Just back from a week on the road and visited the Upper Suwannee valley today. The good news is the Bugaboo fire is almost out, now down to about 100 firefighters mopping up tiny outbreaks in the Osceola National Forest and adjacent lands. The bad news is the Bugaboo pretty much erased the pine forest and bayheads of the Big Gum Swamp Wilderness Area, which means the end of the Big Gum Swamp Trail until someone decides to blaze it again after the forest grows back, which will take a couple of years.

This affects the following guidebooks of mine:
The Hiking Trails of Florida’s National Parks, Forests, and Preserves
Pages 147-148
50 Hikes in North Florida
Hike 11 (page 100)
Hiker’s Guide to the Sunshine State
Hike NF-18 (page 167)

If you have these guidebooks, please note that this trail may be closed for several years, if not permanently. I’ll keep you posted here if I hear otherwise.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 10:34 pm and is filed under North, Trail Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.