I would like to plan a 2-3 day trip on the Georgia Traverse and would like to get input for planning a ride, a good entrance and exit location.
Looking for something to get my feet wet, my 97 XJ upcountry is stock so no rock climbing lol.
Because there is a lot of information regarding the GT I am looking for a good starting point so any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.
As for the west half I wouldn't sweat anything with a stock SUV/Truck. Fire roads abound. I saw a Chrysler 300 drive past me at one point early on in. I do hear the east has more terrain to deal with but can't speak on the difficulty.
I did about half in 2.5 days starting west and working east up until we peeled off for Blairsville, GA where we got some lunch and headed home. And that is with stopping for some hikes, enjoying the journey and setting up camp kinda early due to the lack of sunlight (went in mid-October). I'll be going back to do the second half with the intention of 2.5 days again. Enjoy the trip. No need to rush it and cram the whole thing in 3 otherwise you'll be missing out on some cool stuff and will spend three days driving and doing nothing else.
First site: 34.813275, -84.657945
Located on a horseshoe bend on Sumac Creek. We were looking to set up at Hickey Gap (we approached from the West coming off 411) but after a quick drive by we saw that although there were a few sites available it wasn't for us. Too close and too many people. Wanted to be able to have our own space, let the dogs run around, etc. Take a right out of Hickey Gap Campground and continue straight through the 4-way intersection. You'll soon (a mile or less) come to a horseshoe with a pull off on the right at the apex of the turn. Park there and there will be a primitive site/flat spot about 25 yds into the trees to the right of the creek (prolly see remnants of a campfire ring). The other half of our group set up there while we set up our tent in between the split of the creek a little further in. Essentially had our own private island. Heavy tree cover so don't get your hopes up for star gazing here. Real nice to have the sound of the creek flowing all night.
Second site: 34.813275, -84.150592
If you're travelling West to East like we did it'll be on your right side. You'll climb a hill for quite some time and then it'll flatten off where the clearing is off to your right. Then the road continues on turning down. You can't miss this one. It's a big clearing about 1/4 of the size of a football field. There is a trail leading out the back of the clearing into the woods - we checked it out and had a hard time turning around after it got too tight for the Wrangler and LC60 we had. Assuming some sort of hunting trail that you'd navigate either on foot or with a buggy/polaris/gator type of vehicle.
The next day we continued on looking to stop for a few hikes before heading home and passed a couple of potential sites. Need to try and find them on the map and log them. But yes, again, get the Gaia app and download the map. Be sure to unzip it. We did it on the fly with our iPad on the road and were stumped as to why it wasn't working. Figured out that it had to be unzipped to load.
