The beautiful, less road-walk-filled, running-and-hiking only Alabama half of the Pinhoti trail! Route runs between the Southern Terminus near Flagg Mountain to the Northern Terminus of the Alabama Pinhoti, the Jackson Chapel Trailhead, just 2.5 miles past the state line marker. Good form for this route is trailhead/terminus to trailhead/terminus, so northbound runners should keep in mind that valid attempts will proceed 2 miles PAST the popular state line marker on the trail to the first GA trailhead and southbound runners will likewise run PAST the shiny new Flagg Mountain tower to the southern trailhead. Guides and clarifications on this section can be found in the PTA guide linked above.
While no official attempts at the Alabama only FKT are known to me, the starting place for supported attempts should be the 66h40m it took Coree Woltering to travel this distance on his 5d7h full Pinhoti FKT.
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Starting my fourth attempt at the Alabama Pinhoti Unsupported FKT on April 11th, official start time is still pending due to logistics. Going NOBO after three failed SOBO attempts. I will be live through my inReach for my wife's sanity and official tracking will be done on my Garmin watch. I am shooting for 78 hours but my cutoff is 96 hours. The trail is officially 182.8 miles to the Jackson Chapel Trailhead after several recent trail reroutes and additions. I will be taking gps tagged photos and videoing as I go along.
Leonidas
Tracking link:Â share.garmin.com/LeonidasontheTrail
Update on my FKT attempt, I ended up calling it at mile 76.6 after approximately 34 hours. Day 1 went well with 54.3 miles in 20 hours. I stopped to setup camp and sleep for approximately four hours. Day 2 was a struggle, I made a last minute change to my shoes for the trip even though I had fixed the issue with my Hokas from the prior attempt. I ended up with three large blisters, two in between the ball of each foot and the pad. The third was on my left heel and I wasn’t aware of it until it had burst. I ran out of kt tape after having to ford several streams and reapply. With the numerous rock gardens in the area I headed into, my progress had slowed and I would struggle to make 2mph. I took several shoe off breaks which helped some and almost quit at Clairmont Gap. I texted back and forth with @jason_wishwellfarms and with his encouragement decided to push to Adams Gap to see if I could make it further. By the time I arrived, I needed to make 24 miles in 8 hours, at the pace I had been able to manage it would take 11. At this point I decided with my feet already in bad shape, I wasn’t going to be able to make up time as I needed at least a 50 mile day the next to leave a 38.8 and a 10 mile mostly road walk after the terminus. Everything else was on point this attempt.