Cherokee Trail, Stone Mountain

On the Trail

Latest Conditions

As of September 20, 2026, from that morning's notes:

• A tree that's fallen across the tracks near the carving is still there more than two weeks later, which means the train also hasn't run for those three weeks since the tree first fell.from the notes
• West of the carving, the tree that fell over the trail about two months ago is still there.from the notes
• Past the hike-up trail, there is a lot of overgrown grass on the path, so always make sure you're wearing tick repellent.from the notes
• Water levels seem a little low.from the notes

Last walked September 26, 2026, with no conditions in the notes that morning.

Lines are lifted word for word from the notes of the morning named; a line marked noted followed the word "conditions", one marked from the notes was picked out by a keyword. What the notes did not mention is not here, and a morning with no lines is not a report that the trail was clear.

Doing This Hike

Before You Go

• Parking. Start from the Indian Island lot beside the covered bridge. A park parking pass is required.
• Fee. Parking pass, $20 per vehicle per day or $40 for the year when bought online; the gate can charge more.
• Gates. Park gates are open daily, 5 a.m. to midnight (checked September 2026).
• Sunrise spot. The north shore of the bay across from Indian Island, below the Grist Mill, facing east across Stone Mountain Lake.

Timing measured from the recorded tracks, not guessed: the moment each walk first came within 100 m of the sunrise spot, set against that morning's sunrise and the first point of its track. The walk from the lot to the spot took a median of 17 minutes over 116 mornings, so leaving the lot about 17 minutes before civil dawn puts you there as the light starts.

Months ranked by the median color index of their sunrise photographs. A month is listed only with at least 5 photographed mornings, and the count is beside each.

By the Numbers

Across 146 Logged Hikes

Sunrise

Through the Year

The curve is the computed sunrise for this spot in local clock time. Each dot is a real morning at its measured sunrise: orange when the low and middle cloud was clear, gray when it was overcast, hollow when no weather record exists. High cloud does not count against a morning; it is what lights one up.

Earliest logged sunrise 6:25 AM, latest 7:57 AM.

Places with a page of their own: Boatyard shore (its best mornings, its months and when to be there) and Indian Island (every photograph taken on it, the best first). The sunrise sweep shows where the sun came up across the year from the Boatyard dock.

Watch the year: the 115 photographed sunrises from this trail replayed in date order, or stepped through one morning at a time.

Month by Month

The Trail's Year

What to expect in any given month, measured rather than guessed: sunrise for the dates walked, the temperature at that hour, how cloudy it was, and how long the loop took.

Every figure is the median of the mornings logged in that month, pooled across years, so a single long walk does not move the typical distance. Cloud is the low and middle layers together, the cloud that hides the sun, and Clear counts the mornings it was 30% or less. High is the cirrus layer on its own: it does not hide a sunrise so much as light it, so it never counts against a clear morning. Sunrise is the computed time for this trail's sunrise spot on the dates actually walked, not a monthly average, so a month with few hikes reflects those dates.

From Here

Every Photograph

131 of 146 logged hikes have a photo. The rest are in the table below.

Load the other 96 photographs

On the Ground

Where the Recordings Go

Every recorded morning on this trail, 116 of them from August 17, 2024 to September 26, 2026, drawn as one line each on the same map. A pixel is toned by how many mornings crossed it, on a log scale, so a route walked once stays visible beside one walked a hundred times. Not in it: 30 mornings with a photograph and no recording.

• 1 morning
• 2
• 5
• 10
• 20
• 50
• 100
• all 116

Each recording is a one-pixel line at 2 m per pixel, 3.2 by 2.3 km. The darkest pixel holds 70 of 116 mornings: a wrist GPS wanders a few meters either side of the path, so the band is the watch and the trail together, not a choice of route, and 37.6 percent of the pixels any morning touched were crossed by that morning alone. Under it, contours every 40 ft and the lake at its level, from the same USGS 3DEP grid as the maps. Drawn when a recording is added; nothing runs in the browser.

The common route is every point at least half of the mornings (58 of 116) passed within 10 m of. The median morning kept 77.6 percent of its distance to it; January 19, 2025 kept the most at 93.3 percent and September 8, 2024 the least at 50.9 percent.

19 mornings walked 100 m or more that no other morning came within 10 m of; the longest such stretch is December 25, 2025 with 3,530 ft.

Week to week, on the stretches both walked (within 20 m of each other), a recording's points sit a median of 7 ft from the nearest point of the one before, 11 ft at the ninetieth percentile of the 115 pairs: the watch's repeatability plus the width of the trail, not a choice of route.

The most recent recorded track on its own, starting from the usual trailhead.

The Record

Conditions History

Show the other 134 mornings