West Palisades / Rottenwood Creek

West Palisades / Rottenwood Creek Main Trail

Let’s continue to explore Atlanta running trails with the West Palisades area on the Chattahoochee. This is also called the Bob Callan Trail. It is another Chattahoochee River national park service trail, so if you buy a year pass, you can get into every other Chattahoochee NPS trail with your pass.

This in an out & back trail that starts out very flat, following the river. Once you hit Rottenwood Creek section of the trail, prepare for some nice hills! One of these hills is pretty rough and long, followed by some more rolling hills. The beautiful scenery will distract from the burn in your legs! The trail passes under 285 and ends in a parking lot near a commercial building. This is also about the 2 mile mark, so a turn-around here will put you in at 4 miles total. That is IF you choose to turn around…

West Palisades and Cochran Shoals Long Run

Another option here is to put in a long run and head out of the parking lot onto Interstate North Parkway. Run northeast through the Powers Ferry traffic light to the entrance into the Cochran Shoals park. From here you can add the Cochran Shoals loop, run back to the West Palisades course and run back to the parking lot for a grand total of roughly 9.5 miles. It is a great scenic run with hills to start, flat throughout the main run and a few rolling hills and a downhill run at the end. For the extremely adventurous, add in the sope creek section of the Cochran Shoals course and add 4 more miles to hit around 13.5 total.

Click here for more info and trail maps of the Cochran Shoals and Sope Creek sections.

I hear you can also reach the Cochran Shoals section from West Palisades through some “unofficial” connector trails in the woods – I haven’t tried this yet, but wil update this entry when I do.

Here is the official trail map:

West Palisades / Rottenwood Creek Trail Map

If you have run this route and would like to contribute, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line!