Stone Mountain - Cherokee and Walk-up Trails (DeKalb County, Georgia)

 I've hiked up and around Stone Mountain many times since moving to the Atlanta area three years ago, but with today being a holiday and Stone Mountain only a short drive from home, I decided to get some more trail miles in with one of the local hiking clubs. The organizer of today's group is the same gentleman that lead the hike yesterday along the Pinhoti Trial. 

After parking my car, I met the group near the base of the walk-up trail. As is customary, we went through a quick round of introductions and then started to make our counter-clockwise around the mountain along the Cherokee Trail. It's always been interesting to me that Stone Mountain Park is as much of a "tourist trap" as it is, while still maintaining some since of the outdoors along these trails. 

There are quite a few people out hiking today, but perhaps not as many as I would have expected. We push a pretty good pace as we continue around the mountain. Past the Washington W. King Covered Bridge and onto the Stone Mountain Grist Mill, where we stop for a short restroom break. I always love seeing these old buildings. 

Quickly, we regroup and continue on to complete the loop, but we end up stopping just shy of the normal walk-up trail to climb what the organizer refers to as the "Side Trail". This is a less-used and pretty steep ascent towards the top of Stone Mountain. I'm actually pretty happy to find this new trail and to get my heart pumping as we make our way up the challenging grade. Along the way, one woman in our group slips and cuts her hand. She assures us that she's okay and only requires a small bandage for the cut. 

Continuing on, we eventually join the normal walk-up trail. The granite is a bit wet in places, and the organizer feels it would be better to go up using the hand rails. Probably a good idea. As always, the climb up this huge chunk of granite gets me breathing pretty hard, but I keep pushing myself until I finally reach the top. The rest of the group arrives within a couple of minutes and we all find a place to sit and take in the view for a few minutes. It's a wonderfully clear day and we can see downtown Atlanta clearly to the west and some of the closer northern Georgia mountains in the distance.

After our short break, we start to head back down the Walk-up Trail and back to our cars. It's a quick jaunt from here. Once we arrive, we say our goodbyes and depart. My app tells me that I've hiked 6.9 miles on today's trip and with the steep climb, I feel I got a pretty decent workout.