Georgia Beyond 4000

[ceraffen]

Modeled after the South Beyond 6000 (SB6K) I'm planning a similar challenge in Georgia to climb all 4000 or higher peaks in one continuous footpath starting April 3, 2015. There are 32 named peaks along with 3 other "provisional" peaks - I plan to climb all 35. I'll be taking a west-east route and expect the total route will be slightly over 200 miles. To-date there appear to only be 2 other people who have climbed all of these peaks, although not in one continuous trek.

I've documented the attempt in this website:

georgiabeyond4000.wordpress.com/

I'll update the website after the attempt with my results and a trip report.

[ceraffen]

Here is a short update on my attempt:

I did follow my plan, starting on April 3, 2015 but managed to summit only 12 peaks (of the 36 on my list) and covered a total of 132 miles in the process. The primary problems I ran into were a navigation/scouting error where a specific jeep road through the Rich Mountain Wilderness area had a break that didn't appear on my maps - at night I wasn't able to bushwhack successfully to find the other connecting road to get to the ridgeline....that issue cost me more than a half day to change my route entirely on the fly; the other problem was difficulty navigating through extremely dense vegetation (and an invalid GPS point I had programmed into my Garmin) to summit Double Knob South. The combination of those 2 issues meant that by the end of the 4th day I was at least a full day behind schedule and my crew had to be back at work later that week. Instead of continuing I treated this as a great learning experience and scouting trip to help plan for another attempt next spring.

I was very fortunate also to have run into a member of the Georgia Appalchian Trail Society during my attempt who told me that their group had just officially put together a new GA 4000 Challenge with official rules (similar to the SB6K) and a list of peaks that was slightly different than mine. On my next attempt I plan to follow the GA 4000 Challenge rules and peaks.