Hatchet Creek Rd and Helton Creek Rd

Hatchet Creek Rd and Helton Creek Rd may be used as a convenient dirt road shortcut between Georgia Highway 348 / Richard B Russell Scenic Highway to the east and US Highway 19 / Gainesville Highway, to the west. When passing through, be sure to stop and take a quick walk down to the picturesque Helton Creek Falls.

Download the Hatchet Creek .kmz file.

View the Hatchet Creek .kmz file in Google Maps.

Swallow Creek WMA

This dirt and gravel road network is found north of Unicoi State Park, near Helen, Georgia. This area is roughly bound by Georgia Highway 17 to the west, US Highway 76 to the north, Georgia Highway 197 to the east and Georgia Highway 356 to the south. Found within are a number of designated areas including the Swallow Creek WMA, High Shoals Scenic Area, Tray Mountain Wilderness, Anna Ruby Falls Scenic Area and the Lake Burton WMA. Additionally, the Appalachian Trail passes through this beautiful wilderness. For the road network in the Lake Burton WMA and portions of the Tray Mountain Wilderness, please see Section 2 of the Tallulah River Rd to West Wildcat Creek Rd file, Dicks Creek to West Wildcat Creek Rd. Nearly all the roads in the network are passable with car in a normal automobile. A high clearance vehicle is not likely required, except for one section. The section of Tray Mountain Road located between Corbin Creek Road and Chimney Mountain Road is quite rough. A couple miles of smaller rocks and boulders will bring you and your vehicle to a crawl. While the rocks are not large, they are plentiful and they may create problems for many AWD vehicles. As a result, I recommend a higher clearance vehicle with some form of underbody protection (skidplates).

Including the 'out and back', deadend distance of Mill Creek Rd, the entire drive was nearly 40 miles of dirt and gravel roads with over 50 waypoints collected.

This is a nice area to drive, with many hiking opportunities available.

Download the Swallow Creek WMA.kmz file.

View the Swallow Creek WMA.kmz file in Google Maps.

Catching up and looking forward

I'm behind on getting the new route data cleaned up. I'm also making a few changes to the way I displayed older data. Hopefully, the changes I make now will help when I produce the final route map.

As it stands, I believe I will have the majority of the route wrapped up early 2012 and the plan is to have a proper, hard copy Georgia Overland route map printed and available by Fall 2012.

Stay tuned...