Читать книгу Afoot & Afield: Atlanta. 108 Spectacular Outings in North-Central Georgia онлайн

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Cohutta Wilderness

Quiet. Solitude. The middle of nowhere. These things become more elusive as civilization creeps up on Georgia’s green spaces. But the ridgebacks and river bottoms of the Cohutta Wilderness can carry you far away from the city rumble. Spanning 36,977 acres, the Cohutta is one of the largest wilderness areas in the Southeast. From 1915 to 1930, the Conasauga River Lumber Company extracted timber from about 70% of the area, but the U.S. Forest Service purchased most of the land between 1934 and 1935. The forest started its slow recovery, and then in 1975 the Cohutta became Georgia’s first designated wilderness area. With this high level of protection, the forest is preserved in as natural a state as possible, prohibiting timber harvesting, human-made structures, and the use of motorized vehicles on the trails. The Cohutta Wilderness has more than 92 miles of hiking trails, and the adjoining 8,082-acre Big Frog Wilderness has another 33 miles, making this one of the most massive tracts of contiguous forest in the eastern United States. The five overnight hikes and day hikes included in this chapter are a good sampling of the area’s diverse terrain.