Panther Creek Dayhike

“This past Sunday I went with my daughters, 7 and 9 years old, and my brother-in-law on the Panther Creek trail near Tallulah Gorge in Georgia. It was a beautiful, high 50's cloudless days. It was in the mid thirties when we left Atlanta Sunday morning, but within the first mile of the hike I was down to a t-shirt. I wanted to test my new backpack, so I packed it to around 25-30 lbs, mostly water, and wore it on the trail.

Panther Creek trail is fairly easy 7 mile round trip hike to a gorgeous waterfall (the trail continues on, but we turned back at the falls). Most of the trail followed along the creek, passing multiple small waterfalls along the way with some very narrow ledges with 20 to 40 ft drops. Some of the ledges had overhanging rock walls that caused me to have to do a little twisting to get by while wearing a full pack. The trail even took a weird turn where it went straight up a rock scramble without much of any kind of trail to be seen, then, 15' higher up, there was the trail again. It is very easy to miss this turn. If you do, you end up following a trail that slowly peters out and you find yourself bushwacking along the gorge floor. On the way back we saw a guy doing exactly that. I really felt bad for him. So if you do this trail, watch for some cables stretched between two trees making a gate that is supposed to block your way. Don't go past that.

The payoff on this hike was the waterfalls. There is a nice one about 2.6 miles in with some large boulders and ledges hanging out over it, but the main falls was a mile further. The trail down the last stretch was pretty non-existent. In some places, a cable with poles barely cemented into the ground - some dangling in thin air - was the only thing that seperated the sloping ledge from a sheer drop into the falls below. But at the bottom it opened up to a wide flat area with perfectly spaced boulders to serve as picnic tables. The river cascades down the 50 foot falls and splashes into a large pool at its base. Very picturesque. I imagine it is a very popular place in the summer. As it was, we probably saw 20-25 people and 10-12 dogs in the 5 1/2 hours we were out there.
The girls rolled up their pants and stripped off their boots and commenced playing in the water, boulder hopping and doing all the other things kids do when they reach mecca. We hung around for the better part of an hour just enjoying the view. I heated some water and we had hot chocolate to top off our lunch. The site was pretty clean, but I was disappointed to find a small pile of broken beer bottles.
The 3 1/2 mile hike out only took two hours. Pretty good for two 7 and 9 yo girls. After 7 miles I still felt pretty good even though I had packed about 25-30 lbs (mostly water) in my pack to make it a real test.

We still had a couple hours so we drove over to Tallulah Gorge and did a little hiking there. Tallulah Gorge is an amazing place, but a little too much like a Disney park for my taste. The trails were landscaped, level and well maintained. You could push a stroller on them as easy as you could on a sidewalk. They have stairs that lead to the bottom of the gorge - 440 down, then 440 back up - with a cool suspension bridge 2/3rds of the way down. We went down to the gorge floor then took the steps up to the other rim, where we walked approximately a mile around the rim, over the highway bridge next to the dam, and back to our starting point. Beautiful views of the gorge and the dam, but it didn't really seem real since it was so over maintained.

All in all, a really good day. My girls were worn out, but they had a good time. They might not have wanted to repeat the good time the next day, but they are excited about our planned backpacking trip in march/april.”