Chattooga River Trail

[waasj]

Looking to hike this next week. Hoping to start at the NC end (Bull Pen Road od FR 441, suggestions?) and heading south to SC 28 or further depending on if I am bringing kids along. Both are fairly accomplished hikers. If hiking solo, might aim for 76. Looking for doability, best places to park, shuttle services etc...

[mister krabs]

28 has a great place to park right next to the river at the bridge on the SC side. I've only ever gone south from there. Going south is easy to moderate, lots of old road that is now trail. A few places to camp along the river, some horse traffic. Earls Ford and Sandy Ford are car accessible so can get kind of rowdy. Good info here http://sherpaguides.com/georgia/moun...oga_river.html

[waasj]

Reasonably safe parking overnight at 28 IYO? Thinking about starting at the fish hatchery and heading south to Sandy Ford road at this point.

[jrabbott]

Parking at the Fish Hatchery is your best bet! Safe there. The river is up a good bit so expect some detours on the trail. I love this entire trail. Grew up fishing and hiking it!! Rain coming in tonight and tomorrow but looks good for next week! I would walk north up to the Elicotts Rock area and then back down and camp south of Burrells Ford - great site right on the river!!! Have fun!

[Foresight]

Is overnight parking available at the fish hatchery? I've been there numerous times but either it was a day hike or I was dropped off there. I seem to recall a gate, but I'm not 100% certain on that. Might be something you want to check into ahead of time.

[Foresight]

http://hatcheries.dnr.sc.gov/walhall...laBrochure.pdf

[jrabbott]

I have always parked there overnight. Not a problem. Straight into the East Fork of the Chattooga....then either head north or south along the river!!! Great hikes either way!!! Hope you had fun!!

[Foresight]

Good deal.

[Dogwood]

Looking to hike this next week. Hoping to start at the NC end (Bull Pen Road od FR 441, suggestions?) and heading south to SC 28 or further depending on if I am bringing kids along. Both are fairly accomplished hikers. If hiking solo, might aim for 76. Looking for doability, best places to park, shuttle services etc...

If you wind up doing this can you come back and let us know the trail conditions and trail description? Thanks Would appreciate it.

[waasj]

We put in at the Bad Creek Trailhead and headed south. Camped at Burrells Ford. Had to bail due to one of the party being ill prepared for the blaost of cold air we encountered. This was a strong cold front tright before the infamous Artic Vortex. Brought temeratures in the teens and snow with it.

The trail was in great shape and well maintained. Only one blow down on the decent to the river that required a little manouvering to get through. The second (yellow)sign for Ellicotts Rock was not apparent, so we missed it. Bummer as that was one of the reasons I wanted to go that way (might swing through on my spring trip on FHT). Campsites were a bit impacted in some places. One in particular had massive stone chairs erected around the fire ring (never seen this much effort put in to have a place to sit!!)and what seemed to be a stone oven. Looked like it was used by rafting trips perhaps. It had a stone cairn on the river to mark it.


All in all a great trip on a solid trail. I will go back again.

[FooFighter'12]

The trail was in great shape and well maintained. Only one blow down on the decent to the river that required a little manouvering to get through. The second (yellow)sign for Ellicotts Rock was not apparent, so we missed it. Bummer as that was one of the reasons I wanted to go that way (might swing through on my spring trip on FHT). Campsites were a bit impacted in some places. One in particular had massive stone chairs erected around the fire ring (never seen this much effort put in to have a place to sit!!)and what seemed to be a stone oven. Looked like it was used by rafting trips perhaps. It had a stone cairn on the river to mark it.

Upstream of Hwy 28 is off limits to rafting. There has been a big fight over the use of that section for decades. I find it interesting. This is copied from http://rabuntu.org/site/about/work-p...oga-coalition/

"By 1970, the trout fishery was in decline due to a political change in Georgia’s trout fishery management policies. Also in 1970, a public meeting was held in Clayton concerning the proposal of the Wild and Scenic River designation. Anglers were aware that this would mean closing of roads and some of the stocking access points, but protection of the river was more important. Boating activity was less than 200 trips per year, mostly in the lower river during the summer. Of over 1,000 comments, only 4 were opposed to the proposal. In 1971, Congress designated the Ellicott Rock Scenic Area and the remaining road accesses were closed. New easy trails were constructed and helicopter stocking was begun with one drop of adult brown trout per year in the middle of the Scenic Area. As a Scenic Area, use was light, consisting mostly of fishing with limited camping. Also in 1971, the movie Deliverance was filmed on the Chattooga, and boating use increased to roughly 800 trips.

In 1972, Deliverance was released. In 1973, Sports Afield ran a feature article about excellent boating and fishing the Chattooga, attracting even more out-of-state river users. In 1974, the river was designated a National Wild and Scenic River, and boating use suddenly jumped to roughly 21,000 float trips per year. The backcountry anglers’ remote solitude experience was lost, and conflicts broke out between anglers and boaters at numerous locations, mostly below Highway 28 near stocking points such as Earl’s Ford, Sandy Ford, and Lick Log. Conflicts included shouting, rock throwing, snagging of boats with treble hooks, fist fights, gun play, slashing of rafts, etc. Georgia and South Carolina discontinued stocking below the Long Bottom Ford (Highway 28). At the time, anglers thought it was because some of the access roads were being scheduled for closure and because some of the anglers had already gone elsewhere. Most anglers left because of the loss of solitude and to avoid getting involved in the conflicts along the lower river between the locals (anglers) and the outsiders (boaters). Actually, anglers learned years later, the Forest Service had asked South Carolina and Georgia DNR to discontinue the stocking of trout below Long Bottom Ford to discourage use of the area by anglers.

In 1975, Ellicott Rock Scenic Area was re-designated as the Ellicott Rock Wilderness (ERW). Like a magnet, the new Wilderness label soon made ERW the most visited Wilderness in the entire Forest Service system (measured as visitors/acre/year). However, only 13% of those visitors were anglers. Between Burrell’s Ford and Highway 28, the Forest Service was closing roads, constructing trails, and issuing new trail maps. Above Highway 28, the number of boaters was increasing, as was the number of hikers and backpackers. The Wilderness designation required the termination of the helicopter-stocking program above Burrell’s Ford. With the closing of the roads, all truck stocking was discontinued between Burrell’s Ford and the lower Nicholson Fields. The Georgia DNR trout stocking dropped to only 25,000 fingerlings in 1975.
This was the beginning of a steep decline in the quality of the angling experience (solitude and catch rate) in the Chattooga North Fork, especially in the Ellicott Rock Wilderness.

In 1976, the Development Plan for the Chattooga Wild and Scenic River was published in the Federal Register. This document tied it all together: increase in boating / detrimental effect on the fishing experience / conflicts /’zoning’ by no stocking below Long Bottom and no boating above 28. This was the formal step taken by the Forest Service to reach a compromise. Boating is permitted below Highway 28, whereas the values to be emphasized along the North Fork are solitude, fishing, hiking, and nature viewing. In 1978, Sports Afield ran another article that grossly exaggerated the Chattooga North Fork fishery. Unauthorized horse trails parallel the river above and below Highway 28.

By the 1980s, the anglers were relegated to the headwaters to avoid conflicts with boaters. Boating below Highway 28 was ramping up to over 80,000 floats per year. Again anglers had seen their solitude compromised by the new and easy trails in the Ellicott Rock Wilderness. An area where “use was light, consisting mostly of fishing” had gone to “most visited Wilderness in the Forest Service” in only 5 years! The Forest Service reacted by assigning a Wilderness Ranger to the Burrell’s Ford area to enforce the boating ban and to cope with the overuse and abuse of the ERW, and he was very effective. The backcountry fishery management program was almost non-existent. The fishery and the fishing experienced bottomed out by the early 1980′s."

[Dogwood]

FF, that was a great run down on the river history

Don't feel bad about having to search for Ellicott Rock and not finding it. It took me three separate wades into the river to eventually find it. Stood on top of the rock in the river 1/3 of my body in GA, 1/3 in SC, 1/3 in NC. Waasj, did you hike up to Bulls Pen Rd. I've never done that so wanted some trail description of that part of the Chattooga River Tr.

[waasj]

We hiked from Bull Pen Road in from the Bad Creek Trailhead (eastern side of the river). From North to South it starts out reasonably level (old road grade) for about 1.5 miles then decends to the river by a series of fairly easy switchbacks. Only one or two blowdowns that required a bit of thinking to get through. One or two possible water sources along the way, but nothing I would call reliable until you hit the river. The first real campsite we hit was at the river (~3 miles in from Bull Pen Road), very level and you could easily put 4-5 2 person tents on it, if not more. Nice fire ring and good hammock trees. (The first Ellicott rock sign was about 0.1 mile downstream from the campsite, and what I think was the path to the rock was about 0.2 miles downstream from there.) From there to Burrells Ford was easy hiking and well marked and maintained.

I also want to stand in three states, even though the most recent survey team from Auburn (suposedly) found Ellicotts mound on the top of the mountain SW of the rock that bears his initials, and almost due west of Comissioners Rock. He was quite the surveyor.