Hiking Wise Creek Trail in Oconee National Forest

I went hiking on the Wise Creek Trail in the Oconee National Forest in the spring of 2023. I started at the Ocmulgee River trailhead and hiked the trail all the way until it ended at the Rush Creek Trail, and then took Rush Creek to Kinnard Creek Trail (where I’ve hiked to before).

I’m a huge fan of hiking in the Oconee National Forest. I think it is Georgia’s most underrated piece of public land. It’s mostly used for hunting and horses, not so much for hikers or backpacking. But I think it has a lot of potential, and I was glad to be able to explore it.

Unlike some of the other trails in the Oconee National Forest, Wise Creek was surprisingly well-maintained. I think it gets a lot of traffic from horses, and the horse organizations have done a good job maintaining the trail, keeping it clear of blowdowns. It mostly sticks to Wise Creek, which is a pretty typical creek through the Georgia Piedmont.

Lots of silt, low elevation, not much change, but plenty of wildlife. There are lots of birds, small mammals, and deer making their home along the creek. The trail itself is fairly scenic.

The Forest Service has kept the bottomland hardwood forest intact. There are only a couple of sections where you pass a privately owned tract that has been logged, but even those have a bit of a buffer, so you’re mostly in the woods the whole time.

The trail is fairly sandy but, again, not much blowdown. There are a couple of creek crossings where the trail is hard to find and doesn’t match the map.

But generally, if you hike around, follow the social trails, and don’t get too far off the beaten path, it’s pretty easy to find.

One creek crossing, in particular, had eroded away, so most folks were going down to a more established, more comfortable crossing.

When Rush Creek nears Lane Road, you cross into some land that looks like it was clear-cut a few years ago and is now sparsely forested with young pine.

It’s very quiet, pretty dead, not much light, but you’re in that for only a short time before running into a large boulder outcropping, which has all sorts of interesting shrubs, wildflowers, and undergrowth.

From there, it runs down into Kinnard Creek and joins into the Kinnard Creek Trail. At that point, I turned around because that’s where I made it on my last hike in the Oconee National Forest.

The hike is worthwhile; it’s flat, quiet, peaceful. And honestly, unless you’re going on a weekend, you probably won’t see anybody, and even then, maybe just a few horses..or a tortoise.