted that the black berries were not quite ripe, but they should be good to go next week or the following week.

We made our way back down the trail and checked back in on the small Elk that we saw and she was still there, just off the trail.  We still didn't see any other Elk in that area.

We drove out via Cove Creek.  It was a little bit shorter route, but much of the road was still gravel and there was a lot of two way traffic on what was pretty much a steep and twisty single lane road.  See the maps below for directions on how to get into and out of the Cataloochee area.  The first map is from the Watertown exit over the mountains and down into the valley.  The second map is of the Cataloochee area, campground, and hiking trails and how to get to the Cove Creek exit back to I-40.  The maps are from the Great Smoky Mtns. Nation Park map from National Geographic Maps/Trails Illustrated.  I would suggest that visitors pick one up from one of the visitor centers, hiking store, or order one online.