Sulfur Springs Loop

Dogs Leashed

Features Birding · Fall Colors · Lake · River/Creek · Wildlife

From Picnic Area 6, you can start in either direction on this narrow, steep, strenuous, rocky, rugged, white-blazed loop trail. If you cross the park road and begin at the trail sign, you'll climb up and down wooded slopes until you reach the parking area at Buckhorn Gate. Keep right at the trail kiosk, continue up another steep slope, and bear left at the fork with the Brissy Ridge Trail.

Keep an eye out for mountain bikers who share parts of this trail.

You'll run through mixed pine and hardwood forest atop a mountain ridge and pass the Old Firetower Trail on the left before you begin to climb up and down along deep ravines and running streams lined with mountain laurel and rhododendron. As you pass through these diverse habitats, you may see a variety of birds, snakes, deer, and other wildlife.

The trail levels out near the shores of Mountain Lake, where you'll pass a large dam and follow one of several trail branches that return to the parking area where you began.