Sharing the best of Florida hiking

CONTEST: Fakahatchee Strand Hike 2-20-10

THE FAKAHATCHEE STRAND

The Fakahatchee Strand is an epic place for me. When I first stepped foot in the preserve, I fell in love with the place. I thought it would be just another one of those typical Florida places I visited before. I was wrong! This place is home for over 44 native orchids and 14 native bromeliad species. This place is also home to the rare Everglades Mink, Florida Bear and the Florida Panther. How cool is that! It’s also a place that looks very prehistoric and primitive.

Our hike (exploring hiking) started early in the morning. I was meeting LWgeo, Ata, Chris, and Marc at the welcome center. There is a geocache called “The Ghost Orchid” in this preserve, so I thought it would be fun to do with them. We made our way down Janes Scenic road to our entry point, which was a gate. I started to notice all the water still in the slough. Usually the water is pretty much gone by now. I knew at this point we would be walking in water today. The waypoint for the cache was pointing into the woods about .15 miles down the trail. I looked in the woods and it wasn’t just wet, it had water about a foot deep. At that point I took off my hiking shoes and put on my kayaking shoes.

I looked at everybody and said “Let’s go for it!” There was a hesitation at first, but everybody got use to water after being in it. We sloshed our way to the first waypoints on our trip. After getting our bearings, we found what we were looking for. We put the next set of coordinates in our GPS’s and it was .80 miles away thru the jungle. There is no trail where we are going. It’s a pure bushwhack! They do call this place the “Amazon of Florida” for a good reason. As we walked deeper and deeper in the slough we started to notice our first native orchids showing up. We all stopped and took pictures. We finally arrived at our next waypoint. It took a lot of work to get thru the vines, poison ivy, and the other biting plants. Now the coordinates were taking us deeper in the woods again. We ended up taking a little detour before finding the next waypoint. Lwgeo had coordinates in his GPS for a place in the strand that had a bunch of orchids. I gave him the coordinates when I was out here a year ago. We made our way there and noticed the water was deeper. The last time I was here, it didn’t have water. What a difference! I started to get worried, because the water was deep and I knew gators love these areas. We pushed on and there it was. It was a deeper slough area with hundreds of orchids on the Pop Ash trees. What a sight to see! We stayed awhile and took more pictures and enjoyed the scenery.

We kept moving on and it was getting harder to pick up our feet. The water made our pants heavy and everybody started to fall in the water. By this time, we were about 3 miles out in the Strand. It doesn’t seem that far, but it took us 8 hours to go 5 ½ miles that day and I thought we were going fast. On our last stretch of the hike, we went thru a Cypress wooded area. The cypress trees were huge and it looked more like a wooded area, instead of a Cypress dome. The water was only a foot deep here. Once we got out of this area, I thought we were done with the deep water. I was wrong! The last leg of the hike was hiking in almost waist deep water. We finally arrived at an old homestead camp off the service road. I said “Thank God!” We were tired after being in the water for 8 hour. All we had to do now was walk down the service road, which was a flat dirt road. We saw some young kids on an ATV. They asked if we would like some good oranges. The young kid climbed way up this orange tree and started to shake the oranges down. It was crazy how high this kid was. It was very nice of them. We arrived at our vehicles very tired, but fulfilled. I think the guys will always remember this hike. We had enormous amounts of fun!

The kid way up in the orange tree

The crew

footTRAX, Marc, Lwgeo

Chris, Ata

Comment

You need to be a member of My Florida Hikes to add comments!

Join My Florida Hikes

Comment by footTRAX on February 26, 2010 at 8:05pm: It looks like a easy track in the picture. I have another hike for everybody in March.. Stay tuned!

Comment by footTRAX on February 25, 2010 at 9:12pm: TRACK

Comment by Chris on February 25, 2010 at 12:37pm: I won't go back in there with less than the number of folks that we went in with...

Comment by Ata on February 25, 2010 at 12:31pm: Thanks, now watch we will all get lost trying to find it without hahahahahahaha

Comment by Chris on February 25, 2010 at 12:28pm: Thanks, Chris

Comment by footTRAX on February 25, 2010 at 12:11pm: They bloom in May. I will send you guys coords soon. Using my blackberry

Comment by Chris on February 25, 2010 at 11:48am: Any chance that we can get the waypoint for that?

Comment by Ata on February 25, 2010 at 10:48am: WOW so we did find one!!!!!!!!!!!! we need to go back to that spot then soon to see it fully open

That made my day!!!

Comment by footTRAX on February 24, 2010 at 9:37pm: Here is a log from another cacher on the same cache we did. This is why you don't go alone in the Strand.

I hoped that the third time would be the charm, but it was not to be. The weather was great and I had a blast hiking out there, but after doing a couple of stupid things out there hiking alone, I finally decided to err on the side of caution. I got to within about 2/10 of the hooter where I was going to pick up the trail again and as I slogged through waist deep water I spotted a four foot gator about 30 feet away watching me, so I slowly backed away and ended up within 10 feet of a six footer, who I did not see until it made an aggressive move. At that moment I thought about the pregnant wife at home and the unborn son who I am sure would like to know me and decided it was time to go home. It was beautiful, but I saw more gators and snakes out there this time than I ever have before, they were everywhere on my approach. Still it was a great day and a fine adventure. I have a love/hate relationship with the strand at this point and I am not sure if I will go for a fourth try, but I am down for a few more days so I may wander out there again to see if the water has receded any. I've got to say that it is terrubly frustrating to have a "nemesis" cache that the trailhead is over 1,000 miles from home, but it has been fun. Thank you again for placing this one, it has been every bit of the challenge I expected.

Comment by footTRAX on February 24, 2010 at 9:28pm: I am almost sure nobody found this orchid. It was in a strange place and if somebody did find it, they bushwhacked in a crazy place..