Mud Creek Falls, Sky Valley, Georgia
Hiking this trail started at the Sky Valley overlook where I believed we viewed the path down Highway 23 which leads to Dillard, Georgia and Mountain City, Georgia. It's a great view and shows how far up the mountain you have climbed in the car from the highway. If you're using Alltrails.com, it looks like this particular trail is listed as "Mud Creek Trail from GA 246". Alltrails lists this as being an elevation gain of 239 feet and a length of 2.3 miles.
Once we got situated and our friends arrived, we started the hike to Mud Creek Falls. At the beginning of this trail you are walking next to the main road separated by the guard rail (this soon changes). It's approximately a mile each way (in and out trail). If you're using Alltrails.com, it looks like this particular trail is listed as "Mud Creek Trail from GA 246". Alltrails lists this as being an elevation gain of 239 feet and a length of 2.3 miles.
For those that might not be able to do the hike, you can drive just about to this waterfall - with just a short walk down to the waterfall. Interesting comment that one of our friends noticed is eventually you find that you are hiking uphill to get to a waterfall. Seems most of the time you hike downhill to get to a waterfall.
The trail is dog friendly, we had 4 people and 4 dogs hiking on this particular hike. You will see the remains of a wooden bridge near the beginning of the hike as well. When we visited at the end of July 2024, a good portion of the ground was washed out and while you can get to this bridge, you will need to scramble a bit to get there.
This hike is not difficult, but there is a slight incline along the way. Lots of rain had recently created some puddles and muddy spots along the way but not to bad. There is a small bridge that goes over a water way. Course you have the options to walk through the water or step on the stones across the water way.
A large portion of the trail looks like this. Not a hard trail and eventually towards the end I did see a few benches for the weary.
A short distance before you reach the waterfall is an access point that allows you to walk to the water and see this little waterfall. A refreshing break if you or your dog(s) want to get wet. Abby loves the water, so she is all in whenever she gets a chance.
Abby sitting by the creek while we take photographs.
Mud Creek Falls - this is what the hike was all about!
This water fall is about 85 feet in height and faces Northwest. We arrived at the waterfall about 11:30am and the sun was just starting to come over the top of the trees.
For more photographs from this hike, please visit https://www.vpshoots.com/MudCreekFalls
If you use the internet you will get several different links that will tell you about this particular waterfall located in Rabun County, Georgia. We visited the Chamber of Commerce for Rabun County while we were in the area on a hike and found that it has a good amount of information. One item they mentioned is that a local young man, Mark Oleg Ozboyd, recently published a book called "Waterfalls of Georgia - A comprehensive guide with over 700 waterfalls". I went to a store called Wander in downtown Clayton, Georgia and purchased this book. While I have only used the sections that are for East Clayton and West Clayton - I did find it very helpful. The most notable thing, Mark took the time to tell you which way the waterfall is facing - that's so helpful for those of you that want to photograph the waterfall without sunlight on the water! I wanted to give a little shout out to Mark for working over the last 7 years to compile the information in this book. I also found this website https://www.hikingtheappalachians.com/ very helpful which Mark is associated with. Thank you Mark! (No, I don't get anything for this, just think it's a great resource).