Picnic table and grill at Heintooga Picnic Area in the Balsam Mountain region of Great Smoky Mountains National Park

See the Balsam Mountain Region for an interactive location map.

To reach the Heintooga Picnic Area at Great Smoky Mountains National Park you’ll need to get on the Blue Ridge Parkway and take Heintooga Ridge Road at Milepost 458.2. The picnic area is located where the paved Heintooga Ridge Road ends and the dirt Balsam Mountain Road begins, which is approximately nine miles from the Parkway. Heintooga Ridge Road ends in a loop, allowing those towing trailers or driving RVs to easily turn around and head back the way they came, for no such vehicles are allowed on the one-way Balsam Mountain Road. Park along the side of the road to access the picnic area and the trailhead for the Flat Creek Trail.

Heintooga Picnic Area is typically open from mid-May until the end of October. The exact opening and closing dates change each year, so be sure to get the current schedule on the National Park Service’s Picnicking web page for Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

You can’t see the Heintooga Picnic Area from the road, so look for a restroom building on the left side of the loop. A path leads up a fairly steep hill to the picnic tables, so you really must want to have a picnic to choose this place.

Pathway to the picnic tables at Heintooga Picnic Area

At the top of the hill is a group of picnic tables, most of which have a grill next to them. It’s like being on a small knoll, and the tables are arranged near the edge of where the terrain starts sloping back downhill, so it is pretty obvious that when the picnic area was created that these tables had great views of the surrounding area. However, a forest has grown up, so picnicking at Heintooga today is nothing more than picnicking in the woods.