A deck that faces the park
Barenberg — “bear mountain” in German, the owners explain — sits high in Cobbly Nob, a residential mountain community on the quieter eastern side of Gatlinburg. The draw is not subtle. Step onto the deck and the ground drops away through the trees to an open view over Great Smoky Mountains National Park, ridge after ridge, with nothing built in between. It’s the feature guests mention first and most often, and the photos don’t oversell it.
The deck is set up to use it: a dining table for meals outside, loungers, and a private hot tub right at the rail. Below, a paved patio holds a fire table, chairs and a grill with the same outlook through the branches. Inside, the great room rises to a timber ceiling, with tall windows and glass doors framing the mountains and a stone fireplace anchoring the seating.
Two suites, one loft, stairs between
The layout suits two couples or a family better than a big group. There are two master suites, one with a king bed and one with a queen, each with its own full bathroom — a genuine plus when two couples share. Extra sleepers go to a queen sofa bed in the living room and two pull-out twin beds in the loft, which can be pushed together. Those are fallback beds, not proper rooms, so a party of eight will feel it.
The loft doubles as the games area, with shuffleboard, a multi-game arcade, a console, and a stack of board games and puzzles. The kitchen is fully fitted, with dishwasher, oven and coffee machine, and there’s a washer and dryer. The WiFi is fast enough for video calls, and a desk makes a working week feasible. Upper floors are reached by stairs only.
Where the Cobbly Nob drive costs you
The seclusion that makes the view so clean is also the main trade-off. Downtown Gatlinburg is a proper drive away, Pigeon Forge and Dollywood further still, and this isn’t a walk-to-dinner address. A pizza place and a diner a few minutes’ drive away cover lazy evenings; everything else means getting in the car.
Cobbly Nob softens that with shared community pools, a tennis court and a basketball court, but the pools are seasonal and open only in the summer months — outside that window, the hot tub is your only water. For anyone who wants to wake up, take their coffee to the rail and look out over the park before deciding what to do, that’s a fair exchange. For those planning to spend every evening on the Parkway, a cabin closer to town will save a lot of driving.
