For all those cachers that reported difficulty finding legal parking to access caches on the west loop of Cartersville's Pine Mountain Trail system, here's good news. We stopped and checked on the west parking lot today. From I-75, it is located a short distance east of the Cartersville Main Street exit. At the east end of Main Street, turn right and proceed a short distance to the parking lot entrance on the left. The parking lot is gravel surfaced and is much larger than the east parking lot. The trail maps are not installed yet but the boards are up and ready to receive them. The trail to the west loop is well marked and leads to a new bridge across Hurricane Hollow Creek which connects to the loop trail.

For anyone interested in hiking and caching around this fine trail system, parking is now much more accessable.

I parked there a couple of weekends ago w/o incident. All the "No Trespassing" signs in the area had been removed. It looked like a large boulder at the trailhead was being inletted to receive a plaque of some sort. []

~erik~

Is it the same parking lot that was accessible from Komatsu or is it somewhere else? I'd like to update my cache page with parking coords.

quote:

Originally posted by AtlantaGal:
Is it the same parking lot that was accessible from Komatsu or is it somewhere else? I'd like to update my cache page with parking coords.

Yes, the parking lot is off the road to the Komatsu facility which is at east end of Main Street. Komatsu now has a gate across the road to the facility; the turn-off to the parking lot is before you reach that gate.

Coords for the parking lot are:
N34 10.520, W084 45.220

Thanks Owl!

Great! Now we can hunt those west caches and not have to worry about paying any more $5 parking tickets and/or fending off the towing trucks.

That's great news because I've been waiting to get back up there to finish up the Pine Mountain caches!

quote:

Originally posted by ~erik~:
It looked like a large boulder at the trailhead was being inletted to receive a plaque of some sort. []

~erik~

The plaque will be in honor of the people who donated the land for the park and Komatsu which donated the land for the parking area.

We were on the mountain today to replace the infamous "Y" (micro in the woods) with a regular ammo box. Because it was relocated and is no longer a micro, cachers who previously found it are welcome to find it and log it again.