Trail reports for Bartram Trail

Overall rating: 5
Scenic rating: 5
Difficulty rating: 5
Pete Pitocchi, his ten year old son Peter Frank and myself Richard Beck walked the B.T. from the southern terminus to the end past Raybun Bald 37 miles. We started out July 1, 2006. It is fun to cross the brideg over the Chatooga into SC as you start your trek. If you do the entire hike to the NC state line you can honestly state you walked from SC thru GA to NC! Only because we are inexperienced with judging distances we missed several important camping stops and went 18 miles almost to Warwomans Dell before we stopped at dusk and slept along the trail near some water. We wish the camps were clearly marked with signs. The trail is well blazed with yellow diamonds and there are actually several steel suspension bridges across major water, impressive! The first six or seven miles along the river you may encounter people camping with their cars. Once the BT veers away from the river you will see no more car campers. The trail had water running in many places as it had rained a lot the week before we got there. The night temperatures hovered around a very comfortable 65 degrees. Record lows cold be around 42 degrees so plan accordingly. I did not carry a sleeping bag and slep in long johns which proved to be too warm. There were almost no mosquitoes. But the knats were a constant aggrevation around my eyes and buzzing in tighter and tighter circles around and ending uo in my ears. Day time temperstures were low eighties, enough to see me sweating. We saw a few day hikers going south on the route from Warwomans Dell on the morning of our second day. Warwomans has picknic shelters, cold running water, and a chem toilet. This will be your only civilized area on the entire GA BT. After Warwomans Dell we crossed a two lane hardtop road. Then came a great series of splendid water falls. The trail is easy to follow. i saw not need to refer to a map or use a compas. It is prudent to carry a trail mile-by-mile narrative to asist in planning how far to hike each day. Water can be scarcxe on long portions, so plane carefully where you want to camp each day. The culminating event after the several water falls is the view from Raybun Bald. It's a long clinb and strenuous, but the trails is well mantained with wooden bridges over major streams. Sometime the trail has some loose rocks on it. Sometime we walked thru a "tunnel" of laural trees. GPS and Cell phones DO NOT work on most of the trail. We did get reception on Raybun bald. When on the observation deck be sure to sneak a peek thru the deck boards. There were many wild black berry shrubs just starting to have ripe and sweet berries for the picking. We helped ourselves. We saw one harmless Garter Snake, one yellowish box turtle, and many deer. The squirrels like to chew on the plastic BT blazes attached to the trees. They also chew on the aluminum wildlife management signs as the trail skirts that boundry for msany miles. The metal signs nailed about seven feet up the trees had shiny 3/4" paintless boarders where the tree rats chawed on 'em. The trail is quite easy to follow. There is very little hiking on dirt roads, none on pavement. This trail is remote, I do not recommend using it without careful planning unless you can shuttle vehicles and keep your distances short each day. There is very little trail that is realy flat. The camp sites are almost alweays sloping a little. We did see other hikers including several groups of Scouts. We saw 27 males and two escourted females. No unaccompanied women were seen. Everyone was friendly and freely talked about water availability. This Bartram Trail in Georgia is what mountainous backpacking is all about. Apparently dogs are allowed on the path. Plan well and it will be an unforgettable hike.