The Pinhoti - Alabama and Georgia's Long Trail

The Pinhoti Trail is a 337-mile trail starting at Flagg Mountain Alabama in the southern Appalachians

and extending up into Georgia to meet up with the Benton McKaye Trail. It is also part of the Eastern Continental Trail or ECT that spans from the Keys in Florida all the way up to the International Appalachian Trail or IAT. I've had the opportunity to hike a good deal of the ECT, of which the Pinhoti is a part, from the Florida Trail down in Big Cypress, Alabama and Georgia on the Pinhoti, heading along the Benton McKaye trail or BMT, and linking with the Appalachian Trail which I’ve done twice. 

The Pinhoti Trail is managed by many volunteers in conjunction with the Pinhoti Trail Alliance. There you can find links to hiking the trail, including shuttles and hostels along the way - of which there are several. 

Relaxing at the Hearn Inn

The most famous and robust one and a great advocate for the trail is the Pinhoti Outdoor Center, which helps with shuttles and has a hostel for hikers. You'll also want to download the FarOut app for your phone which now includes the Pinhoti Trail and provides an invaluable resource for all trail info, campsites, water sources, town info, etc.

The trail itself is divided into sections, some of which include fairly lengthy road walking. 

Road walk and the familiar turkey blaze for the trail

I did this trail last year in March and found it to be a very interesting trail. The weather was good as far as it wasn’t too hot or buggy. But I did have to contend with several severe weather situations, being springtime. Having adequate rain gear and plans for dealing with weather and raging creeks is a good idea. The Pinhoti Trai Alliance has a downloadable data booklet that gives ideas for navigating flood waters should the need arise.  

Roaring water after rain. There are several hazardous crossings

The road walks were not as obnoxious as they could’ve been because I was used to it from the Florida Trail. But for those not used to hiking by way of roads, this can sometimes be a difficulty. In Georgia, I did much of the road walking on a Sunday and this helped with traffic.

The trail does have a few trailside shelters. 

There are several good places to stay along the way as well as places re-supply. I had the opportunity to stay with several good friends in the Georgia section of the trail, which allowed me the opportunity to do some slackpacking and helped a knee condition that sprouted from doing too many road miles ( I think from now on, 20-mile days are out)

Along the trail in Georgia

I recommended the Pinhoti Trail for its diverse beauty and mountains that do exist in Alabama. And there are hikers now that are doing it in conjunction with the AT in what’s being called the Bama to Baxter thru-hike.

Cheaha State Park - the highest point in AL

  At the  Border of AL and GA

The Finish 


Link: 

Check out my Florida Trail Blog

The Benton MacKaye Trail - Part 2

(This is Part 2 of a two-part blog series on the Benton MacKaye Trail with guest blogger "Sgt Rock"). Click Part 1 for the first part in this series.

I’m often asked why hike the Benton MacKaye Trail (BMT) or what is the difference between the AT and the BMT. 

Let me try and expand on that for y’all.

Often I get asked “it is blazed just like the Appalachian Trail (AT) right?” No it isn’t. Sometimes I get asked “Are there shelter regularly, just like the AT? I prefer to stay in shelters.” Sorry there are only two shelters. Sometimes this dissuades people from hiking the BMT, but the BMTA is OK with this. I liken it to the movie “Demolition Man” which was about a dystopian future and in that world all restaurants had been taken over by Taco Bell®, so the only thing you got, where ever you went to eat, was Taco Bell® food. Well we want to give hikers that are looking for something different from the AT experience, something different to go for. It would be a shame if all trails were just like the AT. 

 

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the BMT passes through numerous wilderness areas or in areas that are managed as wilderness such as wilderness study areas and the Great Smoky Mountain National Park which does some if its land management like a wilderness area but is not an established “wilderness area” as designated by the federal government. With that in mind, you will find that the BMT is often “wilder” than the AT with the trail often only a narrow strip through fields and woods with minimal marking, where the AT in similar surroundings could be 3’ wide, rutted, and have posts sticking out of the ground every few hundred feet with a white blaze on it just in case you couldn’t figure out it was a trail. The BMT also has less trail structures like bridges, shelters, signs to tell you where you are at or where the water is, etc. Don’t get me wrong, we do have some of these, but you might find one sign pointing to water in 100 miles, or miles of trail with water crossings and no bridges, and we average about one shelter for every 143 miles give or take. Why is it like this? Because that is the way it was envisioned by the original designers.  Because the trail passes through true designated “wilderness areas” trail maintenance is a lot harder for the maintainers, often you will find blow downs or some brush that could use some work, but nothing really blocks the trail. It is a part of experiencing wilderness as it really is sometimes.

So that leads to the next point: why hike the BMT?

Generally I would say the easy answer is for solitude and the wilderness experience. How many of us have been hiking the AT, get the feeling we are miles from the rest of humanity, and then night falls and someone’s porch light turns on a half mile from you? The BMT passes through some designated wildernesses where you can set up camp, and when night falls - you might see the light from distant small town miles away, glowing from behind a mountain on the horizon and you really are miles from the rest of humanity.

And besides being away from everyone else in the civilized world, the trail is basically away from even the hiker world. If you are into the social scene of the trail, or you need to be around people every night when camping, you better go with a group on the BMT because if you don’t, you are likely to not see anyone for days. And when I say “not see anyone” I am not just talking about hikers. There is a good chance you can go for days and not see another human being. Most hikers tell me that they see about 10 people in the first 6 miles of the trail (where the AT and BMT crisscross four times) and then see less than 10 for the next 280 miles.

So all that said, I am sure a few of you have decided that the BMT is not for you. That's okay. Some day it might be just what you are looking for. We find that many of our thru-hikers are former AT thru-hikers that want something long to hike and a little challenging, but one that doesn’t take 6 months to complete. We do get the adventurous soles that are also looking for something different from the “drama” and crowds that the AT can be at the beginning of the AT thru-hiking season and use the BMT to start their long hike and skip from Springer to the Smokies without having to deal with all that. We also get people in the park that take the BMT as an alternate route in order to avoid crowded mouse filled shelters and have the freedom of 19 (mostly empty) campsites to choose from over 13 shelters on the most traveled trail in the most used national park in America.

I hope to see some of you out there!

Sister to the Appalachian Trail - the Benton MacKaye Trail, Part 1

Looking for solitude and a wilderness experience? Try this!

Hi folks,

My name is Ernest Engman, though my "trail name" is SGT Rock. I write the Benton MacKaye Trail (BMT) Thru-Hikers Guide and I’ve been working on the BMT or hiking it since 2005. Blissful has asked me to write a little about the BMT.  

Author and family

First thing – when you say MacKaye, it should rhyme with sky. I said it wrong myself for years.

History

A little look back in history: When Benton MacKaye first came up with the idea for the Appalachian Trail (AT), his sketch included feeder trails that would bring people from around the region into the main artery of the AT. The trail was completed in 1937 and for many years, it made use of already established local trails to provide the network of feeder trails.

 In 1979, a group of GATC members recognized that the AT was starting to see higher traffic and an alternative needed to be created for hikers seeking more solitude in their trail experience – if only they could see what would become of the trail! The number of thru-hikers completing the Appalachian Trail in 1979 was 129; by 1999 the number was nearly 4 times as many. It is estimated that nearly 3,000 hikers attempt a thru-hike every year, and that doesn’t include day hikers or section hikers. To this end they formed the Benton MacKaye Trail Association (BMTA) to construct a path that would give AT hikers an alternate way to travel from Springer Mountain and meet back up again with the AT. A link was sketched out. In 1980, construction started. The first part of the Benton MacKaye Trail from Springer Mountain in Georgia to the Ocoee River in Tennessee was finished fairly quickly. But due to changes in red tape, the remainder of the trail was not completed until 2005. Most of that was by adopting existing trails into the system. Now finished it is nearly 300 miles long, so to make the term easy to remember from year to year, someone who finishes the BMT is considered a 300 miler.

Wilder experience, more solitude

The BMT was designed to intentionally be an alternative to the Appalachian Trail and to also be different. Because of that, the BMT has different maintenance standards of width of trail maintained and an intentional avoidance of extra trail structures. For instance there are only two shelters on the entire length of the trail. One is in Georgia, near the town of Cherry Log, where the BMT crosses private land for 8.6 miles. In order for BMT hikers to have some place to camp in this long stretch of road walks and private land, a shelter was built. The other shelter is in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) and was built by the CCC in the 1930’s. It is one of the more remote structures in the park.

The trail also skirts one wilderness area, passes through five others, and ends in GSMNP which is managed as a wilderness area. Many of these areas are unblazed due to their wilderness management. Signs are kept to a minimum, and some water crossings that would have bridges on other trails are left as fords.

 

The end result is a wilder, more remote feeling than on the AT, and less hikers overall. I’ve experienced it, and other hikers have told me that one can go for days and never see another human being while walking the BMT. 

Navigation

I’m often asked is the BMT as easy to navigate as the AT? The answer is, absolutely not. That said, it is also not hard as long as you bring the right stuff. The trail in some sections is blazed and is plain and easy to follow as a hiker could wish. But in wilderness areas the BMTA is not allowed to blaze and signs are placed on existing sign posts only. A hiker that does not carry maps will certainly have a hard time navigating their way along the entire length of the BMT (maps 777 and 781 put out by National Geographic and a map of the Smokies). A compass is also helpful. I also recommend that anyone attempting the BMT carry some sort of guidebook that will show the other trail names that the section of the BMT might be using. The BMTA has divided the BMT into three general sections: Georgia, Tennessee/North Carolina, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The club produces a data book that covers the mileages for all three sections, and have section guidebooks for two of the three sections: Georgia and Tennessee/North Carolina. They should have the third guidebook finished in 2012 to complete the set.

In addition to those, I write a guidebook that has all the information one would need for long distance hiking on the BMT including town data for re-supply and other essential  functions. It is laid out in a format similar to The AT Guide by David “Awol” Miller. My guide is available here.






(Go to Part 2 on this unique trail by Sgt Rock)