What this is all about

I like to hike, and I belong to a womens hiking group called "TrailDames" - one of our hikes took us to a waterfall just over the border in South Carolina. This got me interested in finding waterfalls nearby and earlier this year I found a website with directions and photos of waterfalls in North Georgia at (see links for TrailDames & North Georgia Waterfalls below)

I now also belong to another womens hiking group called Off the Grid. Both OTG and Traildames are on Meetup.

Mr. Anthony's site has lovely photos of well over 100 waterfalls in North Georgia and I got interested in seeing them. As the weather got hotter through the summer I concentrated on shorter hikes to falls, and falls that were visible from the road. Then, as it started to get cooler again, I started doing longer hikes. It turned out to be far more fun than I expected it to be, and to my surprise - when I added them up - I had been to over 100 myself!

So I decided to make a record of them and of what it's like to visit them, in case anyone else is interested in seeing them too. I will be adding photos and directions, trail conditions, etc. in the future. As I "redo" falls I will update the page that already exists for them, instead of creating a new page every time. Keeping with the format of this blog site, I will put new information at the top of each existing page.

I won't be putting road mileages on the directions, I strongly urge you to compare my directions to a good map so you can see the distances for yourself. I'm not very good at guessing distances, so if I can find a trail length I will use that. If I'm guessing, I'll put a question mark so you'll know!

My apologies for the "watermarks" on the photos, but I have had...and know other people who have had...photos stolen off the net. The watermarks are to ensure that they can't be reused without being identified as mine.

I got a good GPS unit and I'll slowly be putting GPS coordinates for the falls, when I can. If I can get close to the falls the GPS will be for the falls. Otherwise, it will be for where you can see them most easily.

Nov 2012: I got a new PC and now that I can actually get things done (!) I'm going to rearrange the way the falls are listed. I'm going to list them separately, instead of grouping them by the day I saw them. The only ones I'll group are the ones that are on the same creek, or very close - like on the same road.

I've completed rearranging the posts. Hopefully this will help make the falls easier to find. I also found my count was WAY off, so I've updated the total too.

Jan 2013 - I just got a video camera, so I'll be adding short videos of the falls as I am able to get back to them. They might be a bit shakey at first, but hopefully I'll get better as I get used to using it!

Jan 2014 - I almost forgot about posting this! I had been in contact with Sharon Collins, the host of GPB's "Georgia Outdoors"...offering to take her around my 18 Waterfalls tour. She was not able to make it, but I did take her cameraman Shane Keating on the tour. I was hoping they'd do a show about the tour, but that didn't happen. However, some of the shots did show up in the episode "Mountain Magic"...so I've added a link to that episode.

Aug 2015 - I've created a Google map of the waterfalls I either have been to, or know about as publicly accessable, check it out at: https://goo.gl/maps/79Lyb

Got some additional news. The episode of Georgia Outdoors mentioned above, that has some of the shots taken by the cameraman on my 18 Wateralls tour...won a 2015 Southeastern Emmy for "Magazine Program" http://www.gpb.org/emmys

Total Falls

Total waterfalls as of 6/7/2015: 504
Total videos as of 6/7/2015: 180

Monday, December 27, 2010

Fall Creek Falls

3/14/2010 This falls is on the Fall Creek Trail, in the Wildcat Tract of Dawson Forest...near Dawsonville, GA (http://www.mountainstewards.org/) - this site has trail maps, photos, and other information about the area.

This trail was TOUGH.  It doesn't seem like it ought to be from the trail description, because if you start at the top of the mountain you are hiking a total elevation change of something like 1400 feet, most of it downhill.  I never thought going downhill would be so bad!  The day we hiked it, it was cold, wet and sleeting on top of the mountain - but it wasn't TOO bad and we were warmly dressed, so we decided to do it anyway.

There were lots of big, blown-down trees - there had been a bad ice storm up there in the previous week.  Lots of downed branches too, but as we descended the first big downhill it got warmer, and the trail was "cleaner" and easier to hike.

There are supposed to be 4 or 5 waterfalls along this trail, but we didn't actually see most of them...and only got good pictures of the Fall Creek Falls.  This one is about halfway through the hike and falls something like 75 feet and is just beautiful.  It's a little way off the main trail, maybe 1/4 mile - something like that...but as you are hiking the trail you get a good view of about the top 2/3 of the falls just before you make a turn to go steeply downhill to the side trail.

To see the falls along this trail - starting from the top of the mountain, you hike a very short portion of the Tobacco Pouch Trail to where the Fall Creek Trail goes off to the left. Then where the Fall Creek Trail ends, you can take the Wildcat Creek Trail to the campground. This means leaving a car at both ends. This is a 5 miles hike, and it includes a creek crossing that is really more of a small river!

Or you can hike the Fall Creek Trail to the junction with the Tobacco Pouch Trail to climb back up to the top at the trailhead. I haven't done this one, but I plan to try it some day.

Directions and Information: can be found at http://www.mountainstewards.org/

Note: there are a LOT of falls in this area, and the website has photos of 30 or more, but no directions on where they are!  I finally emailed the Mountain Stewards website and asked if they could give me directions to all the falls they show, but the answer was that most of them are on private property.


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