Jack's River Trail Adventures

Last weekend Rake and I met up in the North Georgia mountains at the edge of the Cohutta Wilderness area.  Our goal was to hike a section of the Jack's River trail, have a great weekend, and find adventure.   What we weren't looking for were nuisance bears.

Bears ended up being one of the themes during our trip thanks to this sign being one of the first things we were greeted with.

That night at camp we would hang, not only our food, but our entire packs in a tree to try and protect our belongings from bears.  We thought we were being really smart about this.  Rake threw the rope over a really high branch and it was about as far from the trunk as we could get it.   Shortly after securing our belongings in the tree I walked over to my tent and tossed my wallet and keys on the sleeping bag.   Rake looked at me and asked, "You grabbed your keys out of your pack?"  I responded that I didn't want to lose them in case a bear did get our stuff.  At that point he looked up at his pack and I felt like he was weighing the risk he put himself in.  His keys would spend the night in the tree.

But getting to that camp was the fun part.   That's where we hiked about seven miles north on the Jack's River trail. We crossed the river 18 times throughout our day.  The water was COLD and the rocks were slick.  We were carrying all of our gear on our backs and weren't interested in getting it wet so moving slowly and carefully is how we approached the crossings.   Most of the crossings were knee deep and a few were up to the thighs, a few others could have been deeper but we found routes along rocks that kept us from getting too wet.   At first the crossings were spread out but late in the day we were hitting the water every five to ten minutes.  This was a lot different than most other hikes and was a lot of fun.  

Wildlife along the river trail seemed mostly to be millipedes and gnats.  They were plentiful.  The millipedes preferred to crawl along the center of the trail and the gnats preferred to fly in my eyes and ears.  We also found some very large snails but they weren't a bother.

After five hours on the trail we set up camp.

My next blog will reveal all of the adventures at the falls including stories of Federal employees, almost watching someone die, and encounters with deadly wildlife!