Whenever visitors stay with us we always drive a half-hour to visit Georgia’s highest waterfall, 729-foot tall Amicalola Falls. It’s a pleasant drive through Dawsonville and the countryside to get to the park’s entrance where you pay a $5 per car fee. When you reach the visitor center, you have a choice.
- To minimize walking, turn left on Ranger Road and go about 1/2 mile up the mountain and turn right into the West Ridge parking lot to reach an easier trail designed to ADA standards for accessibility. It runs a 1/4 mile downhill to an observation bridge that spans the waterfall in front of the main cascade that falls off the mountain top. From here the falls continues for hundreds of feet down the mountain’s stream with cascading falls here and there.
- To see the entire waterfall, then at the visitor center go straight to the main parking lot at the bottom of the mountain. From there you will walk up a paved path to reach various observation platforms, eventually ending at the same observation bridge mentioned above. When I’ve made this upward trek with older folks, we stop many times to rest before continuing upwards. Coming down is much easier!
Hint: we actually like visiting here when the leaves are off the trees, because you can see more of the falls, whether from the observation bridge looking down, or from the bottom looking up.
Always be sure to drive up Ranger Road to the mountain top parking lot, where you can walk a short path to view where the stream first falls over the mountain, with super scenery of mountains in the distance to behold. There’s a hotel lodge here with a café where you can eat, and hiking trails, including one that leads to start of the Appalachian Trail at Springer Mountain which is north of the falls.
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