Auger Hole Trail – Gorges Sp

Distance: 3.8 miles Elevation Gain: 700 ft Difficulty: Strenuous Type: Out-and-Back Surface: Rocky, rooted, steep switchbacks, creek crossings Activity: Hiking Best Season: Year-round Typical Time: 2:30 Fee: $8/vehicle Dogs: Yes, on leash Permit: No

The Auger Hole Trail descends into Bearcamp Creek Gorge—one of the deepest and most biologically extraordinary gorges in South Carolina—to reach the Auger Hole, a deep plunge pool at the base of a 50-foot waterfall in the Jocassee Gorges watershed. Gorges State Park protects 7,600 acres of the Jocassee Gorges in the westernmost corner of South Carolina, a landscape where the Blue Ridge escarpment drops 2,000 feet in just a few miles, generating some of the highest rainfall totals east of the Cascades—80 to 100 inches annually—and sustaining a temperate rainforest of extraordinary botanical diversity.

The trail descends steeply via switchbacks through chestnut oak and mountain laurel on the upper slopes before entering the gorge's cove hardwood forest—American beech, tulip poplar, basswood, and yellow birch with a ground layer of trillium, hepatica, and crested dwarf iris. The Bearcamp Creek corridor supports eastern hellbender salamanders—North America's largest salamander at up to two feet long—and the plunge pool at the Auger Hole is prime hellbender habitat. Several cascades and waterfalls punctuate the creek below the main falls. The return ascent of 700 feet to the ridge is demanding but the gorge's extraordinary ecology rewards the effort completely.