Trails & Rivers Editor
Beat: Things to Do, Hiking & Waterfalls, Best Time to Visit
Wyatt grew up fishing the Toccoa tailwater and still checks the generation schedule before he checks the forecast. He covers the Aska trails, the Benton MacKaye, the waterfall routes and the lake, and he is blunt about gravel grades, rutted Forest Service roads and water that rises faster than people expect. If a bridge is closed, he says so.
4 guides · 4 news posts
Last updatedWyatt's most recent update to this site was .
Long-form
Reported guides to Blue Ridge, each with its own publication and last-updated date.
Colour here is a function of height, not of the calendar. The county spans about 2,300 feet of elevation and the change comes downhill over roughly three weeks.
7 min read
Photograph: Unsplash
Nearly everything free in Fannin County is free at the point of use and costs you a tank of fuel and forty minutes of gravel. Here is what is worth that trade.
6 min read
Photograph: Unsplash
Four schedules decide what you can do here, and none of them is the weather: the railway season, the picking calendar, the dam releases and the lake drawdown.
7 min read
Photograph: Unsplash
The walks are short. The gravel roads that reach them are not, and that is what actually decides your afternoon. What each waterfall is really like, and how to get there.
6 min read
Photograph: Unsplash
News desk
Shorter, dated pieces about what is changing in Blue Ridge.
How this was written. News published under Wyatt Ledford's byline was drafted by machine from primary sources — operator notices, government and municipal releases, published schedules — and every factual claim in it was matched to one of those sources before it published. A Blue Ridge Guide editor can change or pull any of it. Our editorial standards.
There is no peak date, only a front that comes down the mountain. The county spans about 2,300 feet of elevation, and that is the whole forecast.
Photograph: Unsplash
Same water as the Toccoa, different state, different name, and a river bed that is largely dry unless the TVA has opened a gate that morning.
Photograph: Unsplash
The southern end of the Appalachian Trail sits on the Fannin county line at 3,770 feet. For two months a year it is the busiest quiet place in Georgia.
Photograph: Unsplash
A reservoir at 1,686 feet in July is a different lake in February. The level swings roughly 20 feet in a typical year and the shoreline moves a long way out.
Photograph: Unsplash