Gabe Furhman and I completed this North Franklin Mountain Loop on March 23, 2024. Starting on the Toms Mays entrance, staying on the west side of the mountain, crossing on the north portion, moving south along the east side, and crossing back over the mountain at Mundy's gap then down to the entrance where we started. We went out on the trail as a completely self supported event having known there was really no access to easy vehicle routes/parking spots along the trails. However, at one of the intersections after the half way point we did find a stash of water bottles that the park refills occasionally, we did not know it was going to be there but we did each take a 1 water bottle just to top off- I believe this would be made to consider it as self-supported, but we weren't positive since we didn't know it would be there and were not planning on having any resupplies. We ended with extra water by the end but good to know for future purposes that it is a spot where it is available.
We also did go off course briefly which is what attributed to the additional (just over) .5 miles we did on the route. We recognized this and after some back tracking decided to cut over to the trail. This can be viewed on the GPS if you scroll into the upper right portion of the route- we should have taken a southern turn, but instead continued east until realizing the trail was not going to go south and we turn back then cut back onto the course having known we'd run further than what we would miss by cutting across.
We received no additional support for food (carried it from start) or water, just what I mentioned previously by happening upon the water bottle cache.