The last and fifth highpoint of this trip was the Brasstown Bald in Georgia which was conveniently in the way to Atlanta and our flight back to Michigan. We decided to take one of the trails to the top, with the decision ending up on the 6 mile round-trip hike of Jack's knob trail.
The trail was a nice forest trail with moderate inclination and a total elevation gain around 2300 ft. Apart from mosquitoes it was a nice experience in weather that actually looked more like what one would expect in The Smokey mountains as can be seen form the haziness in the picture below.
The trail passes a minor peak on the way to Brasstown Bald before descending a bit to reach the large parking lot 0.6 miles from the top of the mountain. The minor peak and the parking lot can be seen below as photographed from the state highpoint.
Reaching the top one finds a nice lookout tower and visitor center at the end of the last paved section to the top. The sign also confirms that one have reached the Georgia highpoint. In the initial low clouds this was good since higher nearby peaks could have hid only a short distance away but still completely out of sight.
As luck would have it the clouds scattered to some extent while on the base of the lookout plattform (the tower and visitor center opens for the season later in May). The resulting view can be seen in the photo below, while descending the sun started warming up the hills. and offered a helping hand motivating the hike down on somewhat tired legs.
State: Georgia
High point: Brasstown Bald
Elevation: 4784 ft (1458.2 m)
Date: May 2, 2011
Total elevation to date: 89083 ft (27152.5 m)
Access: Trail, class 1, 6 mile 3h
Difficulty rating (of 10): 2
Potential Difficulties: Blood sucking insects! Finding the trail head.
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