Florida Trail, Ocean to Lake: DuPuis to Corbett

On a scale accessible to backpackers and trail runners only, this intense immersion in liquid landscapes that make up the Northern Everglades is not for the timid.

It’s a place where pines and cypress grow side by side, and colorful bromeliads dangle at face-level in a place where ancient cultures left their mark.

Massive alligators guard water sources in ponds and canals, and herds of deer roam grassy savannas. Up for the challenge? Read on.

In tall grasses under the pines

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Resources for exploring the area

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Overview

Location: Indiantown
Length: 9.9 miles linear
Trailhead: 27.000700, -80.552696
Address: 23500 SW Kanner Highway, Canal Point
Fees: Free
Restroom: None
Land manager: South Florida Water Management District
Phone: 561-924-5310

Open 24 hours. The three primitive campsites along this trail require no permits. Water filter a must. Insect repellent recommended.

Managed jointly with Florida Fish & Wildlife, both DuPuis and Corbett are busy hunting destinations during all hunting seasons. Check ahead before your hike.

If hiking during hunting season, wear bright orange clothing or an orange pack cover.

Directions

To reach the start of this hike, you’ll either backpack in from the NENA trailhead (see the previous Ocean to Lake segment) or on the DuPuis WMA loop.

From Interstate 95 southbound from points north, take exit 101, Stuart. Follow SR 76 west for 21 miles to the Gate 2 on the left. Alternatively, if you have a special use license to drive within DuPuis WMA, use Gate 3.

Hike

This 9.9-mile hike picks up where backpacking in from either the Governor’s House or Gate 2 trailhead or the NENA trailhead leaves off, at the Loop 4 campsite.

To get to this starting point, you’ll either hike in 8.7 mile from the NENA trailhead, or 8 miles from the Gate 2 trailhead. Leaving your car at Governor’s House cuts it to 7.2 miles.

Misty morning at Loop 4 campsite

Leaving the comfort of camp can be tough in the morning, especially knowing the path ahead will be a rugged one.

As you walk away from the picnic tables back to the main orange-blazed trail, turn left to follow the blazes.

A slender ditch parallels in the woods to the left. After 0.3 mile you reach a major trail junction.

It’s the bottom of the 4W loop trail system of DuPuis connecting with the west end of the DuPuis/Corbett Connector trail.

Ignore the white blazes and stay with the orange ones. Cross a culvert and continue following the orange blazes along the connector trail into the pine-palm flatwoods.

Along the first mile, the trail is very relaxed and pleasant with a very open understory of scattered cabbage palms and saw palmetto.

Around 0.9 mile, the trail makes a sharp left and caroms directly east.

Early morning light in the palms and pines

Crossing a grassy track, there’s a beautiful stand of saw palmettos to the right, and the understory is broad and open to the left, with spiderwebs outlined in the morning dew

A permanent water source is a notable feature at 1.2 miles–a big, broad ditch crossed by a culvert. The trail crosses and turns right to go down a sand road, paralleling the water.

Along the sand road, pass a cypress strand on the left; the prairie is a vast sweep to your right. The road transitions from sand to grass underfoot.

Corridor in the saw palmetto

A live oak splays its branches above the road to provide shade in a small oak hammock before the trail passes through a low spot in a wetland.

It’s easy to set a pace on this long, straight stretch, so don’t get so focused on walking that you miss the trail’s abrupt turn to the left at 1.6 miles.

Pine flatwoods in DuPuis

Narrowing down to a slight track, the trail meanders through the pine flatwoods. You can see a cypress dome off to your right in the distance.

Dropping through a drainage area filled with ferns, the trail continues across a gauntlet of gatorbacks.

Wax myrtle, Florida myrtle, and gallberry join patches of saw palmetto amid the prairie grasses. You cross a forest road at 2 miles.

Close up of yellow flowers in green shrub

St. Johns Wort

Emerging from the bones of pines past, you can see a long cypress strand paralleling on the left. St. John’s Wort shows off yellow blossoms amid the prairie.

By 2.2 miles, the trail has wound its way into the heart of the pine flatwoods, with saw palmetto lining both sides of the footpath.

The forest floor undulates beneath your feet, probably grassed-over hog damage. There may be fresh damage as well.

Hikers in the pine flatwoods

Pass a suspended garbage can feeder used to attract deer at 2.9 miles. It’s been there since at least 2004, so it’s a notable landmark.

By 3.1 miles, you’re in a pretty forest of cabbage palms and pines, headed straight towards a cypress strand. The trail makes a slight jog to the left to pass through it.

Crossing a firebreak, the trail continues through pine flatwoods that are getting soggier underfoot by the moment, with sundews growing along the footpath.

Sundews glistening underfoot

The trail leads you along the edge of an older forest with tall slash pines and a very dense understory of saw palmetto.

At 3.7 miles, a large cypress strand sits off to the left. The footpath crosses spots that, if they aren’t wet when you arrive, will be sometime during the season.

Crossing a firebreak at 4.2 miles, the trail continues straight ahead on a corridor through tall slash pines with a denser understory.

You are soon walking through mixed cypress and pine, a co-mingling of habitats most evident by the many bromeliads at face level.

A bromeliad in bloom

Crossing the next firebreak at 4.5 miles, head straight ahead and the trail quickly makes a jog to the right, out of the cypress and up just enough elevation to add cabbage palms to the forest.

Start following the track of a forest road, which the trail soon leaves, heading to the right along a narrow treadway.

The footpath hops back on the forest road briefly and then crosses it, heading off to the left.

Mind the sawgrass growing to shoulder height as the trail passes through a drainage area for a cypress strand at 4.9 miles.

Zigzag through the strand, which is filled with crooked trunks cradling bromeliads.

Passing through a palm hammock, the trail continues through beauty spots before and after a forest road crossing.

Rejoining a forest road, you see an obvious depression off to the left that, at times, would be a canal with water.

The edge of the sometimes-canal

Cypresses are both uphill and downhill from the trail, with a cut draining the upper terrace into the canal. At its very end, we found water.

By 5.7 miles, reach the sign for the designated Powerline campsite. A 2019 Eagle Scout project added benches, a picnic table, and places to hang hammocks.

It sits within sight of the canal that divides these two public lands, which is always a reliable water source.

It’s also a swimming hole for large alligators. Don’t be tempted to splash around in it, no matter how hot it is.

The trail turns to the right and follows the dike paralleling the canal, crossing it over a huge culvert built for a forest road at 5.9 miles.

This is the official end of the connector trail. The culvert is the easiest place to access the canal for water.

Once on the opposite side of the canal, you’re facing the power lines between the public lands.

Powerline Grade at the land management boundary

Turn left and walk a little ways before the trail turns right to cross the gate into Corbett WMA. If it is locked, you must crawl under it or climb over it.

As you walk under the power lines, you can hear them hum. Thankfully, you reach the other side and the shade of the forest quickly.

A sharp right marked as a double-blaze on a bootstrap of a cabbage palm trunk points you down a forest road through a palm hammock.

Watch for sudden changes in the trail’s direction, as it mainly stays off the forest roads and into the woods, since the forest roads tend to trap deep puddles of water.

You enter the first of a series of many, many cypress strands to be savored over the next hour of hiking.

During our trek, they were bone-dry, exposing knees and making it easier not to trip over them.

If you’re wading through these hanging gardens, you may have your attention focused on the beauty around and above you and stub your foot often.

Don’t try to speed through this section: enjoy the beauty and walk safely.

Walking among the bromeliads

At 6.6 miles, slip out of a strand and into the pine woods. Look up to see how strangely shaped the pine tree limbs are. Bromeliads are so thick they are clinging to the pine trees.

Keep alert for sudden shifts in the trail here, too. Dead-ends tempt, and in some places you think you’ll just pop out on the road.

However, the trail turns sharply right to parallel the road, staying in the trees. Watch for those orange blazes!

Cross a forest road and a buggy track. You can see the white sands of another forest road paralleling off to the left before you re-enter the pine woods.

By 6.8 miles, draw close enough to the sand road that you can see it off to the left, but you continue to parallel it through splotches of shade provided by the young sand pines.

Crunching over pine cones, emerge onto the sand road at 7 miles. Turn left at the fork in the road.

Walk through deep soft sand briefly until the trail heads to the right and back into the forest.

Backpackers crossing a forest road

Slash pines tower above at 7.2 miles, with a lower canopy of cabbage palms adding to the cool shade of this section of trail. Cross the sand road again.

At the next forest road intersection, there are watermarks on the surrounding cypress.

The trail goes off to the right, eventually working its way back to the edge of the forest road to parallel it.

By 7.5 miles, you cross another forest road and continue straight into the forest of pines and palms.

You cross two major forest roads over the next half mile, the second one a gateway into another garden of bromeliads.

This particular strand has a tremendous amount of sawgrass throughout it, which can be painful if you brush against it the wrong way.

Hiker in a dry cypress strand — Cypress strand along the Ocean to Lake Hiking Trail

Poison ivy also pops up inside this cypress strand. The forest is diminutive, very reminiscent of the ancient bald cypress strands of Big Cypress.

Passing a large deer stand by 7.9 miles, the trail continue along an old barbed wire fence before it meets a forest road and turns sharply left.

After crossing the next forest road, the trail heads into an open savanna full of spindly, old, small bald cypress, and a cypress dome off to the right.

Savanna on the edge of the pines

Continuing through the Seussian forest of wizened bald cypress, the trail reaches the next island of pine forest at 8.3 miles.

Cross a forest road before you enter the pines. Here, roots and pine cones supplant the foot-catching cypress knees you’ve become accustomed to.

Crossing two jeep tracks in quick succession, the trail enters a cathedral of pines by 8.7 miles, where the height of the trees around you is awe-inspiring.

After meandering through a cypress dome, the trail crosses another two-lane sand jeep track. Straight ahead, the pines thin out and you see more cypress ahead.

Crossing forest roads becomes a common occurrence now, and these aren’t even the random swamp buggy tracks you’ll encounter tomorrow.

The landscape yields to a thicket – once a savanna – of tiny cypresses and St. John’s wort, which is soon intruded upon by a ghost forest of charred pine trees.

Rounding a copse of saw palmetto, there are cypresses to your left, cypresses up ahead, and a lot of potential widowmakers all around you.

Climbing up and over a berm at 9.3 miles, leave the savanna habitat and enter a forest of tall slash pines.

Pines and palms

Cross a forest road. A quarter mile past it is a memorial for a well-loved hunting dog.

When you start seeing deciduous trees –- maples, hickory, oak, and sweetgum -– it’s a sign that water is near. The trail pops out of this shady swath to a road at 9.7 miles.

Cross the junction of forest roads and keep left to cross the Little Gopher Canal. This is the water source for the campsite that lies just up ahead.

Passing the slope that hikers use to scoop up good, clear water from the canal, the trail makes a sharp turn onto a berm to the left.

It follows it into the woods, flattening out to dart between stands of saw palmetto under the very shady canopy.

You reach the sign for the Little Gopher Campsite at 9.9 miles. Turn right, and you’ll find the fire ring just beyond the stand of trees. The best campsites are off to your right.

Tent tucked in the woods at Little Gopher Campsite

Trail Map

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