Enthusiast III
Georgia traverse Labor Day weekend
- Thread starter Bhinton
- Start date
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Enthusiast III
I've been considering trying to do a little section of it, if my wife and munchkin are up for it. Was hoping to get some intel on the eastern side of the route, from Dillard on, before attempting it (as in is it mostly just gravel roads or is there some more technical stuff that I don't want to do on my own being new to this). Otherwise, I was just going to check out some more of it up near Hatchet Falls again, as I'm a little more familiar with that having been there already.
Enthusiast III
I think I’m going to start at Helen Friday night and go west. If I’m on my own.
Let me know how this goes. I'm prob going to be out there around Thanksgiving weekend and was gonna spend a day or 2 working west to east. Pending weather and conditions I was looking to peel off and head south at Helen.
Out if curiosity. How does camping work out there? Pretty much off the trail and make camp where ever you want?
Thanks
Vandy
Enthusiast III
Enthusiast III
Looks there is multiple sites with drop box 6-12 dollars a night. I have some spots marked from Georgia over land that looks like good primitive spots
Enthusiast III
Went from Trey Mountain Road to Dalton . Got a camp every night and wasn’t too crowded. Weather was great
Enthusiast III
Tried to head west from Dillard, encountered a road closed sign pretty quickly on Patterson Creek (?). Ended up going east from Dillard. Nice trip, quiet roads.
Enthusiast III
Enthusiast III
Ive made several trips to do the traverse including a portion this week. Here is my take...
Navigation- i use gaia on my iphone and an ipad mini on a ram mount. The layers i use are gaia topo, national geographic map, 2016 forest service and national forest visitor. You can download the traverse track and waypoints at georgia overland. Improved campsites will be marked on the map and some of the Traverse waypoints mark dispersed campsites.
If you arent doing the entire traverse.... skip the most western and eastern ends. Travel toClayton Georgia and take Warwoman road from Clayton(gas up first) to Sarahs Creek campground. These are dry sites with pit toilets. You can jump onto the traverse a bit further out on warwoman road and from there you should travel from east to west. You may encounter a road closed here or there but its easy to navigate around these with gaia. Patterson gap road was closed yesterday and also dicks creek road. No big deal. The must do portions in my opinion are tallulah river road and trey mountain road. I set out yesterday morning at 7am frim sarahs creek campground and travelled west on the traverse including tallulah river and trey mountain. I got to the top of trey around 1pm. Theres a spot to canp there with cell signal and the appalation trail cuts right through the campsite. Depending on time you can continue down into helen from there and westward. The portion after trey mountain that stretches into cherokee nat forest has many campsites along it. Dispersed campsites. I spent 3 nights out there in Feb camping along the way and exited the traverse near copperhill tennessee where the cherokee nat forest connects at the power station bridge at the ocoee river. Refuel in helen once youre off trey.
Warning. Several spots on trey “appear” very intimidating but its doable. I have a 2017 4runner and a fellow member here has a ford ranger. We encountered no issues other than having to cut some branches and drag a downed tree out of the way. Bring a saw. Bring rope or tow straps. Be safe!
Enthusiast III
Gaia gps with the Georgia overland waypoints download is the way to go. Tons of info
