Free camping apps help you find a spot in national parks
Camping apps can help you find the right adventure for you and maybe even snag a spot in a coveted national park.
problem solved
For years before the launch of the Park It Forward parking permit program in 2023, visitors to Great Smoky Mountains National Park used the roadsides near the most popular trailheads as de facto parking spots. It was not uncommon to see vehicles lining both sides of the road for a mile or more when approaching trailheads to popular destinations like Alum Cave or Rainbow Falls.
However, as the park’s visitor numbers increased, the dangers of curbside parking became more apparent: blocked roads, trampled or even stripped vegetation, and a danger to pedestrians merging with heavy traffic on their way to the trailhead. To address these problems, the park service took steps to curb unsafe parking, installing nearly five miles of roadside protection devices such as boulders, fencing, and wooden bollards. But creating physical deterrents was only part of the solution. Visitors needed more ways to reach these trailheads and information about alternative adventures.
“Although roadsides were never designated as parking, people had been using them that way for quite some time,” said Kendra Straub, management and program analyst for the Smokies. “We knew we wanted to improve safety and access by giving people another option to get to their destination.”
Shuttle services saw the business potential
Before launching Park It Forward, the park service contacted all local companies that were already authorized to provide shuttle service in the Smokies and asked if they would be interested in expanding their offerings or including their services in the park’s promotional messaging. In Tennessee, the following companies have agreed to work with the park service: AAA Hiker Shuttle, A Walk in the Woods, Great Smoky Mountains Eco Tours, RockyTop Tours and Smoky Mountain Rides. In North Carolina, visitors can be picked up by Bryson City Outdoors and Carolina Bound Adventures.
“These companies were interested in partnering because they recognized there would be demand from a business perspective,” Straub said. “All of them are still offering shuttle services almost a year and a half later.”
Some companies, like Gatlinburg-based A Walk in the Woods, have significantly expanded their shuttle offerings after partnering with the National Park Service. A Walk in the Woods has offered on-demand shuttle service for its 26 years of operation, said co-owner Vesna Plakanis, but last year it added a regular daily route that runs between trailheads Alum Cave, Newfound Gap, Rainbow Falls, Bullhead and Trillium Gap. Those trips cost $17 each way and can be booked online. They’ve proven popular, but not yet with the demographic Plakanis originally wanted to target.
“We thought we would have more day hikers, but that’s not really the case,” she said. “But we do have a lot of people signing up to stay at the lodge or the refuge in Le Conte, and we’re doing multiple trips a week. We’re definitely busier this year than we were last year when we started. I think people are starting to realize that a lot of these trailheads are full by 6 a.m.”
Parking spaces are in short supply and the use of shuttles is increasing
According to Straub, the Alum Cave Trail, the shortest route to Mount Le Conte, is the most popular drop-off location of all the shuttle companies. Plakanis expects demand for shuttle drops to continue to grow among both day hikers and backpackers, “especially as people realize that parking is in short supply.”
Ben King, co-owner of Bryson City Outdoors — with locations in Cherokee and Bryson City, North Carolina — said his shuttle business comes almost exclusively from backpackers, particularly Appalachian Trail hikers who travel the 72 miles between Big Creek and Fontana Dam. That volume hasn’t changed much since the partnership with the park began. Although he gets a fair number of calls from prospective day hikers, they almost all stay on the Tennessee side, looking for trails closer to Gatlinburg. He usually refers them to shuttle services in Tennessee that can offer them a better price.
“Yes, for the hotspots on the Tennessee side of the park, we have received more calls and inquiries than in the past, but it is difficult for us to meet that need,” he said.
In 2023, three-quarters of the park’s 13.3 million visitors began at entrances on the Tennessee side of the park, and most of the Smokies’ notoriously congested trailheads – Laurel Falls, Alum Cave, Chimney Tops – are on that side. Promoting shuttle options is just one of the ways the park is reducing crowding.
“People talk about a panacea, but for things like the visitor experience, it’s not,” Straub said. “It’s a panacea because we have all kinds of visitors with all kinds of goals.”
A tool to help you choose the best time to visit
The shuttles have proven to be a tempting option for visitors who can’t postpone their hike or switch to a Plan B — for example, people with a coveted reservation at the LeConte Lodge or Boy Scout groups whose leaders have carefully planned a hike at a specific location and time. For more flexible visitors, increased notices about tricks to avoid the crowds, such as hiking early in the morning, late in the afternoon or at a different location, could be helpful.
A new tool launched in April can help with these calculations. Using historical traffic data that is updated annually, the tool can tell potential visitors whether a given day is likely to be busy, moderately busy, or not busy at all. It also breaks down arrivals by hour, showing visitors what times of day to expect the busiest.
“It’s a simple tool, but we hope it can be helpful for those who have flexible days,” Straub said.
The experiment in Laurel Falls is going well
A pilot project in 2021 explored the use of timed reservations and regular shuttle routes to ease congestion on the Laurel Falls Trail, an experiment that “went really well,” Straub said. An environmental assessment completed later found that this system could be implemented permanently in the future, and the same document included a number of other improvements at Laurel Falls, including widening the trail, adding 50 new parking spaces to the existing 30, and building a new observation deck and wider bridge. An 18-month closure of the trail to implement these improvements is scheduled to begin this fall.
But those solutions can’t be copied and applied to every trailhead in the park, and the Smokies can’t simply “engineer out” the congestion issues they face, Straub said. The Smokies are a “large and complicated park,” and management will consider solutions for each site individually.
The situation is by no means perfect, but the park’s efforts so far – shuttles, parking permits, roadside security and increased outreach – seem to be making a difference. At Laurel Falls, for example, a site for which the park has particularly solid data, the falls are less crowded and trash is less plentiful than in the past.
“There is definitely an improvement,” said Straub.
Holly Kays is the lead writer for Smokies Life, a 29,000-member nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the scientific, historical and interpretive activities of Great Smoky Mountains National Park by providing educational products and services such as this column. For more information, visit SmokiesLife.org or contact the author at [email protected]For more information about the park shuttle service, visit nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/shuttles.htmYou can find the travel planner at nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/trafficandtraveltips.htm.
