Backpacking Alabama: Cheaha/Skyway/Pinhoti Trail/ Chinnabee Loop in 4K

all right today is February 17th 2018 and I find myself in the great state of Alabama of all places never thought I would ever backpack here I'm in the tala gate Talladega National Forest it's a little bit kind of east of Birmingham and I've got my buddy Brian delay here at a Knoxville Tennessee Brian's height with me in the past love this guy he's playing this trip I know nothing about it so I'm gonna let him tell you real fast what do we doing Ryan we're all right so we are at the intersection of State Route 281 and the Chinna P silence trail this is about five miles south of chi-ha State Park we're doing about an 18 mile loop we're starting at the Chinna be silent trail and we're kind of going west southwest on that trail down toward chi-ha Falls then the Chinna P Lake and then up the skyway trail to the pinho T trail and then the pinho T trail back to the Chinna be silent trail and then back to the trailhead so hopefully it'll be a nice little pretty trip we're about 75 degrees today we've got some blue skies little rains expected tonight but the weather's supposed to be great for the next two days hopefully with no rain has been Thunder booms off in the distance all right first trip 2018 for me he's been out there here we go it looks like the trail leaves the creeks and the creeks here we're leaving the tree and there we go up high decision made hopefully it's right that like a little pamphlet hand out the visitors oK we've decided to make camp haven't come very far it's about 5:15 Central Time I think it gets dark around 6:00 so gonna set up camp here in the trees so the rain finally caught up to us tonight and we've had to retreat to our tents just a quick recap on what was a very short hike in don't really even know where I'm at I just follow him Brian's lead on this one but we didn't hike in we couldn't even come in a mile maybe maybe just about that very wooded few waterfalls much hotter than I was expecting it's cooled off now but earlier today it was it was warm and very humid which is different than all my hikes out west it's also very buggy a lot of spiders there's one hole across top of the screen right now or above the camera say anyways the end of day one well good morning we have made it to day 2 of the trip it's nice and sunny this morning didn't rain on us all of last night I think it was just recently someone asked me in a question and answer video what I did on rainy evenings in camp and this is last night was exactly what I answered in that question-answer video brian has a tarp it's what he sleeps underneath and I got underneath it and it's been about three hours swapping trail stories with him as it just downpour it out here so thankfully it looks like that weather has passed for now but let me show you on Brian's map where we are and kind of what we're intended to do with this trip so here's a look at the map that we are using for this trip and apparently according to Brian there really isn't a good map with topography lines on it this looks like something you'd see in a coloring book or something but it works and brian has gone in and added some mild numbers in there this is the chi-ha state park area and chi-ha wilderness which is this area in yellow and i think the green is Talladega National Forest and it runs a ways down there and course jiya State Park I don't know if it's a peak or whatever but it's the highest point in Alabama and that's somewhere in here and we actually started near this Turnipseed campground and we hiked in this blue apparently it's about a mile these waterfalls the Chia Falls and we passed that and they're somewhere up here and then what we're looking to do on this route is kind of circle this whole area looks like this at the Skyway trail Adams gap and the Penn OD trail I don't know how to pronounce that and we could do multiple things in here and we'll take this little section of trail back to the trailhead to finish the trip you know it's like 17 or 18 mile it's just the straight loop probably do that in one whole day hike if you wanted to work obviously gonna take our time and enjoy it and might be able to do some side trips over in here so Joey in his map review mentioned the Penn hodie trail the Penn hodie trail is a long distance trail it connects to the Florida Trail then it also connects to the Benton MacKaye trail in the Cohutta wilderness in North Georgia so the florida trail you can hike from the keys all the way up to florida trail to the pin hoody trail to the Benton MacKaye trail to the 80 and then go all the way to Maine or you know go all the way to Maine and then there's another section of the 80 that actually goes up to Nova Scotia so it's a real nice interconnectivity of these trails you can literally hike from Florida to all the way Nova Scotia yeah interesting and even though everyone knows what the 80 is you got to tell people that don't know the Appalachian Trail the great Appalachian Trail which is a big trail that runs from basically northern Georgia trails roughly 20 just under 2,200 miles long it goes from Springer Mountain Georgia to Mount Katahdin Maine and we're not on the 80 trail but we could hike up to it on this trail here's a shot of Brian Starr Brian I want you to tell us a little bit what do you got going on there this is a log designs trail start art it's a five sided tarp it weighs about 17 ounces this is the way I normally use it I've got five four sides stakes down and the fifth side is up if it were really nasty wind stormy I would stake this corner down and I would put my hiking pole on the side and have a small opening going in I've been using the tarp since 1998 and have never gone back to a tent they really excel nights like last night when it was raining and rather being enclosed in a small little tent you're you're still open you've got rain protection you can see out you don't feel enclosed yes you might have a little splash factor around the edges and yeah if you don't like you know bugs and grande long legs then a part might be might not be for you but I'm really enjoying it how much a room you saw me crawl through there look how much room is in this thing check out the Brian's YouTube channel is it just Brian delay yes Brian delay I'll put a link to it below in the description box and he has a bunch of gear reviews and you talk about your tarpon more in depth in there along with a lot of other stuff of course you'll see Brian and a few other of my backpacking videos somewhere on all over the place I know we did one in Yellowstone that'll be coming out pretty soon too so alright we packed up camp and now hitting the trail plan for today you tell us today we're going to continue on the chin of be silent trail down almost it should be Lake then cross chin api-- Creek connected with the Skyway trail and then hike up toward State Route 281 and hopefully find a place to camp maybe two or so miles before we get to State Route 281 should it be try saying that word eight times yeah so well we're thinking that's gonna be they may be a sweat six mile yeah something like maybe six seven nothing too strenuous it is a little cooler than yesterday and we got some cloud cover so maybe we're gonna get rain again what was the low last night got down to about 45 yes what's that right now we're 64 degrees and yesterday the high was 75 well let's do it let's do it all of you something in this area might be called the devil's den area on the maps then it's a bunch of waterfalls you can kind of see them all but there's way more up above this and then there's more to the right below this kind of just hard to capture the scene with all the trees okay we have reached our trail Junction the Skyway trail we've got six miles to Adams gap and we're not going that far but that's a beautiful section along this river and I think we're going to be looking for a place to cross pretty soon Ryan's who had some wishful thinking for a bridge not sure if we're going to get so lucky so no bridge but it turned out to be a pretty easy and shallow crossing surprisingly the water temperature really isn't that cold is a bother my feet if they have been colder water I probably would have taken these little 5m5 to things that I have on camera there and gone barefoot and dried my feet all starting to rain on us it's kind of a cool-looking tree [Applause] all right bossman says we're camping here so we're right along a creek it's kind of let off the rain for a little bit right now so so in this trip I'm using a western mountaineering sleeping bag I've actually had two western mountains sleep sleeping bags since about 2008 and I would guess I've gotten close to nine hundred to a thousand backpacking nights in that time frame all with just two different Western a mountaineering bags I don't actually know the brand names on these guys but they work really well they are expensive sleeping bags and I'll be honest with you I am gonna be switching up to something new in the next couple of weeks so still not sure what I'm where I'm going with that yet but you'll probably be seeing me talk a little bit more about something different in the upcoming trip videos but I have to say I love western mountaineering they have done me we are here in camp and it's been raining on us for a while now we were lucky enough to get everything set up before the rains came well that's kind of lag is it kind of rained on and off all day but nothing really hard this is the beauty of hiking with somebody that has a tarp cuz this is awesome to sit underneath this thing and be social and not be crammed into like a tiny tent see I like it yeah you know like a little recap on today's hike not really much to say beautiful stuff the waterfalls and the gorge by what was it like hell's Devils day Devil's Den there's a series of waterfalls there and a big river not really a big river but a big creek or creek as they would call it here and I honestly wish we can't that would have been like the best place to camp very nice reminded me a lot of the Smoky Mountains which isn't too far from here but it just kind of had that feel just charming and since then it's kind of just really since we crossed the creek there it's kind of just been rainy most of the afternoon and we hiked through forests a few miles to get up to where we're camp now we don't even know what we're camped on but there's kind of in the woods probably call this the end of day number two and see you guys in the morning good night good morning we've made it to day number three that part's gonna go in the video heywhat there's a lot of moisture here and I kind of forgot about that I'm so used to hiking in very dry climates where everything if it doesn't rain it dries out really fast and just arid where's here everything's wet it's just been it hasn't really rained the entire trip at all but it's just it rains here and there and then nothing dries out there's always clouds but just like inside my tent everything's kind of getting wet the camera getting wet it's just forgot that the East Coast is so humid and wet all the time and probably why it's so muggy I mentioned that there's spiders everywhere the last couple nights I'll put my headlamp on and you know spiders eyes kind of reflect in your headlamp light and so I'll look out and all you see are off of these lights everywhere and I wasn't just like oh those are spiders I went and like tried to look and sure enough you go look and they're all you get close to him it's spiders so this is Forrest little spiders I don't I don't think too many of them are dangerous thing right well those of us would sleep on your tarp we choose to ignore yeah all right Brian what's our plan for today okay our plan for today is to continue up the skyway trail yesterday we stopped hiking about four o'clock we didn't quite get as far as we wanted to we found a really nice campsite along a really pretty Creek so we've got about four miles left up to the sky way and then we'll connect over to an OB trail and somewhere tonight find a place to camp all of the penalty trail hopefully along a small spring or branch there is this normal that it is brainy like this all the time this time of the year yes this this rain is absolutely normal we've not had what I call significant rain we've had a few sprinkles on and off a little bit of drizzle we have had a lot of humidity and yes and the southern Appalachians when you're backpacking once things get wet it's very difficult to dry out see you're smoking a cigar there what kind of cigars you smoke this is Liguria Cubano waffle cigar and I enjoy cigars yes very they for me they're very compatible with that packet all right time to start hiking for the day here we go it's opened up a little bit we've got some views and so now you're looking at chi-ha mountain with the towers on it there and that's the highest point in the state of Alabama because I've heard me mentioned all the spider is a bug really kind of like bugs snakes spiders that are unique to this area should be heads up that likes snakes well yeah of course thanks rattlesnakes and copperheads and every now and then you might run into some brown recluse spiders they can bite you and leave the nice little bruise on your skin or you know maybe a scorpion but those are pretty rare scorpions here yeah [Applause] we haven't quite reached the road yet but we have joined forces with peyote trail actually it's running that way and then this way and the gnar trail came up this way so hopefully we're gonna hit the road we actually could already see the road right there so we're pretty close to a road at Adams yeah all right we've made it to the road in Adams Gap trailhead really not much to see here it is pretty especially with the blue skies we're crossing the road straight ahead and that's where our trail goes into the woods again that is looking West I think over the state of Alabama all right it's about 4:30 p.m. and place that we're gonna set up camp for the night somewhere along the Penn hodie Trail if you remember back to earlier on in this video we talked about the Penn hodie trail being a trail that goes all the way across Alabama right from southern part of Alabama from Florida through Alabama so we're on that couple miles we've come down it headed north basically I gotta say the views are much more what I would have expected from a Skyrim trail all right so this is bear country although I'm not really sure how many bears are here it's a black bear country I would assume and so you might be wondering what we're doing to store our food so that bears raccoons mice and other critters don't get it so I'm gonna let this guy tell you what he does because he's got a pretty cool bag hanging system to hang food in your food bag up in the trees so bears and other animals can't get it so basically I've got a system that uses two cords and a ring I've got about 50 feet of this ziget cord it's a 1.75 millimeters and I've got a little small chain link on one end of it on the other end I have a little small carabiner this is what I call my throw line I'll throw one end of this over a lamb or through a fourth my second cord is a little thicker cord it's just a two millimeter utility cord and I've got the little small carabiner attached to the end of it and I will run this cord through the ring attach my food bag to it and pull it through that ring so I'm not pulling the food bag over a limb there's very little abrasion on the cord this enables me to throw it over you know a small limb or a fork and then this pull cord I'll tie it off to another tree you know in the distance so this is 30 feet and this is 50 feet so I've got a total of 80 feet that enables me to you know get something really hot I'd like to be a minimum of 10 feet high prefer 12 feet high and I also like to have a radius all the way around the bear bag of about 12 feet with no clearance you know eight would absolutely be the minimum eight feet from a lamb eight feet from other trees just touching that what he's talking about hanging it up 10 to 12 feet want to hang your food you want it to be up high enough that a bear can't reach it and I don't really know the Bears sizes here in this part of the country but still 10 foot the 12 foot is a pretty good height and a general height that they tell you to do everywhere I've ever been and then you want to at least be six to eight feet from each side just so that a bear can't climb up that tree reach over and grab it it's not just bears I'm gonna give you another a little story that happened to be one time in shining Rock Willis I was walking through this guy's camp and I saw a squirrel climb up the tree jump off the tree turn around in mid air and land on the guy's food back you also have a pretty cool story of some aliens taking your food - yeah well they ended up with a smile oh that's just awful so if you didn't quite follow along with how Brian was hanging his food there you could watch a better video that he does on his youtube channel what do you call this method the to see up to see our method two chords in a ring the to see our method so if you'd like to see more on this I'll put a link to his video below in the description box or go check out a channel and you can find it there anyways things are winding down here just a nice quiet evening definitely the best day of hiking we had views we had beautiful skies clear skies only saw one person on the trail today compared to the last couple days it's actually been busy today was really interesting we went through a lot of different - geology and and ecosystems today we came out of some drainages I think our net gain was probably eight right at 800 feet our aggregate gain by the time we went up and down all these ridges was probably closer to 1500 feet then we got on the pin hoody trail and I was thinking that we would go up to the main ridge and be hiking along the main ridge it's been so long ago that I did this it was in rain and fog when I did it but instead of that we were kind of on the side of the main ridge going across these rib ridges that come off the main ridge so instead of long steady klein it was just up 100 200 feet down a hundred hundred hundred then back up just up and down you it to me that's more challenging than just a standing climb you'd never get in a rhythm you know it's just up and down up and down so that's pretty standard for like this whole Appalachian East Coast hiking right the trails are just constantly up and down I will say the mosquitoes are a help and they've eaten me up on my leg so I wasn't expecting that I got I got new alright pretty exhausted this is gonna be the end of day number three I'll see you guys tomorrow good night good morning welcome to day number four so I'm using a new backpack on this trip that's an osprey an XOS 58 litre and it's my first time ever using Osprey packs have always used Gregory packs in the past Osprey is a really popular brand this is kind of a lightweight pack for them and so far through three days of backpacking I really like it but we'll give it the rest of the year to see how it does I do want to say thank you my buddy Jacob Menard who bought this pack for me and shipped it to me he actually didn't just get this one he got me two packs both Ospreys he had seen that I had broken my pack in my Sierra video so Jacob that was really awesome of you thank you and I'm loving it so far okay we have packed up camp and it's time to start hiking this should be the last day of our trip if we actually had a map with topography lines on it we might know we were at and how much farther we have to go today we're guessing we have between 6 to 7 miles back to the car or on the pen OD trail we're gonna keep going north on it until we intersect the chicopee silent trail we're gonna make a left-hand turn and take that back to the road so it's been pretty overcast so far today almost all so windy almost like we have weather coming in but now it's starting to break up a little bit so maybe it'll be a good day the Pinho tea trail has a logo I don't know maybe some kind of bird or something it's got a horizontal marker and then a excuse me vertical marker and then kind of horizontal varka marker that has a curve in it and this is the first time we've seen that blaze on the trail this is old and a little bit faded but you can kind of make it out here notice all the green on the rocks here the green on the rocks is what and that's what I don't know but supposedly it's but it's a living organism it's pretty common everywhere oK we've climbed up to a high point and have some pretty spectacular views best views of the trip guys that's Alabama okay so here's a great look at I think it's called chi-ha Mountain and that's the highest point in the state of Alabama that bump CH EA H a it's how you spell it I'm pronouncing it G ah I could be incorrect G aha okay we've reached our trail Junction it should be silent trail run that way it's our final trail junction of the trip really I think it's about two miles from here back to the cars should be mostly downhill we're gonna stop and take a lunch break here but one quick note this section of trail from camp this morning to hear the pono tea trail awesome highlight of the trip you're on a ridge almost the entire time you know it's not like always open views because there is it's forested but a lot of times you have these good spots where you have lookouts and you're overlooking the whole valley out there really nice some five-star campsites up here it's also a lot of Springs there's a spring right here I don't know if it's gonna be that way all year long but right here in the winter it's working just eat it is it gonna be taste like stop okay we have pretty much made it back to the road into our cars and that's gonna end the trip so I thought I'd give you a few final thoughts first of all this video is shot with my sony a6300 I shot it in 4k and when I shoot it in 4k it crops in the size of the shot so I normally shoot a lot of shots like that are 16 millimeters well it crops him down to about 22 to 24 millimeters so therefore I wasn't able to get any wide angled landscape shots so hopefully it came out good great trip thank you to Brian here who took me on this one I had no idea what I was getting into you know no prep time to even think about it I just when we were coming out for four days and you know the first two days you know that first day we really caught jumped in this thing really fast it was really rainy and we only went in maybe a mile kind of got dark on us fast we actually lost the trail I think a little bit that day in the next morning but that second day that was a beauty River which i think is what we just crossed right here we got decided on day two it was a really beautiful spot you know it kind of started raining on us there was overcast and I'd always like just rains on my morale when it's overcast so I I was aware that was a really pretty spot lots of like boulders and rocks in the water was just like a classic southern Appalachian River you know not huge but definitely had a little volume moving it and the ton of waterfalls especially by Devil's Den it was like a Big Bend in there and there's several great campsites that had we had I gotten up here earlier the day we started we probably would hike into would have those would make for better campsites day two after that it really started raining on us I didn't feel much day three just was but just change in morale Sun popped out a lot it was dry out they get rained on us at all yesterday we started to get a little bit more views even when we were in the woods you had more and there was some charming sections along the creek there and that's when we kind of got more into the rocky or terrain and got up on the ridge and the pin ot trails definitely I think my favorite part of this trip to the point that I would hike this section I would do this loop again and I would do that section at a much longer range it's kind of a PI views vistas great campsites a lot of Springs whether or not they're gonna be there you know during the winter or the summer who knows it probably dries up but right now it's perfect and I really enjoyed this last day with all of the rocks and the lichen on the rocks and the colors yeah great trip I'd come back definitely it exceeded my expectations I would I would I'll tell you that so if I have anything else anything you want to say the only thing I'll add to it was you know I did this loop the opposite direction starting at Adams gap in 2009 and it was torrential downpours we had about 10 plus inches of rain in about four days got a little bit longer trip and some miles to it we kind of came up to with this idea at the last moment didn't have a lot of opportunity to find a really good map and had to use the coloring book map this joy describes it I don't know why I called that it just looks like it's something out of a coloring book so we just kind of made a Winget trip and felt our way through this one then had a lot of fun come we did see people every day but it was never crowded but what we did notice is we passed at least three different groups of backpackers twice on two different days and they're all doing the loop different than we were I think they did exactly how you did it the first time everyone seemed to start from this Adams gap and kind of go the opposite direction all right yeah well no yeah the opposite direction that we did it they do make maps it appears for this area check with the National Forest Service because I know the Forest Service will make maps and a lot of different places and it's hard to find them say in a public setting but if you contact the Forest Service they usually have a map with contour lines in it and you know topography so you can actually tell where the streams are what the trail is going to do I will say today was a lot of up and down what do you think we did I think once we left the rib bridges and climbed up to the main ridge you know I forgot to check my altimeter but I felt like it was about an 800 foot climb so yeah I mean it we've definitely climbed up a lot today and this was the hardest day of the high of the trip and the last two days have been the hardest day when it comes to up and down and I know that's different from a lot of places I'm used to being out west but very normal here in Appalachians is that your trails go up and down up and down a lot as you were talking about the rib ridges where you're just you're circling around the ridge and it's up and down up and down up and down so yeah I have no idea what the aggregate elevation gain was but just that one section was about 800 feet the aggregate elevation gain from yesterday and today all the ups and downs I don't know I'd say well over 2,000 feet maybe 2500 feet so a lot of people seem to think including us that the distance on the skyline trail from was a chin of pea Lake kitchen to Adam's gap is a little bit longer than the six miles that's the markers say it might be more than six miles it says at least it felt a little bit longer to both of us and to some other people that's all I got I'm a little tired of this rainy stuff you guys have in the southeast so I'm headed to the southwest big-big national parks up next thanks for watching guys and Brian think you look like whoo all right sweet see

Channel: MyOwnFrontier

Views: 23,462

Rating: 4.9762378 out of 5

Keywords: Backpacking, Alabama, Talladega National Forest, Cheaha Wilderness, Pinhoti Trail, Skyway Trail, Chinnabee Silent, Hiking, Camping, Backcountry, Outdoors, My Own Frontier, Southern Appalachians

Id: 96qEen2YWLY

Length: 41min 13sec (2473 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 01 2018