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Georgia - Appalachian Trail

David Aaronson
2005-09-26 15:57:46

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This page is slightly different than our other trip pages in that it covers several smaller trips concatenated together. These were done scattered over three years and cover the 76 miles of the Appalachian Trail that runs through Georgia. These started out as separate pages but it makes more sense to group them together. We followed the A.T. from south to north in order, although several side trails and nearby locations are covered as well.

For those who may not be familiar with it, the Appalachian Trail is a hiking trail that approximately follows the crest of the Appalachian Mountains for more than 2000 miles from Georgia to Maine. The southern endpoint is Springer Mountain, Georgia where this marker can be found (1).

There is no way to get to Springer Mountain except by trail. Even though the A.T. ends there, a trail continues to Amicalola Falls State Park another four or five miles to the south. This was to be Trout's first real mountain hike so we began the first day just by hiking up to Springer Mountain and then back down to the parking lot.

The next day we covered the section between Springer Mountain and an area called Three Forks where several streams come together to form Noontootla Creek. There are actually multiple trails that make the trip which is nice if you don't want to backtrack. In the end, we actually spent as much time playing in the creeks as we did hiking. It wasn't nearly as dark as this picture makes it look, it was an overcast day though and this section of the creek was in heavy foliage. Trout meanwhile turned out to be quite the river dog, though he shows little grasp of some basic concepts.

Like fording for instance. This section of the creek was primarily about a foot deep and composed of nice calm pools. Trout naturally chose the one rapid in the area through which to cross. It's not a very big rapid, but still.

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