The Mountain Ecology Around Helen

Step off the sidewalk in Helen and you're about 1,440 feet up, with a summit nearly 4,800 feet high within an hour's drive. That change in elevation, plus plenty of rain (NOAA's normals for the Helen station show about 72 inches a year), gives the area a patchwork of habitats packed close together. Walk a creek trail on a damp day and you're in cool, mossy shade; drive an hour and you're on an open summit.

The National Park Service calls the southern Appalachians a primary evolutionary center for salamanders: varied habitats, a wide elevation range, ancient mountains and abundant, oxygen-rich streams have let dozens of species develop here. Helen sits inside it, next to the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest.

Cove forests grow in sheltered valleys and ravines where moisture collects and the soil runs deep. They're among the most productive and diverse forests in the mountains, and in April the ground beneath them turns into a wildflower carpet. Sosebee Cove, a 175-acre north-facing cove forest in Union County near Blairsville, is the one to know. The trail there is named for Arthur Woody, the ranger credited with helping bring the land into the national forest. It's close to Vogel State Park, so the two pair well; see our spring wildflower guide for timing.

Eastern hemlock is an evergreen that shades mountain streams, and cool water is exactly what trout and salamanders need. That's why losing hemlocks matters beyond the trees themselves.

The hemlock woolly adelgid is a tiny insect that arrived from Japan; it was first found near Richmond, Virginia, in 1951 and now reaches from northern Georgia to Maine. It drinks sap at the base of the needles. In the northern part of the range, trees typically die 4 to 10 years after infestation; in the southern Appalachians they decline faster, in about nine years or less. Land managers protect individual trees with soil treatments such as imidacloprid and dinotefuran, and a predatory beetle is used as biological control. If you see white, cottony specks on the underside of hemlock twigs, that's the adelgid.

At 4,784 feet, Brasstown Bald is Georgia's highest point, and the mountain is made mostly of soapstone and dunite, unusual ultramafic rocks. In southern Appalachian usage a bald is a summit with open, 360-degree views. Admission is $10 per adult 16 and up, shuttle included; see our fall color guide for timing. The mountain is also the only known home of a small isopod, Ligidium enotahensis.

Most southern Appalachian salamanders are lungless, breathing through their skin, which is why they thrive in damp, cool, oxygen-rich places. The Great Smoky Mountains alone have 31 salamander species. The giant eastern hellbender, North America's largest amphibian, ranges south to northern Georgia and needs clear, fast, rocky streams, so it's a good sign of clean water. You're far more likely to see a small salamander under a creekside rock on a wet day. Put the rock back exactly as you found it.

Keep exploring: geology, native plants, wildlife watching and waterfalls.