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

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At 0.9 mile, the Benton MacKaye Trail enters on the left and shares the Hemp Top treadway to the border with Tennessee. Continue straight, and take the bend to the north, passing beds of creeping cedar. Steady and easy, the trail rises to the spine of Blue Ridge at 1.4 miles, and you can gaze down slopes to the left and right. Keep alert, as you might encounter a bear along this stretch. I scouted this section following a summer drought that depleted food resources for local animals, and bears were roaming the ridges scrounging for food. The first evidence of this was the frequent swarms of yellow jackets; spots along the trail were scarred from where bears had dug up their burrows in search of yellow jacket larvae. The surefire evidence was the bear that came cruising around my tent at 2 a.m.—a heart-pounding moment to say the least.

At 2.3 miles, you reach the junction with the Penitentiary Branch Trail (Waypoint 2). Bear right to stay on the Hemp Top Trail, which is flat and bordered by pines and oaks. Traveling this section on a summer morning, I saw sunlight breaching the ridge on my right and setting the woods to the west aglow. From here the path is covered in grass and alternates between flat sections and slight upward grades, and along the trail you can see the tattered, gray trunks of shagbark hickory.