I’m not sure that the weather could have been much better for a day of field work at the end of January. Chase and I GPS’d the trail system in Elsie A. Holmes Nature Park just outside of Ringgold, GA. They’ve created a really nice system of trails for a nice walk that takes you down alongside the South Chickamauga Creek, and has a super nice parking area with bathrooms and a pavilion.
South Chickamauga Creek
This evening, Chase and I decided to hike up the Disney Trail before sunset. This makes our 4th time hiking it, and even after doing it that many times, it’s surprising how much longer the way up seems versus the trek down. It turns out it’s 2.4 miles to the top according to a quick online search. The top has a wonderful viewpoint of the west side of the county. It’s a lightly used trail with hardly any traffic that we’ve seen, so the top would make an excellent place just to go sit, collect your thoughts, or even read.
Chase & I at the top of the Disney Trail
A few photos from this set
Today we rode out into Gilmer County and took some forest service roads out to Bear Creek Trail. Chase and I first walked this trail back around 2003 for work, and was astounded by the Gennett Poplar tree that is about a mile into the trail. We’ve been wanting to go back out here for the sole purpose of seeing the tree again, and this time get some pictures of it. Back when we were doing all of the hiking for work, we never really thought to take a camera along with us, but this time cameras were definitely taken.
Virgin forest is rare in the north Georgia mountains. The Bear Creek Trail contains what appears to be a never harvested section of land with trees so immense that they literally astound even the casual observer. Deep in this section of forest is the so-called Gennett poplar standing some 100 feet high and nearly twenty feet around. The tree is massive, and it alone is reason enough to try this hike. Source
DeSoto Falls, DeSoto State Park, and some fall foliage.
A few photos from this set
Hike down Sitton’s Gulch Trail in Cloudland Canyon State Park.
A few photos from this set
Today at work, my brother and I were asked to go and GPS some new bike trails that are open to the public. My supervisor is a mountain biker, and wants us to create some maps showing the different trails that are in Raisin Woods, which currently contains 4 different trails that total about 5 miles.
This really brought back the feeling of a project that we did back in the summer of 2003. We had the task of hiking and GPSing all of the hiking trails in our area, most of which were in the National Forest.
Back in 2003, I was taking some classes at the local college, so I only worked a few hours a day except for friday, which was a full day. A coworker of ours, Ben, who is now retired, would do all of the legwork of locating the trails, calling and finding out about them, pretty much doing all of the planning on topographic maps to get us out there and going. He would drive us to the trailhead, help us get everything hooked up and working, and see that we were off to a good start. Usually he would even hike with us for a while because he enjoyed it as well and his added company was nice, but would have to turn back at some point to get the car so that he could pick us up at the end of the planned hike. So hiking was the friday thing for a few months, and we totalled ~93 miles worth of trails. We had a blast doing that project and really saw alot of neat things out there.
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.
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© Copyright 2007-2012 Shane Holden
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