Last Sunday, when I tried to stretch my weekend neighborhood walk from 5 to 5½ miles, I vacillated between calling it a "walk" and a "hike." Today, I extended my weekday walk in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area from 5 to 6 miles by finally taking on the connected Sope Creek Trails, and it most definitely felt more like hiking than mere walking.
It's not that I hadn't noticed the Sope Creek trailheads off my walking route. I just that I thought they were mountain bike trails not suitable for hikers. I was wrong. The trails are narrow, not even two persons wide for the most part, and hilly and rugged, and are very similar in look and feel to some of the hiking trails one would find in the North Georgia mountains. In other words, they're ideal hiking trails.
The trails run the length of the unlovely, shadeless mile of the main trail, where it runs along the easement of the Plantation Pipeline. But as it climb up out of the Chattahoochee River floodplain, the trail snakes around as it switchbacks up the hills and around hollows formed by small streams. With all the twists and turns, you walk at least 1½ miles along the 1-mile run of the pipeline easement. The trails are surrounded by trees so they're shady (unlike the easement) and the hills contribute a degree of cardio workout missing from the flat, lower trails.
Oh, how I rue all the time I had spent prior to now down in the floodplain, when I could have been up hiking the side slopes!
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