Anything South of Montgomery?

[Desertfox_21]

Hey all, I'm new to AL but have been reading Alatrails for about 2 years now and haven't seen anything about trails south of Montgomery.  I'm down in Ozark and looking for something that I don't have to spend a lot of time driving before I start walking.  Is there anything down here?

[squidbilly]

Conecuh National Forest  http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/a...portunities.shtml#Conecuh



Blue Springs State Park is Northeast of Ozark in Barbour County. Not sure what they have to offer, but you can find out here:
State parks

Eufaula Wildlife Refuge is on the other side of Barbour County,on the Chattahoochee River.

[stargazer]

Conecuh National Forest has many miles of trails.  Alabama Hiking Trail Society is having an overnight hike there in October.  Check out their website @ http://www.hikealabama.org. Also alabamatrail.org has information.  This is an older site but has interesting facts about many trails. 

[MobileBackpacker]

Providence Canyon just west of Lumpkin, GA

it is not too far from Ozark and is one of the coolest places i've been to here in the south, its like our own miniture bryce canyon. They have a longer trail that is about 7-10 miles, not sure if you can camp in the canyon but its definetely worth a daytrip. We camped at Eufala which is just down the road.

[WolfVanZandt]

There are a line of parks along the Alabama River administered by the Corps of Engineers and most of them have easy to moderate trails. I don't know of any backpacking there, though.

[Desertfox_21]

Thanks All,  Providence Canyon looks awesome definitely added to the list of places to go down here.  I think I am onto something in the Geneva State Forest area.  There are some maintained trails down there and it's only about a 45 minute drive.  Can't wait for a long weekend to get up north to the Cheaha area!!

[ednotmilkman]

I don't think Geneva State Forest has more than a 2 mile walk around a lake. I helped with the maintenance on it two or three years ago.

 The Florida Trail has several nice, long sections to hike across the panhandle. The problem I have with it is there is (was?) no inexpensive map available to easily show mileage of woods trail vs. roadwalk. It has lots of gaps that require a road walk.  You won't be getting any ridgetop views of anything on it for sure !


Providence Canyon is cool to see, although once I found out it was not a natural feature, but the result of SEVERE erosion from early 1900 ignorant farming methods, I now think of it as a huge gully and not wonderful.

[Desertfox_21]

You're right Ednotmilkman, I thought some of the roads down there were trails but they aren't and there is no where that they allow back country camping so that is back off the list.

[MobileBackpacker]

About an hour+ south of you is Marianna, FL. There are several places around here that offer up some excellent dayhiking/one night backpacking

Florida Caverns State Park -  2-3 mile hike, also a guided cavern tour if your into that
Torreya State Park - 14+ mile loop, some surprising elevation changes, good campsites, 20-25 ft waterfall
Apalachicola Bluffs Preserve -  3-4 mile also some good elevation gradients and a 200 ft view over the apalachicola river

There are several longer trails west of here, the Eglin airforce base (40+mi) and Blackwater SF "jackson red ground trail" (20+ mi) both are part of the Florida Trail

just some more i thought of

[Desertfox_21]

I got to do the Florida Caverns trails when I was TDY here a couple of years ago.  I didn't do the cave tour but the trails were nice. Pretty much flat but interesting walk on the bluffs overlooking the river.  It was still pretty cold so the gators weren't out and about.  That might be a good thing to go back to before it cools off and they get hard to find again.

[WolfVanZandt]

Those erosion scars spread out all over the area around Lumpkin, Georgia. In fact, they extend as far as the main road between Columbus and Richland. There are some old iron prospects on that road which has some beautiful goethite nodules. I've also done some canyon hopping in those "big gullies".

The major culprit of that erosion was kudzu. Southerners thought that it would be a good ground cover. It certainly covered the ground but instead of stopping erosion, it leached all the mineral out of the soil and increased erosion.