Great Smokies will have weekday closures of trail leading to park's tallest waterfall

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is doing repair work and will have weekday closures starting April 15 on a popular 4-mile trail, which is the only way to access the tallest waterfall in the park.

The Ramsey Cascades Trail, located in the Greenbrier, Tennessee, area, will be closed on weekdays while trail crews finish the full-scale rehabilitation work started in 2022, according to an April 12 news release from the National Park Service. The trail is the only access point to the 100-foot Ramsey Cascades, the tallest waterfall in the park, the release said.

The trail will be closed Monday through Thursday each week, except federal holidays. The weekday closures will be in place from April 15 to Nov. 14. The only weekend closure planned is May 3-5 while trail crews replace a footlong bridge.

Trail crews will repair tread surfaces, improve drainages, construct trail structures such as staircases, turnpikes, and retaining walls and remove trip hazards like exposed roots and rocks, according to the release.

"The rehabilitation will improve overall trail safety and protect the park’s natural resources," the release said.

"Significant flooding and storm damage caused the NPS to close the trail completely for several months in 2022 and early 2023," the release also said. "Trail crews rerouted 200 feet of trail, built and installed a new footlong bridge and built four new trail structures damaged by the flood."

The project is supported by the Trails Forever program supported by Friends of the Smokies, the nonprofit partner of the national park. Trails Forever is a partnership established by the Friends of the Smokies and Great Smoky Mountains National Park to fund a permanent, highly skilled trail crew that rehabilitates high-use trails, according to the release.

In 2012, the Friends set up an endowment to support the program. To date, the Friends have contributed more than $2.6 million to rehabilitate Abrams Falls, Trillium Gap, Rainbow Falls, Alum Cave, Chimney Tops and Forney Ridge trails, the release said.

The Great Smokies, which sprawls across a half-million acres of rugged, forested terrain in Western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, is the most-visited national park, with some 13.3 million visitors in 2023.

Ryley Ober is the Public Safety Reporter for Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at rober@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter @ryleyober