Light Pack Backpacking: Palmetto Trail

I'm a sprinter at heart. I've been trying to fix it for years now but the going is slow. I blame it on the BMX racing. Its 45 seconds of full tilt go. I built up a single speed cruiser for getting around town in Clemson way before it was hip to SS anything. It was a rusty heap that I literally bought out of a pile of rusting bikes for $5 or $10 and brought back from the dead. I bring it up because this bike was designed and restored to be a chill machine. What did I do? Sprints between my apartment and class. It jumped sidewalk ramps like a dream. I took off from a light so hard in town that I blew a chain and crumpled into a bloody lump in the middle of the street. Honestly, I didn't regret it. I'm a sprinter at heart.

Why do I bring that up? I have a passion for long distance adventure and being a sprinter makes that really hard. No matter how fit you are if you don't pace yourself smartly, you blow up. It doesn't help if you have a (as yet undiagnosed) lung problem that leaves you face up on the side of the trail content to sleep with ants and mosquitoes taking their fair share of you.

I decided to take a swing at the Palmetto Trail back late in 2011. Its taken this long to post anything about it because... well, it aggravated me. Looking back on it I definitely had Type II fun (fun to remember - not as fun to do). The original plan was to drop off in Awendaw and pedal my way up to home in Lexington, SC. That's a couple hundred miles on singletrack, jeep trail, pavement and urban sprawl. I ended up biting off 50 miles of it from Awendaw to Monck's Corner, SC. Here are a few photos from the trip...

With a full time job and two kids there really isn't a ton of time to get packed and ready before trips like this. I do get all of my gear together in a pile, plan meals, routes, etc. but it seems like the last minute preparation always suffers. That's OK, I can take care of it in the hotel room, right?

The other thing that I don't do enough is thank my wife for being pretty rad. She tolerates me taking off on silly solo adventures when most other wives would tell me to go read a book. In this particular instance, she loaded up Kate & Mason and drove down to Charleston to drop me off.

Mason doesn't know that he isn't in a luxury crib.

Kate needed to set up a campsite next to the actual bed.
She's going to be an adventure princess!

Lots of waffles in the morning before hitting the trail.

Palmetto Trail trailhead. I can't describe the mosquito
density here... brutal.

A view of the marsh along the trail out of Awendaw.

Its gorgeous trail and easy going.

I never get used to seeing palm growing wild in the woods.

Don't mount your Spot this close to your GPS.
They don't play nice together.

A view of the 'trail' along the way. This trail doesn't see much use
so the markings and trail maintenance are lacking in certain areas.
Keep a keen eye out for 90 degree turns and disappearing track.

There was a lot of sandy gravel jeep trail in the lowcountry.
Not particularly exciting but you make great time on it.
Hard-packed and fast.

This is Turkey Creek. I filtered water here because it can be a little
difficult to find along the way. This tannin rich black water is pretty
common in the lowcountry and gives filters a fit. I used my
MSR Hyperflow on this trip with decent luck.

A nice bridge shot over the creek. I tested a Brooks on this trip.
Yeah, I know its moronic to test a new seat on a long ride like this
and I knew that going in. It worked out fine but I
did learn that I prefer my Selle Italia Flite.

There was a long run of this built up trail out in the middle of
nowhere, SC. I can't muster a guess of why you'd do this but
it was a welcome change to the hidden pot holes I'd been
grinding through for the previous 20 miles.

I must have wiped out 1,000 spiders on this ride. They were particularly
bad in the first 10 to 15 miles of the trip. These guys were the most
common and have an impressively large and strong web. The front of
the Black Sheep (and me) were caked in web to the point that I didn't
bother even cleaning it off after awhile. The worst was when the spider
either hitched a ride like this and suddenly climbed onto your arm.
Worse than that was the two occasions that I managed to snag the spider
on my face. Yes, twice.I'm skittish about bugs but I pretty much freak out
when large spiders are on my face. For the record, this guy was safely
removed from the bike and relocated to a nearby tree.
No, the face spiders didn't meet as lucky a fate.

Sand sloppy enough that 2.4" tires aren't enough.
It probably was only a couple of miles but it felt like 30.

There was a lot of overgrown brush in the trail as well.
Funny enough I was glad that it still had dew on it and it was
relatively stiff brush. It did a fantastic job cleaning the spider
web crud off of me and the bike. Its the little things.

Taking a break along the way. The elevated walkway was
in rough shape and in some cases completely rotted.

Lots & lots & lots of jeep trail.


At one point I had ridden miles and miles of fire break cut that had hole after hole from rotted out pine stumps. When I got to the road near the ranger station I just laid down for a long time and took the day in. I was tired and cranky so I took a picture from the grass. It didn't take long to relax and enjoy the moment.

I remember thinking how pretty these clouds were.

Slight change of plans... no more pothole trails. I grabbed the map and picked some secondary roads.

Miles and miles of secondary roads as it turns out.

I stumbled on the ruins of an old church and the cemetery along the way. Beautiful & peaceful site.

I took a 3-day weekend to meet up with dad so we could explore possible connector loops between the Jocassee Gorges section of the Palmetto Trail and the Foothills Trail. We've done these trail sections before but the first time around we chose to hike out all the way to highway 178 then up to the FHT. That loop requires 4 miles or so of asphalt which can ruin the experience so we dedicated this trip to finding a more suitable connector. The plan:

1. Hike the Palmetto Trail to the 9 mile marker and camp there.
2. Scout an off trail route to the FHT or decide to test a few sections of double track that seem to head in the right direction.
3. Camp overnight on the FHT.
4. Come home.

Plans change - that's the beautiful thing about hiking. The point is to enjoy yourself so you adjust your schedule to suit. My last several trip posts have been gear focused and bordering on geeky. This one will focus on adventure and the beauty of being out there.

Here's our route on the map.

Day 1 is highlighted in yellow and is just a little over 9 miles (I forgot to start the track on my GPS at the very beginning of the walk).

Here's day 2 highlighted in yellow. We walked a little over 10 miles with the first mile or so being in very rough off-trail conditions. It was technically impassable with very dense laurel but we're tough (read stubborn) so we pushed our way through. I wouldn't recommend this route to anyone.

The woods were full of spring green and fresh blooms:

We started bright and early on Saturday morning with the choice of bush-whacking our way to the FHT or walking jeep trail. That's a no brainer, right? Adventure!

This is not a trail...

If there's no trail only a moron would go the steep way, right? What did you call me?

Getting better... now where's that trail?

There's that white blaze. I knew where I was the whole time. You doubted me?

We got to camp around 10:30 am which was much earlier than expected. We had a choice to make - hang out around camp for several hours or explore another connector back to the Palmetto Trail and head home. Explore, of course!

The new track took us down a solid rock ridge line for about a mile. Its a great hike down but it would be a steady and steep walk up.