After the Flood: hiking the Hooch

Just a short update to let you know that the Chattahoochee River Trails are, for the most part, back open. This press release is the most up to date information I have found about specific parks and parking areas, other than the first-hand account I can give you of the East Palisades Trail in Sandy Springs.

First off, we realized upon arriving that East Palisades is the first trail we hiked from our hiking bible, 60 Hikes within 60 Miles of Atlanta (and Marietta blah blah blah). This picture to the right is of us after we finished.

While the trail isn’t crazy difficult, I was still smoking and neither of us were in great shape, so it was a bit of a challenge. Yesterday, we practically skipped through the whole trail. After we pranced to the top of the toughest climb, we had a moment, reflected on some newfound awesomeness and actually, some disappointment that we weren’t really getting as good of a workout as we’d wanted. Funny.

Now, back to the trail. It was in relatively good shape on the hills, but thick with mud along the river. Check our Facebook Photo Album for pics, but as you can imagine, there were trees down, giant pools of trash in every cove along the river bank and giant heaps of trash along the coast. The entire trail is passable, but be prepared to get muddy and definitely wear your boots.

Did you know there is an Atlanta Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation?? They are organizing a cleanup at the Paces Mill park on October 24th and have a Facebook page with updates about volunteer opportunities. See what happens when surfers are land-locked? Good stuff. That’s what happens.

The Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper also has some cleanup dates scheduled. Check out their website for meet up information and updates.