Date: 01/25/2022
Name: Frady Branch Loop & Three Waterfalls€“ Near Currahee Mtn.
Distance: 5
Difficulty: Easy to Moderate
Total Climbing Elevation: 682
Type: Loop
Notes: Another good day for a hike with seasonably cool and cloudy weather warming up quite nicely to near 60 degrees with sunny skies. The trails were mostly dry and in mixed condition. Where the eastern section of the Frady Branch Loop follows the creek, there is a significant amount of rocks and deep rutting from lack of drainage control and use by horse, bikes and hikers. The trail in this section has several very shallow wet crossings back and forth across Frady Branch. There are also several small cascades along Frady Branch. We did find the three waterfalls we were seeking on an unnamed tributary of Mill Creek. These are accessible with some bushwhacking and scrambling down through some rocky, brushy and steep embankments. These falls are best found off an old "jeep trail" paralleling the Frady Branch Trail. While there was not much water flowing, it was good to find the Staircase, Roughshot and Little Beauty Falls which would be difficult to locate in the growing season. Just above these three falls we also found a low, constructed rock dam. Lastly, on the way up to Latham Road, there is a very impressive large rock formation overlooking the trail. Regarding this formation, below are comments by Bruce O'Connor,PhD, Retired Geologist who hikes frequently with us. "Impressive cliffs of white granite crop out on the west side of the trail at the SW corner of the loop. Geologically the rock is typical of granite being composed predominantly of light colored quartz and feldspar minerals. The age of this granite has not been determined, but it is probably 300-400 million years old – similar to most granite in Georgia. (Stone Mt. Granite is the youngest at 300 m.y., but there are a few other much older granites in the state that are 1 billion years old – 1,000 m.y.) These granites formed when the rocks of the crust were subject to great heat and pressure. This took place miles below in the roots of a huge mountain system (like the Himalayas of Tibet) that extended all along what is now out Blue Ridge and Piedmont - from Maine to Alabama. This heat and pressure transforms (metamorphosed) the old rocks of the crust. In places some of them were melted and the liquid pooled together to form bodies of granite magma. Slowly the area was lifted up and cooled. The magma solidified into granite rock. Over the eons the mountains were eroded down and rivers deposited the sediment in what are now the sandy beds of the coastal plain. At the cliffs by the trail the exposed upper layers of rock are incessantly being rounded by weathering process over the millennia. These are the small incremental process we see every day – rain fall, freeze and thaw (frost wedging), root growth, humic acids from plants, etc. The nearby stream probably follows an area of weakness (fractures?) in the bedrock. The stream washes away loose debris. As it erodes downward, it undermines the ledges above. From time to time large pieces of granite break off along natural fractures in the granite."
AllTrails Link: Frady Branch Loop & Three Waterfalls€“ Near Currahee Mtn.
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