Georgia under our feet

I goofed. In my last post I called both North And South Carolina our #6 High Point. In fact, they were two separate HPs. #6 was Mt Mitchell and #7 was Sassafras Mt. As we left you, we were still in Asheville, NC.

After leaving Asheville we headed to Georgia. We have been awed by the beauty in the Appalacian range, and this portion of Georgia does not disappoint. In fact, I added Georgia to my hiking destination list. I’d love to see more.

Brasstown Bald is accessible by car and shuttle. Or you can hike up by several routes. We chose to summit by hiking half the Jacks Knob trail. The trail officially starts at the Summit parking lot, goes up a ridge and down to the highway (at the intersection of the park entrance), crosses the highway and intersects the AT. We started at the highway intersection and hiked backwards to the summit parking lot (aprx 2.2 miles).

From our start point the trail is a steep climb on a flat smooth path. Not a hard hike, but a good cardio workout. There were mountain laurels blooming, but we missed the rhododendrons. The trail was nice and shady, and we even had a breeze. About 1.5 miles on, you start downhill and end at the parking lot. We crossed the lot and started up the paved trail to the top (0.6 mi one way). It’s a steep paved trail. Not surprising that most people take the shuttle.

at the bottom of the paved trail

We had a nice clear day and checked off our high point #8. One other interesting fact; this HP has a tower built on top for viewing. To get to the geodesic marker you need to ask a forestry volunteer to unlock the storage closet to the right of the stairway.