Hemp Top Trail – GA
The north end climb from Dally Gap to the Tennessee line, just over ten miles round trip.
Photo by Griff Kerstine
- Distance
- 10.6 mi round trip
- Elevation gain
- 2,893 ft
- Trail type
- Out & Back
- Difficulty
- Strenuous
- Crossings
- No crossings recorded
- Best season
- Spring through fall.
Wilderness status
Inside Cohutta 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
Hemp Top climbs north out of Dally Gap toward Double Spring Gap and the Georgia and Tennessee state line. It runs about five and three tenths miles one way, ten and six tenths round trip, on a trail that sees far less use than the river corridors below it.
The ridge is quiet and the woods are older feeling up here. This is the link for anyone continuing into Tennessee and up Big Frog Mountain beyond the state line, and the point where the Cohutta Wilderness stops being a Georgia trip and becomes something larger.
Marquee feature
North end route toward Big Frog and the Tennessee line
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 MapsLoops that use this trail
- Hemp Top and Penitentiary Branch
13.0 mile loop
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