Foothills Trail Birthday Hike

[Floridahanger]

That is a wonderful job of getting the pics of the beautiful trail. You nailed it for a great Autumn playland.

A wonderul Happy Birthday to all of you.

[swampfox]

Awesome pictures! I love the FHT. You guys really captured the beauty of it.
Where did you camp and how long did it take you?

I did the section from Bad Creek to Laurel Valley in Sept. with Muskrat and Half-hitch.
I'm a sucker for a waterfall so we camped at the bottom of Hilliard Falls, Toxaway River, and the top of Laurel Fork Falls.
I will definitely do that again and I was thinking Fall would be nice. Now I'm sure of it!

Swampfox

[dakotaross]

...Where did you camp and how long did it take you?

I did the section from Bad Creek to Laurel Valley in Sept. with Muskrat and Half-hitch.
I'm a sucker for a waterfall so we camped at the bottom of Hilliard Falls, Toxaway River, and the top of Laurel Fork Falls...

We started at Burrells Ford Friday afternoon and finished at Laurel Valley Tuesday morning. We camped along the Fork Mt trail Friday, at Bad Creek Saturday, about 2m from Toxaway on Sunday, and at the camp 2.8m from LV on Monday.

I'm with you on the waterfalls, especially camping by them. Would've liked to have done that, but the mileage spacing didn't work out.

Yeah, just about any hike is great in the fall!

[swampfox]

Wow!
That was some long, hard, days.
If my math is right, you had about a half day more time and covered 20 more miles than we did. I know you were tired Sunday night.
I've decided 7-8 mile days is a good number for me.
Swampfox

[dakotaross]

Wow!
That was some long, hard, days.
If my math is right, you had about a half day more time and covered 20 more miles than we did. I know you were tired Sunday night.
I've decided 7-8 mile days is a good number for me.
Swampfox

Yeah, we were close to 15m on Sunday and might've continued to the Toxaway site (planned destination) had we known how close we were. Signage around the Gorges Park border was off and we thought we could be up to 4m away. Had map, but not guidebook. Truth is though, I'm glad we stayed where we did and not that overused (surprisingly for such a remote location) site. However, had we known about the sites just past that big site along the lake, then I'm sure we would've continued. I think. That Horsepasture climb took a lot out of us and we weren't sure how much more "up" we might have. Turns out there was some left to go up, but not much. Was probably fortuitous that we stopped when we did so that we had some life in our legs for the Hearbreak climbs.