Mistletoe State Park

Trail Map

Mistletoe State Park is located about 2 hours east of Atlanta, located on 72,000-acre Clarks Hill Lake near Augusta.

The Cliatt Creek Nature Trail Loop starts across the street from the park office and parking lot. It is a wide (easy to walk with a dog) trail, and because it is manly a new growth pine forest the trail is bright. This may not be great during the summer, but it made for a very comfortable hike this fall. The trail is about 3.75 miles long and would make for a good group hike. It is well marked with white blazes.

Cliatt Creek Nature Trail

About a quarter of the way through the Cliatt Creek Nature Trail you will come to a intersection for the Rock Dam Trail. This is a longer harder trail (6.25 miles). Because I was alone and without a dog, I decided to take this trail.

The trail starts off with a creek crossing. I was glad to have waterproof boots on, because the creek was too wide to jump. I went up and down the creek till I found a good place to cross (only one boot got wet, and it didn’t go too high on it). On the map I received from the office, it listed some points of interests (see map above): a rock outcropping that is part of Stone Mountain, his and her oaks, a rock dam (where the trail gets its name), split rock, sitting tree, the Devil’s Gorge, and a Vista. Because the points of interest weren’t marked, it made me look for them.

Creek Crossing

The first item was easy to find. The trail crossed the rock outcropping. It amazed me that this was part of Stone Mountain, because it is so far away.

Rock Outcropping

The second item was harder to find. I actually went past it, and had to back track. The his and her oaks were two huge oak trees surrounded by pines.

His and Her Oak Trees

The third item was the rock dam. At first I thought it was a bunch of boulders at the end of a dry creek bed that you hike through. It wasn’t. The rock dam was a large piece of granite across a creek. This creek was another crossing, and you can use the dam as a bridge (be careful, the water makes it slippery).

Rock Dam

The only thing that made finding the forth item difficult was that there is a lot of boulders around. I would stop and look for what could be considered a split. When I didn’t find one I would continue on. The split rock was actually right on the trail, and easy to see why it was called split rock (even with all the leaves covering it).

Split Rock

I had a little difficulty with what the fifth item was. I thought I had found it when I saw a tree surrounded by rocks, but when I walked past the real sitting tree, a little further up the trail, I knew immediately.

Sitting Tree

You would think that the sixth item, the devil’s gorge, would be easy to find (it actually was), but I was not sure what they meant by gorge. This area was clear cut in the late 19th early 20th century, and used for farming. Because of this, the land is scared with cracks and crevices, but the minute you come up to the devil’s gorge you know it.

Devil's Gorge

The last item was the vista that wasn’t much of a vista.

Vista

Even with no more items of interest on the rock dam trail, it was a nice hike with a section going by the lake.

The rock dam trail ended with another creek crossing back to the Cliatt Creek Nature Trail . Instead of getting my feet wet again (this hike had numerous creek crossings), I crossed the creek by using a fallen tree as a bridge.

Fallen Tree (Bridge)

Once back on the Cliatt Creek Nature Trail a took it back to the park office and my car. All in all, a very fun, not too strenuous, long hike. I would recommend it to anyone looking to do a 3 to 4 hour hike, but remember they wear waterproof boot.