Foothills Trail, More than Bargined for

I started yet another long trail this last trip. Over the week of Nov. 3rd to 7th I start hiking the Foothills Trail in North/South Carolina. I left out from Oconee State Park in SC with Patrick Brockington on Wednesday afternoon and planned on hiking 31 miles by Friday night. Martha was going to drive up after work and meet us at the Bad Creek Access point along the trail and we would then Hike to Bear Creek Camp and stay then night and then return to the vehicle. The weather worked in our favor this time. Overcast on Wednesday, rain that night and the clear the rest of the week high in the mid 60's and lows around 35 degrees. We ended up not be able to hike farther on the Foothills trail after Bad Creek Access because of there not being a camping spot and my knees giving me a problem. I want to think it was all the kneeling I have been doing working on the tile in the bathroom, but don't know for sure. Instead we hike to several waterfall on Saturday morning and built a fire and bummed around camp in Oconee State Park that evening and on Sunday morning as well. Had a great cold weekend with lots of fall leaves and fellowship. loking forward to finishing this trail, like all the rest.

Cohutta in spring

So I went over the weekend of April 16-18 2010 with my old scout troop on their Philmont shakedown hike. The original plan was a loop trail around the southern end of the Cohutta wilderness. Starting out on the Emory creek trail and then over little bald and down the Conasauga river trail and back a service road to the Emory creek. Unfortunately some fitness issues prevented the group from making the full itinerary. We did make it up little bald and camped there then hiked back the Emory creek trail in the morning. I spent all day Saturday with the group and had an easy stroll up the ridge. So an open glade with about thirty pink lady slippers about to bloom and some other general botany pleasures. I stayed in an old hammock I had that gave me problems on Friday night when all the end laces broke on both ends. I was fortunately able to use para cord and repair it for the trip. I slept under a Golight 7'x5' tarp and was fairly happy with its performance. Saturday night was on top of ridge with strong winds beating my camp all night. The tarp held shape and did make any of the typical rustling noises that tent make in high winds. Sunday morning I left out from the group and made the return hike solo, partly because I could use the freedom and partly because I needed water and the group was going to hang around and cook breakfast. Over all a great weekend. Emory Creek Trail has a set of falls that are wonderful to sit by and relax a meal over. The Cohutta is the wettest parcel of land I have hiked. If its not crossing the same stream 30 times then its trails routed through small ponds. Still an good place to take summer hikes.

Snow and the Stupid Forest Service

Last weekend we had the prediction of at least two inches of snow, so what do I do? Go camping of course. The plan was to leave Friday morning and drive up to the Cohutta Wilderness Area, hike in and set up a base camp and then loaf around until Sunday. The first hurdle that we came to was that the forest service roads did not match the map that we from the Tim Hoffman Guidebook for the Cohutta and Big Frog Wilderness area. So after driving around and back tracing two or three times we found the road that we should have been on all along (FS 64 going NE). At this time it is 1pm and beginning to snow, which is great except that we are still miles from our destination. As we drove up the FS road to the boundary of the Cohutta, the snow began sticking. By the time we reached the Cohutta boundary the roads were almost to snow covered for our two wheel drive pickup. I was at this point that we discovered that both directions into the Cohutta had locked gates, instead of just the eastern route as we had been warned. With no place to park the truck we were forced back down the mountain to a picnic area parking area. Here we pitched camp because the road was to iced over to try driving all the way down and because it was a pretty spot, complete with fire ring and waterfall. Saturday morning we attempted to walk into the Cohutta for a loop day hike. Again we faced unforseen barriers in our path. The farthest that we walked was the about a mile westward in on the Cohutta boundary. After that we made it back to camp, and packed up to drive home early because we had no other hikes close enough to our camping site and because the sanctuary that we had enjoyed brought on by the snow covered roads was broken. Enough sunlight had thawed the roads to make a drive up the mountain in the snow the only activity for every pickup owning individual in Ellijay.

Next time we try a different access point, don't go in the winter and buy a jeep before we leave so that accessibility is not what holds us back.

(for some viewing of our camp and hike attempts visit "http://jimiswanderingacrosstheplanet.shutterfly.com/"

Rained Pinhoti

So last weekend (Jan 29-31 2010) we were supposed to hike a section of the Pinhoti Trail in Alabama. It was our friend from Woodruff, Zack Shaw's birthday trip. The trip started at 10am on Friday but we couldn't be there that early because of work. So we drove out later that day, leaving Atlanta about 3pm. It started raining as soon as we crossed into Alabama. We tried to drive the Danger Ranger up a dirt road to a trail crossing near the first nights camping spot at Rock Garden. Unfortunately the little two wheel drive pickup did not have the spunk to get us there...from the south. We drove around in the dark on county roads until we reached the opposite end of the dirty road (alabama county rd 600-skyline motorway). Then another hour of crawling the truck over ravines and above average sized gravel until we reached the Pinhoti Trail crossing that we wanted to be at. We then spent the night in the back of the truck, under a tarp, in the rain. The next morning we woke early enough to pack up and be on the trail by 8am. After a quick one mile walk we found the group just opposite rock garden from where we started. It turns out that in the rain they had been through a rough night Including but not limited to collapsing tents, run away dogs and tents pitched in flood drains. So instead of hiking the rest of the trail north to Adams gap as planned we walked back to our truck, loaded gear and dogs and most of the people and drove everyone back to their cars at the trail head. When the whole group was finally back together we drove into Talladega for a merry and thoroughly enjoyed breakfast meal at the huddle house at 1pm. Over all a good but short trip, Happy Birthday Zack-maybe better luck next year.