122 Cloudland Park Rd., Rising Fawn, GA, 30738

https://gastateparks.org/CloudlandCanyon

This winter we have stayed busy and have been keeping ourselves active. I haven’t posted in a while, I have been busy working on family ancestry this winter and I realized just recently we look like we have stuck our heads in the sand. We have not, we have spent this last month exploring our own park when the weather was nice enough to get out and about. Where we are we basically get one month of winter and it is the month of January.

We have done all the main hikes in the park before but I am going to change the format of my blog from weekly to monthly and pick a topic to write about. This month I am going to share with you the main hikes in our winter home, Cloudland Canyon State Park. We are about 45 min. away from Chattanooga, TN.

Overlook Trail

The easiest and most accessible trail in this park is the overlook trail. When you pull into the park it is straight down the main road. There is a large parking lot at the end. That is where you can access this trail. It wraps around the center of the canyon. It offers breath taking views and it really is a sight to behold.

the hike it self is short only about a 1 mile round trip. the trail is flat, and handicap accessible to most areas. Here are some photos from our hike. This is one of our Favorite Hikes.

Waterfalls Trail

We have not done this trail in full this year. We did it once last year and once the year before. It is an awesome chunk of trail which includes over 600 steps one way down into the canyon. We try not to do it with the dogs since they are grated steps and hard on our dogs feet. I did the bottom section up to the lower falls since it connects with Sitton’s Gulch Trail. Here are a few photos of the lower section.

Sitton’s Gulch Trail

This is once of the most strenuous trails. The first winter we where down here we came over to Cloudland Canyon State Park just to visit for a weekend with the Roof Top Tent. We hiked down from the top and then back up. it is about 7 or 8 miles total from the West Rim Campground. We were toast by the end of the day. I remember telling the boys there has to be an easier way.

And there is, park at the bottom, you still need your park pass to park there. But instead of 600 stairs down and back up. it is only about 75 stairs to get to the lower falls. You hike mainly up hill on the way in. you cross a small stream along the way. If the park has had a lot of rain this stream can be difficult to get past. But on a normal day you don’t even have to get your feet wet.

it is about a 5 mile hike in and out. it is strenuous but worth it. and if you do it this way, it is far less strenuous then doing all the stairs from the top. Plus, this way is far more dog friendly because there are far fewer stairs. Here are a few photo’s from our hike.

West Rim Trail

This hike kicked my but last year. We got done here last year and this was our first hike in the park. I took a digger that took me 2 weeks to recover from. Don’t Drag your toes when you hike here.

But needless to say this year I have done much better thankfully and I haven’t landed on my face or hip once this season, knock on wood. This trail has some of the best views from the park. It gets you out to the edge of the rim. It is a lot of rolling ups and downs, not too strenuous of a hike. I you park in the parking lot it is a true loop and take you hike from 4or 5 miles down to 3 miles. We have had to shorten our hikes this winter because Chewbacca isn’t a young buck anymore and starts to limp is we walk to far. Here are some photos from our hike.

I hope you enjoyed my post. right after our west rim hike the next day we woke up to some winter. Here it is to finish off my post. Look forward to a post the first part of March for our February Adventure down here in Georgia