Why I love Georgia’s great outdoors: Trail racing
At five in the morning, I stretch my legs and get out of the car into a downpour. My friend Ethan and I are at Unicoi State Park in Helen for a half marathon up Smith Mountain, a small forested peak in North Georgia. The morning is still dark, and we fill our packs with snacks and water for our first trail race. The rain is so loud that we fall mostly silent. “You know what would be sick?” Ethan says through the rain. “If we saw a bear today.”
I nod in agreement. It would be sick, but I can’t help but think that this desire is not significant. The bear conversation is one I have had countless times in my teens and early 20s, probably twice before with Ethan. Like many who have come before me and many who will come after, I want to see a bear in the wild. I think about what I might do if I ever came face to face with a bear. Yelling seems like the natural reaction, but what would I say? Something better than “Bear!,” right?
Bears are American in nature and culture. They are idolized maybe more than the bald eagle, through comforting characters like Smokey Bear, Winnie the Pooh, and your teddy bear. Throughout Helen’s downtown, there are statues, memorabilia shops, and streets dedicated to them. But in the wild, bears are powerful and unpredictable, which can be a lethal one-two for humans. Even black bears (as many as 5,100 of which live in Georgia), which are smaller and just want your lunch, can attack and kill in self-defense. They are not rare enough to never appear, but they are elusive enough for our fearful admiration.
I am now at the starting line of the race, with no course of action to escape a bear if I had to. There are about 300 people here to run the trail in the rain. Ethan scarfs down a banana next to me. I had signed up for the trail race with him as a way of forcing myself onto nature. When I was growing up in St. Louis, my parents had too many jobs, and I played too many sports. Hiking seemed to me like a hobby you did when you could afford the time. I hiked a few times in my childhood at a cousin’s house, on flat ground. When I got to Atlanta for college, the forest tempted me, but I never acted. I idealized it from afar, in books, in an ecopoetry class at Emory, and through social media set to euphoric background music. Today, I’m about to run up my first mountain, with rain as the drowning soundtrack.
After the first few flat miles, next to Smith Creek, we start our climb. The dirt trail is all mud, and our feet sink deeper the farther we go. But spirits are high. Ethan and I sing a chant to keep us sloshing on, and we meet runners from Florida and the Carolinas. A man from Florida follows our song and joins us, forming a pack. The rain is a wall now, and when I look into the forest next to us, I can’t see past the torrent.
“Shit,” says the Florida man.
“Are you okay?” yells Ethan.
“Yeah, I mean actual shit,” the Florida man says. “That was bear shit on the trail.”
Our song stops, and although we keep climbing, the importance of the race fades. All of my senses are alert for potential danger; something else is here with us on the trail.
A few minutes later, Ethan stops running and looks to our right. In the distance, I see a black bear, high in a tree, on a large branch. It’s a ball of fur first, and then the bear unfurls and stretches its front legs forward. The bear’s eyes are glowing at me, and I feel significant looking back. I break out of the moment when the ground underneath suddenly starts falling, and I catch myself on a tree. As I was watching the bear, the muddy edge of the trail I stood on had slid away, and I had almost gone down the ridge with it.
We have a race to run, so we push on and summit Smith Mountain around mile seven. The trail loops us around the other side of the mountain. Tracks from runners ahead have filled with water, but our descent is fast through the rain. Better runners than us clap at the finish line as we cross it. The race in Helen was the most physically difficult thing I had ever done at that point, but I left knowing I would come back to run with nature again.
Three trails to hike at your own pace
East Palisades: North Loop and Bamboo Forest
Located at I-75 and 285, the East Palisades meander along the Chattahoochee River. Take the North Loop, a 5.6-mile rolling trail with 750 feet of elevation gain, which will take you through a bamboo forest with scenic views of the river much of the way.
Mount Yonah Trail
For a steeper challenge, Mount Yonah in North Georgia has a 4.1-mile out-and-back trail with 1,400 feet of elevation gain to the top. Hike it for the outstanding views of the Blue Ridge Mountains; run it for that, too, and the grueling test.
Amicalola Falls State Park
The entire park is worth a mention here. Try the 16-mile out-and-back trail that Appalachian Trail hikers use to start their journey to Springer Mountain, which takes you past Amicalola Falls, a 729-foot waterfall. There are other great hikes in the park, like the Len Foote Hike Inn (9.4 miles out-and-back), which takes you on the last portion of the Georgia Death Race, a 74-mile ultramarathon and one of the most infamous in the U.S. for the low finishing rate every year.
Xavier Stevens is managing editor of Atlanta magazine.
This article appears in our August 2024 issue.
The post Why I love Georgia’s great outdoors: Trail racing appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.
The forest tempted me, but I stayed away until I did a trail race up Smith Mountain in Helen. The pouring rain didn’t bother me; the encounter with a bear did.
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