Bear Creek Trail
A loop to the Gennett Poplar, open to bikes, and the busiest trail on this list.
- Distance
- 8.5 mi loop
- Elevation gain
- 1,122 ft
- Trail type
- Loop
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Crossings
- No crossings recorded
- Best season
- Year round.
Wilderness status
Outside the wilderness
Bicycles
Bicycles are permitted. This trail lies outside the designated wilderness boundary. Yield to hikers and expect two-way traffic on blind corners.
The trail
Bear Creek is the exception on this page in almost every way. It sits outside the wilderness boundary, which means bicycles are legal, and less than a mile in it holds the Gennett Poplar, a tulip poplar over a hundred feet tall and about twenty feet around at the base. It is the second largest living tree in Georgia, and it survived the clear cutting that took most of the old growth around it because the Gennett Lumber Company, which logged this land in the early twentieth century, chose to leave it standing.
Eight and a half miles as a loop with modest gain, along a creek the whole way. This is the most ridden singletrack in this part of the state and it is the reason the mountain bike traffic comes to this side of the ridge at all. Expect to share it on a weekend.
Marquee feature
The Gennett Poplar, one of the largest trees in Georgia
Getting there
Forest Service roads to the Cohutta trailheads are gravel, seasonally gated, and often without cell service. Download directions before you leave pavement.
Access roads and winter closures
Open trailhead in Google Maps
Stay near the trailheads
Sherpa Camp — a cabin at the edge of the wilderness.
The drive in from Atlanta or Chattanooga is long enough that most people are better off sleeping near the gate than starting at 4 a.m. Sherpa Camp is a small cabin on Holly Creek, on the western edge of the Cohutta Wilderness, about 25 minutes from Ellijay. It sleeps five, with a covered porch, a firepit, and a creek. Cell service ends before you get there.
See Sherpa Camp