Emery Creek Trail
Fourteen crossings up Emery Creek to a pair of falls on the Holly Creek side.
- Distance
- 13.5 mi round trip
- Elevation gain
- 3,192 ft
- Trail type
- Out & Back
- Difficulty
- Strenuous
- Crossings
- 14 crossings
- Best season
- Summer and early fall. Crossings are cold and frequent.
Wilderness status
Outside the wilderness
Bicycles
Bicycles are prohibited on this trail. Mechanized transport, including mountain bikes, is banned in designated wilderness under federal law by the Wilderness Act of 1964. This is enforced by the Forest Service. Do not ride here.
The trail
Emery Creek is the Holly Creek side answer to the Jacks River, starting near the confluence with Holly Creek and ending at the old Cherokee Campground. Fourteen crossings in thirteen and a half miles, two waterfalls of about forty feet each in the lower reaches, and one of the steepest sustained grades in north Georgia, dropping more than fifteen hundred feet in the first three miles alone. Keep climbing past the trail's end on the connecting Tearbritches Trail and the grade keeps up all the way to the top of Little Bald Mountain.
The crossings come fast in the first few miles and there is no way to keep your feet dry, so plan for it and bring the shoes that make it pleasant instead of miserable. This trailhead is the closest of the major ones to the Old CCC Camp Road corridor.
Marquee feature
Waterfalls low on the creek, fourteen crossings
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