Lora and I headed out to Barker Camp Road to hike the North End of the South Section of the N. Chickamauga Creek Segment of the Cumberland trail.
Is this section complete?? Well I will describe it the only way I can. We took the blue blazed trail from the parking lot to where it dumps you out on an old roadbed with no further marking. From prior experience I knew that if you went left uphill you would eventually come across the trail heading to Stevenson's Branch. If you go right and downhill you will end up on Cain Creek. From Cain Creek you have to make your way back upstream until you find the Furnace Rock. You will see the bridge from there. There is no trail to the bridge so you have to climb your own way there. At the other end of the bridge you will find a staircase and at the end of it nothing. If you go to the bluff wall and go right climbing over the rocks you will find Vortex Falls. If you go to the bluff wall and go left up the hillside you will eventually find the trail. Now this section of trail is blazed. The trail is partly built being that there are a lot of rocks. Some are stable and there are some good steps. Problem is there are a lot of the rocks which are loose so you don't know which ones you can trust. There is a section that has washed down into the creek and a couple of blow downs.
The trail follows Cain Creek and is blazed up until the confluance of Chickamauga Creek. Here the trail is just flagged. You follow the flagging and the trail will climb up and follow some bluff lines. After the bluff lines the trail will go uphill and follow an old roadbed. Shortly up the roadbed the flagging goes off to the left, but there is no trail here. The trail continues along the roadbed and is not marked in any way. The roadbed goes across the top of the mountain for a while and then drops back of into the Chickamauga Creek Gorge. Here the blazing starts back up for a while before going back to just flagging. We turned back at Holly Branch because of time. It looks like they either had a log bridge here or have one to be placed.
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