Sougahoagdee Falls one of my most regretted waterfall fails. While exploring the Bankhead National Forest it was on my list of falls to check out, but things did not go as planned. This adventure starts out with me camping at Brushy Lake Campground. Brushy Lake leads to Brushy Creek, and far down Brushy Creek, allegedly just up some little offshoot area, is Sougahoagdee Falls. According to a book I had with me at the time, the GPS for the falls is n34 15.254′ w87 15.888′. Anyway to do this hike one doesn’t start at Brushy Lake. You start at the Sougahoagdee Falls parking area, which is to the north side of the road, on the west side of Brushy Creek, where a bridge crosses over it via Hickory Grove Rd. The parking is easy enough to find via your favorite mapping app by name or by GPS at n34 15.113′ w14.743′. If you find a small gravel lot near a bridge, you’re there, at the Brushy Creek Trail.
This starts you off south of the falls and far, far south of Brushy Lake on a kind of northwest hike. Where I screwed up is that I didn’t know what Sougahoagdee Falls was supposed to look like. I did know it had rock shelter that you can walk behind. I knew it was supposed to be at least 70 feet tall. I also know it was supposed to be a roughly 4.5 mile round trip. What I did not know was that when it rains in that area, and it was raining a lot when I visited, that all sorts of random unnamed waterfalls would appear along Brushy Creek. Even back by my campsite at Brushy Lake, which has the far end of this trail, there were a lot of seeps and misc falls created from rain. Didn’t cross my mind though. So I hiked, enjoying the scenic Brushy Creek. Enjoying a pretty good and high cliff for what felt like 2-3 miles. I kept my eyes open for this majestic Sougahoagdee Falls, and in that process found at least 6 unnamed waterfalls. As I went, the randoms got higher, and the mileage piled on. Here’s how that scenery developed as I progressed.
These are just a few of the waterfalls along Brushy Creek in the Bankhead National Forest. Many were tall, many had rock shelters you could walk under. I had to be close. Then finally I came to the most impressive of the lot, and decided that this must be the famous Sougahoagdee Falls.
Content that I’d found it, I hung out for awhile. Some random hikers showed up and thought this was it as well. We all left that day not comprehending that this too was another random waterfall of Brushy Creek. I had to have been close, because looking back at a map and having the advantage of the internet (not a thing in the Bankhead) I see other people’s pictures of the falls and the real deal is more impressive. Based on how far I hiked I was probably just around a corner from it too. So now it lingers as a future thing to go back and conquer, annoying me to this day. I’m thrilled there were random waterfalls to see, but this is a redo waiting to happen on a future visit. For what it is worth since this fall’s name is a tongue twister, I learned to keep it straight by thinking “Soggy Hoagie”, which has become my nickname for it. Or maybe that’s what this runner up fall I found should be called.
