Iron Mountain Trail

Iron Mountain Trail was built in the late 1990s as one of the first trails in the range designed with mountain biking in mind, and riding it clockwise from Cottonwood Patch Campground is still the way to do it, since finishing with the long climb out of the Conasauga instead of starting with it makes for a much worse day. The loop fords the Conasauga within the first half mile, climbs through old roadbed singletrack for about two miles, drops into a fun descent, then climbs again to just over fifteen hundred feet at a three way junction. A short side trip on Doogan Tower Road reaches the site of an old fire tower, though the view has grown in.

The trail continues past a gap and an overlook with views east into the Cohuttas, then drops steeply to a second, harder ford of the Conasauga, this one waist deep at normal flow and best avoided after rain. On the far side, the route turns onto an old railroad grade that follows the river closely, past short cliffs, rapids, and swimming holes, before becoming the Conasauga River Trail as it works back toward Georgia and the trailhead off Peavine Sheeds Creek Road. The whole loop sits outside the Cohutta Wilderness, on national forest and wildlife management land on both sides of the state line, which is the only reason a bike is legal here at all.

The second ford is the one to respect. At around two hundred cubic feet per second on the USGS gauge downstream in Eton, the crossing runs two and a half to three feet deep over a slick, irregular riverbed, easy footing to lose in a real current. Check the gauge and skip it after recent rain.