Trail
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The Appalachian Trail's first white blaze sits at 3,770 feet, about an hour of mountain road from a Blue Ridge cabin.
Photo: Thomson20192CC0
Two long-distance trails start on the same low wooded summit south-east of Blue Ridge, and neither of them starts with a view. Springer Mountain is 3,770 feet of hardwood and rock on the line between Fannin and Gilmer counties, and the thing that marks it is a bronze plaque set into stone, a hiker in profile, with the first white blaze of the Appalachian Trail beside it. Every year a few thousand people touch that plaque and start walking towards Maine. The Benton MacKaye Trail begins a few hundred yards north and goes the other way, north-west into the Cohuttas and eventually the Smokies.
What surprises most visitors is how easy it is to get here. The Appalachian Trail did not always finish in Georgia at all: until 1958 the southern end was Mount Oglethorpe, about twenty miles south-west, and the trail was cut back when development crept up that ridge. The replacement terminus is crossed by Forest Service Road 42 less than a mile north of the summit, so from the small gravel pull-off there you walk about 0.9 miles south to the plaque. That is a forty-minute stroll, not an expedition, and it is why a Blue Ridge cabin makes a plausible base for standing at the start of the Appalachian Trail before lunch.
The summit is a broad rock ledge with an opening in the trees looking roughly west. In winter and early spring, before the leaves come in, you get ridges stacked to the horizon. In July you get green. The register box beside the plaque is the better attraction: a battered notebook full of handwriting from people who are four hours into a five-month walk, and it is worth reading a page or two before you sign it.
Understand what this is and it is one of the most affecting places in north Georgia. Turn up expecting a viewing platform and a gift shop and you will drive back down a gravel road wondering what the fuss was.
The short approach begins where the Appalachian Trail crosses Forest Service Road 42, about 0.9 miles north of the summit. From Blue Ridge the route runs south on Aska Road, then across to Doublehead Gap Road and onto the forest road network; allow roughly an hour, the last part on gravel.
There is no bus, no shuttle from town and no signposted tourist route. Fuel up in Blue Ridge or Morganton, because there is nothing between the pavement and the trailhead.
The alternative is the 8.5-mile Approach Trail from Amicalola Falls State Park, which is a full day on foot in each direction.
Forest Service roads here close seasonally and after storm damage. Check the Chattahoochee National Forest's current alerts before you set off rather than discovering a locked gate forty minutes in.
The short walk to the terminus starts where the Appalachian Trail crosses Forest Service Road 42, 0.9 miles north of the summit. Getting to that crossing is the actual undertaking.
From Blue Ridge the usual line is Aska Road, then Newport Road and Doublehead Gap Road towards Nimblewill, then onto the forest road network. Allow an hour and accept that the last stretch is gravel, single-lane in places, with drop-offs and blind bends. A standard saloon car handles it in dry summer conditions at about fifteen miles an hour. After heavy rain, and through late winter, it can be rutted and greasy, and the Forest Service closes sections of the network seasonally without much warning.
Two practical points. Mobile signal disappears well before the trailhead, so download your route before you leave the cabin rather than relying on a live map. And the parking at the crossing is a widening in the road, not a car park; on a March weekend it fills, and people park along the verge for several hundred yards in both directions.
If the road is closed or your vehicle is not up to it, the honest alternative is the Approach Trail from Amicalola Falls, covered below. It is a different day entirely.
The terminus is marked by two things set into the rock: a bronze plaque showing a hiker with a pack, and the first white blaze painted on stone. A steel register box is bolted alongside. That is the whole installation. No building, no water, no bin, no toilet.
About 0.2 miles north along the trail is the Springer Mountain Shelter, a three-sided timber sleeping platform put up in 1993 by the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club, with a privy and a spring below it. Day visitors should treat it as somebody's bedroom rather than a picnic spot, especially in March.
The Benton MacKaye Trail's own southern terminus sits roughly 0.3 miles north of the summit, signed with the trail's white diamond. Walking the first mile of the BMT is a quieter alternative to retracing your steps, and it makes the point that this summit is a junction, not just an end.
Take everything out with you, including orange peel and apple cores. This is a wilderness-standard backcountry site with no staff and no services, and it shows the strain of being the most-visited trailhead in Georgia.
The northbound thru-hiking season peaks in the first three weeks of March. Cars fill the FS 42 crossing, shuttle drivers run relays from Amicalola and Dahlonega, and the register fills a page a day. If you want to see what the start of a five-month walk looks like, this is when to come, and the atmosphere is genuinely worth the drive.
If you want the summit to yourself, come in the second half of October or on a clear weekday in January. Leaf-off means the western view actually works, which it barely does in summer. Frozen ground also makes the forest roads firmer than a wet March.
Weather at 3,770 feet is not Blue Ridge town weather. Reckon on five to ten degrees Fahrenheit colder than the cabin, with wind on the ledge and cloud sitting on the ridge when the valley is clear. Ice forms on the north side of the trail well after the town has thawed. In March, snow on Springer is unremarkable.
Sunset from the ledge is good and the walk out afterwards is not, because the gravel road has no lighting, no signal and deer. Bring real torches, not phone screens.
The purist route is the Approach Trail, 8.5 miles from the visitor centre at Amicalola Falls State Park to the summit, starting with the staircase beside Georgia's tallest waterfall. It climbs roughly two thousand feet overall and takes most people five to seven hours one way.
It is not part of the Appalachian Trail. It is a feeder path, and plenty of thru-hikers skip it and start at FS 42 instead, which causes a mild and permanent argument at the shelter.
For a cabin holiday it only makes sense as a one-way walk with a shuttle or a second car, or as an out-and-back to the Len Foote Hike Inn junction. The Hike Inn itself sits five miles in on its own trail, is reachable only on foot, and is booked well ahead.
The realistic comparison: FS 42 gives you the terminus in under an hour of walking, after an hour of driving. Amicalola gives you a full day, a proper climb and a waterfall. Families with young children want the first. Anyone who came here to walk wants the second.
Straight-line distances, so allow more on the road — the island is long and has one main parkway.
The quieter long trail: 300 miles from Springer Mountain to the Smokies, and the one that actually runs through Fannin County.
1–8 hoursFree. No permit required for day walking, no facilities on the trail.7.8 mi away
Photograph: Unsplash
A broad, stepped falls a few minutes off the Appalachian Trail, reached by a forest road that does most of the work of keeping it quiet.
2–4 hoursFree. No fee, no facilities, no waste collection.3.1 mi away
Photograph: Frances Long Taylor
Georgia's best-known wild trout creek, where the 16-inch size limit means almost everything you catch goes back.
3–8 hoursFree to access. A Georgia fishing licence and trout licence are required to fish.3.6 mi away
Photograph: Scott Long
One river, two personalities: a lazy summer float above the lake, and a cold tailwater below the dam that fishes all year.
2–7 hoursFree to access. Forest Service recreation areas charge a day-use parking fee, and rentals and shuttles are extra.11.4 mi away
Photograph: Thomson200
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Almost. Forest Service Road 42 crosses the Appalachian Trail about 0.9 miles north of the summit, and from that gravel pull-off it is a walk of roughly forty minutes each way to the terminus plaque. You cannot drive to the summit itself. Getting to the crossing from Blue Ridge takes about an hour, the last stretch on single-lane gravel, and the forest closes sections of that road network seasonally and after storm damage.
Roughly an hour by road to the Forest Service Road 42 trail crossing, going south on Aska Road and across to Doublehead Gap Road before joining the forest road network. The straight-line distance is far shorter than the driving distance, which is normal here: the ridges run the wrong way and the roads go around them. Allow longer in wet weather, when the gravel sections slow everything down.
A limited one. The terminus sits on a broad rock ledge with a gap in the trees looking roughly west towards stacked ridgelines. In summer the hardwood canopy closes most of it off. Between late October and April, with the leaves down, it opens up properly and is genuinely good at the end of the day. People who come expecting a panoramic summit are usually disappointed; the interest here is the plaque, the first white blaze and the hiker register.
The Benton MacKaye Trail, whose southern terminus sits about 0.3 miles north of the summit and which runs almost three hundred miles north-west towards the Great Smoky Mountains. For the first few miles the two trails share ground before separating. Walking a mile of the Benton MacKaye is a quieter way to extend the visit than retracing the Appalachian Trail, and it is signed with a white diamond rather than a white rectangle.
The northbound wave peaks in the first three weeks of March, with a long tail either side from February into April. That is when the parking at the road crossing overflows, shuttle drivers are running back and forth from Amicalola and Dahlonega, and the summit register fills a page a day. It is the most interesting time to visit and the worst time to want solitude.
