The Palmetto Trail, Swamp Fox Passage, Section 3, almost 12 miles.
The weather was forecast to be raining most of the weekend, fortunately, the rain backed off some leaving us a great sunny hiking day. This is my volunteer group’s first backpacking trip this year. For some of the hikers, this is their first backpacking trip. I’m pleased with the group’s interest in this trip. It’s nice to get new people into the outdoors camping and backpacking. I think it greatly helps them build self-confidence and a better appreciation of the outdoors.
Our backpacking group this weekend consists of seven new backpackers and another five experienced hikers including myself (4 adults and 8 youth). I had done some trail scouting a month or so earlier, looking for a good drop-in location. Due to recent rain, the whole area was a little soggy, so I picked this section of the Palmetto trail to give us a ten-plus-mile hike to finish at our base camp on the shores of Lake Moultrie. Our drop-in point and campsite for the night is on the North side of the Cane Gully Branch crossing. The designated campsite on the South side of Cane Gully was officially closed and too wet to camp there anyway.
The entire Swamp Fox Passage is just over 47 miles. The Swamp Fox Passage is the longest section of the cross-state Palmetto Trail. Most of the Swamp Fox Passage of the Palmetto trail runs through Francis Marion National Forest and includes the swamps made famous as hideouts of the Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion. The section we are hiking this weekend is the last leg of Section 3 from about mile 38 to the Lake Moultrie dike and then into our base camp at Boy Scout Camp Moultrie.
I selected a site to camp the first night off Callum Road just after the Cane Gully Branch Creek crossing. With the recent rains, this seemed like the best (dryest) option for us. Traveling from Summerville is about an hour’s drive up from Summerville through the Friday evening traffic. We arrive at our campsite just before dark, which is nice. This allows setting up our camp while there is still some daylight. Some of the kids are up late chatting with each other. One group even has fired up a backpacking stove and is making mac & cheese, at 9:00 pm. Just hungry I guess, and they can.
I’m up early-ish, about 6:30 am, just before most. Everyone starts getting up shortly after, and then the routine begins. Breaking down camp, making breakfast, and loading our packs. And not necessarily in that order for everyone. For me, breakfast was hot cafe mocha and oatmeal. For my Trail Cafe Mocha, I use an instant coffee packet mixed with a hot chocolate packet mix and hot water from my Jetboil. My morning oatmeal is a couple of packets from a variety oatmeal box. I mix hot water from my Jetboil in the oatmeal packet to get to the desired consistency and eat it directly from the oatmeal packet. This minimizes waste and cleanup.
We are hiking on the trail by about 9:00 am. I consider this a reasonable time with this size group. But first, we take a short walk back to the bridge over the Cane Gully Creek. This was installed several years ago after one of the hurricanes and was part of the trail reconstruction. We then head northbound towards Lake Moultrie.
The trail is a bit soggy from the recent rains. But a lot of this trail is soggy all year (hence the part “Swamp” of the name “Swamp Fox”). There are numerous places with elevated walkways to navigate around routinely flooded areas. Hiking along this trail is mostly shaded, the trail is well-defined and maintained, although soggy.
We enter the Wadboo Creek part of the trail about mid-morning. This section of the trail has elevated boardwalks through some of the swamp areas. History says this area is where Francis Marion was headquartered during the Revolutionary War. Later the area became rice fields for area plantations in the 1800’s. The elevated boardwalks take us past the canoe launch point. The launch point is for the Wadboo Creek Canoe Trail and is accessible from Highway 17.
Once we are past the Wadboo Creek area, we find a shaded spot to break for lunch. We are about 5 miles from our destination now. With our group, you pack what you want for food. I abandoned group menus a long time ago. Today, some folks are doing simple lunches but one is doing a hot lunch involving boiling water to rehydrate their meal. For this trip, I went with a simple canned chicken spread and pita bread. I generally find tortillas pack better than most breads with pita being a close second.
Back to hiking after lunch. Some are getting tired. The day has been warming up and some of the young legs are simply wearing out. We have two more milestones of importance to make and then we are home for the evening. The first is the Trail Head (TH) at the Northern end of the Swampfox Trail, located at mile marker 47. The second is making the dike around Lake Moultrie. The TH has a nice little green grass field around it. I promise a break there to cool off and rest for more than just a few minutes. Years ago, the TH once had a parking lot and outhouse which were nice for hikes. Somewhere in the last ten/fifteen years, the parking area was closed off and abandoned. The TH was moved away from the parking area about a hundred yards.
We finally make the little green field of the TH and rest, share water, snacks, and discuss the remaining distance. Some are very close to their limit and we still have a couple miles to go. It’s important to me to try to provide a positive experience in the outdoors, and encouragement here is important.
The last mile from the TH to the dike is more of a continuation of the walk in the woods we’ve been hiking all day. Generally, the trees shade you but also limit your view to a few hundred feet.
But then we break out of the woods and see the dike ahead. The openness of the view as we break out of the woods and swamp and onto the dike of Lake Moultrie is refreshing.
The sky is clear and bright blue. When you climb to the top of the dike you are treated to a beautifully clear view across the lake. However, there are always compromises in life. With the openness of the dike, we’ve now lost the shade of the trees. The mid-afternoon sun bears down on us as we hump the last couple of miles along the open dike to camp. We drop off the dike and into some shade as we hit the lake shore town of Overton and make our final leg into the scout camp on the shores of Lake Moultrie. In camp (4 pm) at last!
We hiked 11.9 miles. A solid day trek and a challenging first hike. I was concerned I had broken some of the new hikers but the best part was learning the new hikers liked this hike and would do another. Here is my Relive video of the Swamp Fox Section 3 hike. If you go, expect wet feet. The trail is soggy. Despite good hiking footwear, I still ended up with several moisture-related blisters on my feet. Towards the end of the hike, I could feel hotspots developing. I should have changed socks at lunch of at the northern trailhead. Sometimes you just want to push that last little bit. Listen to your feet! Dry socks are our friend.
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