“Where’s the blaze?”
I look up as the hiker in back of me splashes forward. This is one of those rare sections of the Florida Trail where you have to keep looking down at your feet—as if you could see your feet. Water the color of coffee with cream swirls in mysterious patterns between my knees. I lost sight of my feet more than an hour ago, and I have no confidence at all that I’ll see them again today.
I see no familiar orange blazes in this section. But other hikers struggle forward ahead of us, splashing and stomping along a relatively well-defined corridor of water. Trees crowd in from both sides. Another blowdown blocks my path. I try to hop over the fallen tree, but one of my feet gets caught in thick mud that oozes over the top of my boots.
“This trail sucks!” I complain. A giant sucking sound rises from the water as I yank my boot out of its trap. The other foot struggles, and pries free. Thwock! Thwock! I clumsily slide over the tree as Kent Wimmer, our trip leader, comes back to check on us stragglers. “It’s the mud that sucks,” he says, watching the next hiker struggle through the sticky stuff, slyly hidden under the sullied water of the slough.
This is the Florida Trail, in the Bradwell Bay Wilderness.
WET AND WETTER
Backpacker Magazine calls it one of the ten toughest hikes in the United States. I won’t argue. Today’s seven-mile hike will take us more than six hours. But Kent Wimmer, Florida National Scenic Trail Liaison, leads this annual Apalachee Chapter “Swamp Stomp” hike every spring, and he always has enough takers. Like me. I knew what I was getting into. I asked to be invited on the next group hike. I’d been warned…or so I thought.
Water creeps up to my thighs, lapping at my pants pockets. I grimace, take my “water-resistant” camera out of my pocket, and shove it in my sports bra.
“It’s the lowest out here I’ve ever seen,” says Kent, who is on his fifth traverse of Bradwell Bay. He’ll return again in a few days to escort thru-hiker Joan Hobson through the wilderness.
“This is low?” I ask, turning in surprise as Ralph, behind me, slips and plunges into a mudhole.
“Yup,” says Jerry, who’s done this trek before. “Wait ‘til you see the Pond. That’s where you take photos to impress your friends.”
As Florida’s second largest designated wilderness area, the Bradwell Bay Wilderness contains 24,602 acres of nearly inaccessible hardwood swamp within Apalachicola National Forest. More than 6,000 acres of the bay is lush in titi, a leathery-leaved tree with fragrant white blooms. Three varieties of titi grow in the swamp; the most common is the black titi (also known as buckwheat), which grows to a height of about 25 feet.
Different plant communities radiate outward from the center of the Bradwell Bay Wilderness. The titi swamp forms the core of the swamp, surrounded by an extensive open hardwood swamp, thick with black gum and cypress, loblolly and sweet bay. Within the hardwood swamp are pine islands, scarcely inches above the surrounding terrain but just high enough to support slash pine. Breaks in the swamp form ponds, where alligators have been sighted. Fringing the hardwood swamp are pine flatwoods carpeted with wiregrass, supporting pond pine, slash pine, and longleaf pine.
Our hike this day started at the western edge of the swamp, where a severe forest fire started on Memorial Day 1998. These woods hadn’t seen fire in decades, and the wilderness lit up like a torch. More than 13,000 acres burned, despite the ever-present water. As we hike, it is heartening to see brilliant lime-green underbrush filling in under the charred matchsticks of pond pine laid waste by the fire, which burned for more than a month. As the water around us deepened, so did the greenery overhead, until we entered a zone of hardwood trees resplendent in the young green leaves of spring: tupelo gum, black gum, sweet gum, and red maple.
Water accumulates across the broad, flat clay basin of Bradwell Bay, keeping the forest floor perpetually submerged as it sluggishly moves towards its only outlet, Monkey Creek. Deep in accumulated layers of humus – the waterlogged rotting remains of leaves, mosses, and grass – the mucky forest floor generally hides beneath one to four inches of standing water.
And then there are the mudholes, like the Pond. These deep spots in the landscape stay hidden under cover of clouded water. Only your hiking poles, used as a guide for the next footstep, can warn you of their presence.
OBSTACLE COURSE
Ronnie Traylor, FTA section leader for Appalachee West, points this section out as the most dangerous part of the hike. When I called him just after Tropical Storm Barry (August 2001) passed through, he said “right now, you’d have to swim through that section. The water’s chest deep. With conditions like these, you won’t be able to make it out before dark.” Because of the slow drainage of Bradwell Bay, it can take weeks for water levels to drop after a storm.
We’re lucky today. Despite the rain a couple of days ago, there are dry patches between the mudholes. Cypress knees jut out of the dark water, creating a base for little islands of slightly firmer muck accumulated around tree roots and giant knees.
But it’s still an obstacle course. Fallen trees force us into deeper water. Titi branches tangle together into impenetrable thickets. We clamber up and over and through brittle branches and thorny vines. Bloody gashes appear on bare skin.
Water seems to gravitate to the trail corridor. Or did some diabolical trail builder blaze the trail right into the deepest sloughs?
“Keep right! Keep right!” Ann yells back to the rest of us. Thwock. “Aaaaaaahhh!”
Big splash. Another hiker plunges down in a hole. Looks like Tom this time. “Watch out! There’s a big hole on the left!” he yells.
It’s not easy keeping out of the holes. Ronnie Traylor dropped off a University of Florida group who were taking GPS measurements of the trail, and hiked in to meet them. When he reached the pond, he caught up to the two students taking measurements, “one holding the GPS and one holding the antennae up high, attached to a piece of PVC pipe. We told her ‘whatever you do, don’t drop that antennae!’ A moment later, she stepped off in one of the holes, and all we could see was the antennae sticking out of the water.”
I’m glad I’m near the end of the line. I’m one of the lucky third of the group who has managed to keep dry from mid-thigh up, despite the frequent splashes of my comrades. Even with hiking poles, it’s easy to slip in the unseen muck and lose your footing. Or wrench your foot under a hidden root and break an ankle. Or step on a slimy log. Or plunge into a deep hole. It’s not a place to visit alone.
Still, I can’t escape the muck. The sucking muck.
The muck that oozes, filling tennis shoes. Linda is in front of me, making funny noises. “Ewwww. Goooo.” Squish. Squish. Squish. I’m glad I wore my high-topped, double-tongued leather Vasque boots. Pity the Gore-Tex lining is doing a great job of keeping water in as well as out.
The muck that grabs so tightly at heavy boots that you have to cantilever yourself against a tree and reclaim your foot with a resounding Thwock!
The muck that coats the swamp floor so deeply that only a foot of my fully extended Leki hiking sticks peep out above waterline as I probe ahead for footing.
The muck that sucks so hard on my hiking poles that they become disjointed. I see their inner workings, their springs, for the first time. I require help to push my poles back together again before they are ruined. I probe less deeply after learning that lesson. But the hiking poles are a necessity here— the first time I’ve found them of any use in Florida. Some of these blackwater troughs have pits deep enough to swallow you whole. Especially the Pond. Here, it’s water in every direction. Trail? What trail? Look for the bright orange rope. Follow it closely.
“Left side.” Someone yells from far ahead; I can’t make out who, through the dense brush. “Switch to the right in the middle…”
“Aaaaaaaahhhh!” Splash. Repeat.
A VIRGIN FOREST
Trusting in Kent’s navigation skills, we follow him into a dense stand of pine. Missed blazes throw off our leader; we briefly travel in a circle before finding the way again. Deep in this thicket of swamp and forest, it’s easy to become disoriented. According to an oral history passed down through a retiree of the U.S. Forest Service, Otha Anderson, in the 1800s a landowner named Bradwell and his elderly black companion followed their baying hounds into the swamp, where the dogs had treed a bear. Becoming severely disoriented in the titi forest, Bradwell left his old shotgun in the crook of a tree. He and his companion wandered around for several days before finding their way back out. Decades later, Bradwell’s son, Carl, offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone who could find the old shotgun. Carl died in the mid-1980s. No one has ever found the shotgun.
On a mostly-dry piece of land, Kent points upward. “This is what’s special about this forest.” Towering above us, a centuries-old pine, rising high to the sky, broad around the base. It looks like it might be one of the oldest pine trees in Florida. Around it, pines of similar girth and size, a 12-acre stand of virgin slash pine. We’ve reached the Scenic Area, about three miles into the swamp, a 300-acre wonder of nature where I feel like a Lilliputian amongst the incredible trees. Many of them are over 100 feet tall. Several significantly enormous trees, measured and registered as part of the Champion Tree program of the U.S. Forest Service, have been identified in this area. One slash pine, considered the largest in the world until recent years, had a circumference of 128 inches, a height of 129 feet, and a crown spread of 41 feet. But multiple lightning strikes took their toll; by 1998, the tree had toppled, a probable victim of Hurricane George. Measured in 1981, an ogeechee tupelo had a circumference of 162 inches, a height of 95 feet, and a crown spread of 40 feet.
“The loggers never made it back here,” Kent says.
Despite the difficulties in penetrating the forest, logging concerns saw the promise of the oversized trees found within Bradwell Bay. Tramways were built to give railroad access to the depths of the forest. The remains of some of the tramways and logging roads form parts of today’s trail. With the exception of the one stand of virgin slash pine and several other inaccessible islands in the depths of the titi swamp, pine and cypress were harvested between 1915 and 1920. Cypress was hardest hit. By the time Apalachicola National Forest was established in 1936, virtually all of the accessible area had been logged. Selective logging continued up until 1971.
Specifically to preserve the virgin slash pine forest, the Bradwell Bay Scenic Area was designated in June 1963, prior to the signing of the Wilderness Act of 1964 by the U.S. Congress. When asked to nominate a roadless area in Florida that could be protected under the new act, the U.S. Forest Service named Bradwell Bay as the only area in any of the three national forests (Apalachicola, Osceola, and Ocala) that could easily qualify, thanks to the difficulty of timber cutting within the swamp. Logging, development, oil, and hunting interests fought the designation. After all, the wilderness designation would end logging and exploratory drilling, would limit the use of motorboats and motorized vehicles, and would eliminate the building or maintaining of roads into the interior of the swamp.
Most participants at a public meeting over the issue voiced their concerns over losing their right to hunt within Bradwell Bay, and that the land would be shut off from use forever. Elise Lawton, a member of the Sierra Club, pointed out the positives. Speaking of her son’s explorations of the swamp, she said he “never misses a chance to get into the Bradwell Bay area to check on pitcher plants, carnivorous plants and the wild orchids, and to take pictures of what he finds. For him, this area was a frontier, a place to explore, to test himself and prove his abilities.”
Bradwell Bay was designated as an official Wilderness Area in 1975. Permitted uses of the area still include hunting and fishing, along with primitive camping, backpacking, canoeing (the Sopchoppy River, which is seasonally deep enough to canoe, runs along the northern extreme of the swamp), birdwatching, photography, and hiking.
LANDFALL
Landfall! An inch or two is all it takes for the plant life to change. Although the trail remains a little squishy underfoot, I can see my shoes. Delicate sundew plants glisten with jelly-like droplets on reddish-orange leaves, awaiting the arrival of an unwary insect. Oddly veined in deep crimson, bladder-like cups of green line one section of trail. “Pitcher plant,” says Linda. Delicately fringed bursts of white bog buttons break up the greenery.
It’s taken four hours, but we’ve finally arrived at “The Island,” the one and only almost-guaranteed-to-remain-dry spot in Bradwell Bay. The only place you can camp when backpacking through this wilderness area. Although a victim of the forest fire, the island is lively with young shrubs, yellow flags of Carolina jessamine, vivid buttery sprays of polygala. Lunchtime!
We rest, relax against the fallen, charred cores of pond pines. Take off the boots and pour the water out. A pointless pursuit, it turns out. For as lunch ends and we return to the trail, the treadway turns to puddles. Overhead, sweet bay magnolia unfolds its broad leaves, creating a shaded canopy. Titi branches choke off the understory.
Soaked from head to toe, Tom is happy is see the water again. He stomps through puddles like a happy child, spraying squishy mud on Linda, Kent, and me. “Bet your mother never made you write ‘I will not stomp in mud puddles’ one hundred times,” I grouse, as Tom gleefully stomps onward. The water deepens, rises over my boots again. This part of the swamp is different, though. The bottom is a solid limestone base. White sand sparkles through water tinted in hues of iced tea.
“Snake!” I yell. Three hikers have waded by the baby snake, its slight black and red frame coiled in a defensive posture, ready to strike. I give it a wide berth. Wildlife sightings have been minimal today. One sad-looking algae-covered box turtle clinging to a mudpack near the Pond, and a second, more brilliantly colored box turtle cowering in a muddy depression near the Island. Despite my fears, we’ve seen no alligators, no water moccasins. But it’s not that way every day. Last year, Ronnie Traylor escorted a documentary film crew out into Bradwell Bay. “They were disappointed that the water was so low, so we kept looking for deep spots around the Pond.” The lady doing the commentary was asked to wade into deeper and deeper water. “They kept taking the shot again and again, and she was stirring up the bottom…and she worked up an alligator from the bottom of the Pond!”
Alligator nests have been sighted from the air, and Traylor says “there are alligators all through there, but they lie still under the water. If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.” He’s seen bear as well. During one hike in from the eastern side, “I could smell the bear up ahead…he was cornered between me and the hikers I left off, and he preferred the trail over the woods. But we missed seeing him.” Rangers estimate at least forty bears live in and around Bradwell Bay.
As hunters know, small mammals and deer call Bradwell Bay home. It’s surmised that the Florida panther slinks through these dark woods. Five colonies of the red-cockaded woodpecker cluster around the pine islands in the Scenic Area, nesting in longleaf pine. Indigo snakes continue to be sighted in the pine flatwoods.
MONKEY CREEK
As we hike, magnolia and titi give way to longleaf pine, scrub oaks, and palmettos. Cinnamon ferns poke their heads out into the sunlight. We’re out of the swamp! A collective sigh rises from the group. We have just two more obstacles ahead— the two branches of Monkey Creek.
Water flows swiftly through the first crossing. “Watch out for that dark spot!” Kent warns. “It’s a deep, deep hole!” I stop mid-current to take a photo, fascinated by the layers of color in the water, hues of brown, golden orange, yellow, like a parfait. On the second crossing, we manage to squeak along the edge of the deeper water.
As the elevation increases, fringe trees turn the distant woods to a white mist, a brilliant backdrop for the slash pine scrub. We follow an old road, pausing frequently to muse at bear scat. “Bear aren’t stupid,” Kent says. “Looks like this is a bear highway, all right. Would you crash through palmetto when you could amble down the trail?”
Ambling down the trail. What a concept! And yet here we go, walking out of the wilderness to our cars shuttled down to the parking area near Monkey Creek.
It’s been a good hike. Unlike last years “Swamp Stomp,” where a cellular phone and a watch disappeared into the murky waters of Bradwell Bay, our only losses are a water bottle (by Tom, whose bottle sank to the bottom when he went splash in the Pond) and a forgotten camera, which was retrieved by two hikers before we left the wilderness.
It’s been a tiring hike. I’ve used muscles I forgotten I had. My shins ache. My soles throb. I wring out my pants. Who would think that a seven-mile day hike in Florida could leave a hiker so trashed?
“You earn every step here,” Kent said.
And I did. Whew!
Originally published on Gorp.com, Summer 2000, and later in Florida Hiker, 2002
