Words and Photos by Carl “Professor” Stanfield @prof_carl
Folks in the long-distance hiking community have come to know and appreciate the beloved communities around our Triple Crown trails. Anyone who has set out on any of these 2,000+ mile trails can't communicate the impact of their trips without lengthy discussions of trail magic, trail angels, and trail communities. The very heart of many hikers' experiences revolves around the goodness they receive during these treks.
What fewer folks may know is that this trail community exists around smaller trails, too.
The Pinhoti Trail traverses 350 miles beginning at the southern end at Flagg Mountain, the southernmost peak in the Appalachian mountain range over 1,000 feet. It doesn't quite terminate at the Appalachian Trail, but there are a few options to easily connect the two trails, adding only about 35-75 miles en route to those who make the full "Bama to Baxter" journey. In 2022, I used the Pinhoti Trail (as well as the blazed Alabama Roadwalk) to connect the Florida Trail to the AT.
This last year, I was under a bit more of a time crunch, and I figured I had time to squeeze in a purely Pinhoti adventure, and that's exactly what I got.
On December 8, my partner and I set out to SOBO the Pinhoti Trail. We didn't quite have time to fit in the entire trek before Christmas but we got in a solid two weeks before taking a break for the holidays and rejoining the second week of January.
THE START OF THE HIKE
Our trek began with my gracious mother driving us as close to the northern terminus as we could get, a vehicular adventure through a labyrinth of back roads. This ended on a one-lane dirt and grass road just up a hill from a small hunter's campsite. We crossed a creek, made our way on an old, overgrown road bed, and finally found ourselves at the seemingly random northern terminus of our trail.
After our first day and a half, we found ourselves sitting out a day-long downpour at Mulberry Gap, a little rentable cottage community primarily for mountain bikers in warmer months. We enjoyed our dry beds, our hot tub, and a gorgeous lodge where we played chess and video games all day.
Just another couple of days later, we made our way to the beginning of our first road walk, beginning at the Dennis Mills trailhead about 40 miles into our hike. This was the place where, during my 2022 hike from Key West to Canada, I departed from the Pinhoti to make my way across 38 road miles to Amicalola Falls to begin the AT. Our arrival at this trailhead meant that I had officially completed the Pinhoti myself. Woohoo!
TRAGEDY ON THE ROADS
Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse on this road walk. Of all the hundreds of miles of roadwalks I have backpacked in my tenure, I have never encountered worse dogs than on the Pinhoti Trail. The official route of the Pinhoti is unfortunately scattered with folks from "a different time," who rely entirely on loose, ill-tempered dogs for their home protection. There are quite a few rather aggressive dogs along this route who bark, snarl, and chase hikers away from their domains, thanks to neglectful treatment and training from their owners. While we, fortunately, were not physically harmed by any dogs through this stretch, we were emotionally scarred by something we witnessed as we made our way toward Dalton.
I'll spare the harsher details of the encounter, but late in the afternoon, we witnessed a young, nonaggressive dog, curious about our presence, sniffing his way out into the road just behind us. When I turned to look back at him, I watched a car hit him and drive off. Within two minutes, he passed away on the side of the road. The owners of the loose dog weren't home, but we were met by the neighbors who, in tears, took the dog from us back home to await giving the horrible news.
This was the first time I had experienced death so tragically in a life form that felt so familiar. I'd seen roadkill before, and I'd been to my share of funerals, but never before had I seen life actually leave such a sweet, innocent creature right before my eyes. It was a horribly sad experience for both of us to witness, and it greatly turned me off from road walking in the South again any time soon.
Even though it meant we wouldn't be able to fully connect our footsteps along this trail, it no longer felt like a worthwhile venture to put not only our own lives in danger being in the midst of potentially reckless drivers, but our very presence on this trail had already directly led to the loss of another's life. Maintaining the "sanctity of our hike" suddenly seemed like a completely ridiculous cause, and we committed to keep ourselves and others safe. From here on out, the rest of our hike would take place only on trails: we were done with roadwalking.
REGROUPING
Fortunately, my mom was already planning to pick us up off-trail this evening from her home in Chattanooga, so we were able to regroup off-trail for a bit. Even though we were only a few days into this hike, the tragedy we had just witnessed warranted a little time to regroup. We took the next day off in Chattanooga before heading back to trail to continue our journey south.
While the shock of witnessing a tragic death still weighed heavily on us for days to come, we were mercifully greeted with completely wonderful trail for the next several days as we made our way south through Georgia. Nights were typically several degrees above freezing, enough such that we didn't even need to sleep with our filters again before our Christmas break.
The Pinhoti Trail is the lovely little sibling of the AT. While the trail still winds through mountains, they are smaller and have a much more forgiving grade than the gnarly trail further north. There are even a scattering of wonderful shelters and a loving surrounding community.
THE END OF GEORGIA
As we made our way south to Cave Springs, a local trail angel, Mary, reached out to help us in any way she could. It was thanks to her flexibility and willingness to help that we were easily able to skip the biggest road walk of the Pinhoti Trail several dozen miles north of the community of Cave Springs. This was the roadwalk that stood out to me the most from my 2022 hike of having rather aggressive dogs, so, particularly in light of this hike, we were extremely grateful to skip ahead.
Mary dropped us off at the Hearn Inn, a massive house from a different age that now serves as a resting place for Pinhoti Hikers. We thanked Mary, cleaned ourselves up, and headed down the road for an all-you-can-eat fried catfish dinner just a block or so into town. We had the entirety of the Hearn Inn to ourselves that night and enjoyed a restful, probably not haunted, night of recovery as our bodies continued to adjust to life on the trail.
The next morning we were able to scrounge together a resupply, find some breakfast food, and meet Mary one more time for a drive further south, granting us safe passage and peace of mind from the wild dog laden roadwalk.
Our remaining few days were peacefully uneventful. Shortly after returning to trail, we crossed into Alabama, the state where I was born and where much of my family still lives. We only had one night of rain, a pattering that mercifully waited until we had settled into our tent for the night. We met my dad this time at the Shoal Creek Ranger Station, SOBO mile 237. After our road walk skips, this made for about 200 miles hiked for us before our Christmas break.
RETURN TO TRAIL
We picked the trail back up 2-3 weeks later at the same location. Alabama had received a rare "heavy snowfall," which meant there were several inches on the ground for the next few days. Right as we got out of her car, my mom even got the best phone call a teacher can receive: snow day tomorrow!
Over our final week on the trail, we were granted the luxury of four out of seven nights indoors, without any such planning prior. On our first night back, we had to dig a patch of dirt out of the snow to set up our tent. Night two, we made it just after dark to Blue Mountain Shelter. The following morning, we popped into Cheaha State Park to grab some hot breakfast treats (and free coffee!) while warming our hands and feet up for a big day ahead. A tough descent lay not too far before us, a steep (by Pinhoti standards) climb down labeled "the Stairway to Heaven." And thanks to quite a few inches of snow and ice, we (correctly) estimated it might eat up a good bit of our brief hours of daylight.
But this is also where fortune smiled on us. This afternoon, I texted some local trail angels who run a place called Next Step Hostel in Talladega. As I was arranging for a meetup the next evening, I was delighted to discover that not only would that meetup not be a problem, but they also serviced the trailhead north of the one we were planning to meet up from, as well as another one further south.
LUXURY "BACKPACKING"
And so, thanks to the generosity of Nancy and Jeff, we ended up with three stays at the lovely Next Step Hostel, smack dab in the middle of town, for three cold nights in January. They dropped us off each morning and picked us right back up each evening, allowing our 15-18 mile hiking days to fit perfectly between each trailhead. Their hostel was literally across the street from a sushi restaurant, and to make our resupply more convenient, they handed us the keys to the truck after dropping us off each night. The Pinhoti Trail is truly home to a wonderfully warm community.
And that hospitality didn't stop there, either: our penultimate night on trail had us staying at the epicenter of the trail, the Pinhoti Outdoor Center itself. We were picked up by the owner and man responsible for many of the great things going on in the Pinhoti community, Nathan Wright, a man I'd already had the chance to befriend on my first hike of the trail.
We went out for Mexican food after we'd cleaned ourselves up, and were treated to excellent company as we talked all things Pinhoti over a wonderful celebratory meal. Nathan filled our ears and minds with the history, the present, and the future of this awesome trail we now found ourselves nearing the completion of.
After a restful night of rain pitter-pattering on the tin roof of the hostel, none other than Chuck Norris himself (the one who goes by that trail name, that is) met us for chit-chat over breakfast and a ride back to the trail, skipping over just a few more miles of dog filled roadwalk.
It was an easy enough foggy day, and on our last night we were treated to one final empty shelter, the Weogufka Creek Shelter, just a few miles from the terminus.
THE FITTING FINALE
As I have often found to be the case on long hikes, we were presented with a fittingly reflective ending that told us we were exactly where we were supposed to be. We ran into a mother and daughter who had camped near the parking lot the night before. They said they'd been a little nervous, but the presence of another car there (my car, which we'd shuttled for ourselves a week prior) comforted them. They were shocked and inspired that we had hiked the entirety of the trail from Georgia. We could see the gears turning in the mother's head, especially as we spoke about our hike. As drops of rain began to pelt us on our overcast morning, both parties walked away smiling.
It wasn't long before we reached the top of Flagg Mountain. The tower was locked up for the weekend, so after a quick look around, we descended on down the mountain back to the car, where we took a few pictures and then met up with some friends in the area for lunch. We made it home in time for hot showers and dinner with family, safe, happy, and grateful for a successful hike.
REFLECTIONS
I am deeply thankful for the time we spent on the Pinhoti Trail. I've found I quite enjoy re-hiking long-distance trails I've already checked off, and this one was no exception. The previous time, I had my eyes on a much larger picture, of which the Pinhoti was simply a means of connecting trails across the country. I appreciated being able to focus on just the Pinhoti this time.
I find myself continuously happily impressed at how well taken care of these smaller trails around the country are. With the exception of the troublesome roadwalks (which are quite easy to skip), I think the Pinhoti is an extremely smooth trail experience. All of our resupplies and experiences making our ways in and out of towns was easy, with several resupply points either directly on trail or an easy walk from it. We found great information about the trail, between our Far Out map and Nathan at the Pinhoti Outdoor Center. Water sources were reliable and abundant. The Trail Angels were spectacular any time we called on them. The Pinhoti Trail is simply an excellent trail and trail community.
I'll sign off with a simple, honoring thought on our experience on trail–the loving community that is the Pinhoti Trail makes me proud to be from Alabama.
