Matt, Chris and Jin on the Pinhoti Trail near Cheeha State Park, May '04
The Pinhoti trail is marked with a blue blaze and an occasional metalic turkey foot bade. Pinhoti translates literally to "Turkey House". The blue blazes that now mark the trail are of significance because of the future connection to the Appalachian trail.
Thursday night was spent at the Cheeha State Park campgrounds where I slept on the comfort of a full sized inflatable air matress, Matt hanging in a hammock, while Chris made due in the folding chair. We brought the Necso American Harvest dehydrator and make some kick-ass beef jerky.
Here we are at the start of our journey! What we thought would be 24 mile hike as plotted by the Delorme Topo 4.0 software turned out to be a 34 hike. D'oh!
The Pinhoti at times is little more then a wild game trail. This is not the trail to hike if you do not like foliage touching you and old spider webs hanging along the trail. This trail is a great change of pace from the overused and abused four lane divided highways trails such as the Appalachian Trail has become.
The Pinhoti meanders through the Alabama countryside. Most of the trail you are surrounded by lush green vegitation and lots of forrests. A view of more then 50 yards is few and far between. If you fancy yourself a woodsman instead of a mountain man this is the trail for you.
This is the first of several turtles we saw on the trail. I'm glad I didn't step on this little guy, I never saw him!
About 3 miles in from the trail you will encounter a few interesting cave structures. This is the beginning of probably the only "hard" climb we had all weekend, which was probably only a couple of hundred yards at most.
Near 431 we found a great place to camp near the intersection of two streams. At this point we finally looked at the map and figured out we had 34 miles to hike insead of 24. After that short 8 mile hike in we decided to just hike back out the next day.
Chris and Matt had me leading the pack all day, and by the end of the day i was COVERED in spider webs. Even after i swatted most of them away with my trekking pole. There is just not enough foot traffic on the Pinhoti to keep the trails cleared of webs. Don't hike the Pinhoti if you are arachnaphobic!
Salamanders LOVE Matt. After having one crawling under his butt for about a half an hour he had a little baby 'mander on his shoulder. He yelped like a little girl when he swatted it off. This was the big guy who became aquanted with Matt's rear end.
In the 8 miles of trail we hikes we saw only one spot that even looked like it had been camped at before. At least in the section we hiked, be prepared to do some searching for suitable camp sites. Camp sites are NOT overused and abused like most decent places to make camp on more popular trails. This IMHO is the beauty of the Pinhoti, the wildness of the trail.
Chris and Matt are in a pre-coffee zombi-like trance while they filter water for our morning Java.
Instead of a tent I slept under my poncho in a bug net. I was attempting to keep my pack weight down to a minimum because I was nursing a sore back I pulled while trying to be macho and drive a golf ball 300 yards on the golf simulator at the Golf Warehouse in Birmingham.
The other side of our impromptu camp site. The second stream meanders down the trail to intersect it's brother.
The morning after. Can you tell I'm about to sneeze? I held it in though! We begin our 8 mile trek back to the jeep.
There were several odd circular clumps of foliage. We beleive them to be marking for alien being to land their space craft during an upcomming earch invasion. On a related note, they make a great target to aim for if you have to pee.
Making our way back down the trail. There were a couple of times when going through some dense foliage where we were not sure we were still on the trail. I highly recommend a Pro Tick Remedy to remove the ticks which WILL get on you while on the Pinhoti. It's an absolutly fabulous tick tool, very simple to use and dirt cheap.
Chris takes a nap while we filter water.
The forrest is green with life. Water was abundant on this section of trail. Matt abandons his pack while he sits by the stream filtering water.
We spent Saturday night hanging out at the Primative camp sites at Cheeha. The particular inch worm nearly put us in the ditch as Matt found him on his hand. When he went to throw the little dude out the window he flew back in to land on Matt's back.
