The Eastside Beltline is the most popular linear park in Atlanta and the most punishing one after 9 AM in summer. The asphalt is dark, the trail is wide enough to lose tree cover on one side, and most of the canopy is young — the maples and tulip poplars planted on the rail-trail conversion are only fifteen years in. By midday in July the corridor reads as hot.
Between 6 and 9 AM the same trail is the best walk in the city. The mature street trees along the parallel residential blocks shade the east side. The warehouse buildings that line the corridor through Old Fourth Ward — Ponce City Market, the old foundries on Krog — throw long west-facing shadows in the morning. The trail itself is in shade for most of those three hours.
The picks below are graded for that window. Each one is graded against a specific 30-minute slice; the Stay Cool router pushes them later in the spring and fall when the sun rises later. After 9 AM in July, route something else.