Everglades Exploration Network

I canoed from Everglades City to Flamingo in 1975, Coot Bay Pond
to Everglades City in 1977, Hells Bay Trail to Turner River/Tamiami
Trail in 2001 and Hells Bay Trail to Everglades City in 2002.
This year, after a few days of the familiar Cape Sable area, I solo
canoed from Hells Bay Trail to Collier Seminole State Park and had
plenty of time to think.

First, Collier Seminole State Park is the perfect north gateway to
the Wilderness Waterway. Collier Seminole State Park and
Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge adds on an
excellent 20 miles of protected wilderness. Also, the state park
offers a top quality boat ramp, marina and parking lot. It's
quiet, remote and gated at night. The state park already has the
canoe route through the park marked.
I wonder what is necessary to create a Friends of the Wilderness
Waterway group to promote the official extension of the
Wilderness Waterway.

Second, a very handy tool for the gladesgodeep website would be to
create a listing of conditions of questionable places, that
everyone can modify.
Something like this, from north to south:

Gill Rattle Creek - January 2009, open, but only canoeable at higher
tide.

Fish Hawk Creek - January 2009, open, but avoid at low tide.

Charley Creek - December 2002, open, passable but shallow at low
tide. Alan took an Outward Bound group through Charley Creek in December 2008
he didn't comment on any problems so I suspect it's open

Cabbage Creek - December 2008, open, passable by even small boats.

Wood River - December 2008, Keith reported this closed in to the point where he
really struggled to get through. I don't know if he had to get wet. Keith?

Nightmare - December 2008, open, shallow at low tide, this was trimmed this season
by NPS volunteers.

Between marker 17 and 16 - December 2008, open, many snags, also trimmed this
season by volunteers.

Bottle Creek - October 2008, open all the way from Rookery Branch Junction to
the airboat trail but will require some lifting of branches.

North creek out of Canepatch - December 2008, open, canoe only, also trimmed this
season.

It also might be good to include who it is entered by. This would
be very handy and I could see something like this growing to be
a reference for not only Wilderness Waterway travelers but the
park staff themselves.

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Interesting thoughts. Extending the 'official' WW trail would mean getting the Park to add new trail markers north of Chokoloskee to the Park border at the north end, and then getting the state involved in continuing the marked trail up into the 10K Islands Aquatic Preserve to Collier Seminole Park. A 'Friends' group would be a good idea just for general purpose even if there was no plan on extending the WW north.

Creating and maintaining a log of local conditions is also a good idea but I'm not sure how that could be accomplished with the tools available. I'll look around and see what we have to work with.
Why stop at Collier State Park?You could start from the bridge to Goodland (which is just south of Marco & "civilization"). We did Turner to Goodland a few years ago. There's plenty of campsites along the way and most of it is protected by some entity or another.

The more challenging issue is the eastern expansion, from Flamingo to Miami &/or the keys. From the keys you could connect to the keys paddling trail and go all the way to Key West, or the Marquesas for the heavy duty's...or anyone want to try Tortugas (make that one & come back & the beers are on me).

There used to be a real nice crossing, from Flamingo to Carl Ross, to Rabbit Key to Lower Matacumbe or Fiesta Key. we did it a while back before Wilma wiped out Carl Ross. Now you'd have to go straight from Flamingo to Rabbit, which is a bit of a haul, even in good conditions. NPS has said that they want to put a new Chickee near Carl Ross to take its place.

The more difficult route is along the coast. You could go Flamingo to Alligator or Shark (if the bugs let you sleep @ either). Then you would have to go all the way to Nest Key which is quite a haul! Once again the Park Service is looking to add a chickee in that gap.But then when you leave Everglades, the next "official" camp is Elliott Key Harbor. From there you can comtinue north to Bill Baggs (no camping) or you can stop at Boca Chita for a nice night. We did Key Biscayne to Key Largo a few years ago (very nice). But the next camp north of Boca Chita is Oleta!

We have paddled (segmented) from Goodland to Key Biscayne (or arguably up to Broward if you include day trips) along all options except the coastal trail between Flamingo & Biscayne. I have discussed this extension with the powers that be at both Everglades & Biscayne & they are receptive but lacking in $$$. Like I said, Everglades is looking at new chickees to make this viable, but part of the gap is in between the two parks.

This issue is also being looked at by the Florida Circumnavigation Trail folks & they can tap someof the non-NPS agencies, maybe the crocodile lake NWR or Dade County parks & rec or their Environmentally ENdangered Lands folks would allow camps to be set up. Also I've been pushing the Keys trail folks to extend their trail to the northern keys all the way to Key Biscayne.
This might be the start of a Friends of the Wilderness Waterway group. You've already opened up talk with park
officials?!?!? I've got a number of thoughts I'd like heard that are more in the interests of open canoers.
Like the whole Rookery Branch area. How about a chickee in the middle of the Shark River Slough,
somewhere near Panther Hammock. And stick this on a wish list, since Rookery Mound was closed to
camping, a chickee at the junction of Bottle Creek and Rookery Branch just south of the mound.
An Ernest Coe type campground could be made at the new end of L-67, they could even service it
by truck on the leeve. All that one takes is a piss pit and some picnic tables and allowing it to happen.
Talk about a great L-67, Shark River Slough, Rookery Branch, Shark River, Flamingo promotion!
The already established airboat trail makes a great canoe trail.
The reason I used Collier Seminole as an exit is it's still in contiguous wilderness protected area.
Marco Island was already starting to destroy the horizon vista as I passed Panther Key, so in
keeping with the WILDERNESS Waterway I could not go further north.
I like the idea of a place to post current trail conditions. We do this with hiker groups that plan trips on the Florida Trail. It requires volunteers to keep this information current. The FTA keeps a website with trail conditions posted. I don't think ENP has the money or resources to make this work. It would have to be as you suggest a friends of the wilderness waterway group.

The 10k preserve is a good buffer between developed Marco Island and the wilderness of the ENP www trail. It is a good place to carry the overflow crowds on high use dates that can't get a permit at ENP. There are no permits required in this area and that is appreciated by a segment of the people that use that area. To watch the sunset from the islands close to Marco and viewing those condos in the horizon is not a fitting end to the www route, IMHO.
Keith is our computer guy he'll do it. Hey Keith did you get that from Vivian? May be you can steal a
template from FTA. WW conditions, even ENP staff will appreciate that!
Here is a link to what the FTA posts on their website:

http://www.floridatrail.org/options/Trail-Conditions/
Glad to hear the nightmare is open, that leaves us a good option on our trip coming up incase the seas are foul. This is a good idea, something where people could add comments as more trips go through these questionable areas.
I canoed through the entire Nightmare (markers 16 - 24) on 29 December 2008. It was low tide but starting
to flood back at Harney River Chickee so I went through the marker 16-17 part at almost low. I cleared
it canoeing but at the lowest spot there wasn't an inch of water to spare. The branches had recently
been trimmed by NPS volunteers so there were no overhangs but a lot of snags, none that I couldn't
bounce off. By the time I got to the marker 23 - 24 stretch it was on the high side of flood tide.
As the Nightmare is, there was plenty of water but these branches didn't seem as trimmed. I had to
duck under or lift a number of branches. Still it was very passable all the way from Harney River to
Broad River, staying completely dry and not even taking on much debris falling in the canoe.
The Nightmare is a feature of the Wilderness Waterway and no through trip is complete without
its successful traverse.
(...coming up for air...)

woohoo!! 12 credit hours this semester - what the HELL was I thinking?!?!

Vivian, how do FTA members post trail conditions? Looks to me like they come from a web form where you enter your information into data fields, and I don't think we can do that here. We would probably need to create a new forum and moderate it's content. A little like herding cats...

Just an idea, we can bat this one around a while until we come up with something.
Just discovered & joined this forum. Very glad to note Nightmare info as had to send 3 emails to NPS before a reply re it's status. Last yr on our 8th trip we were forced to turn back by blowdown in Nightmare. Hope to complete passage later this month when we escape frozen North.
Thanx for info
Keith, the FTA is much more organized than we could be in the next year or so. They rely on volunteers to maintain sections of the Florida trail through chapters. Trail conditions are posted by the individual chapter.

In our situation we would have to rely on:

Outfitters
Park Rangers
Fishing charter captains
Individuals

One idea:

I think that we should think of dividing the park in three sections, the south, middle and north. Find a few that are willing to send reports at the beginning of each season. I can ask some of my friends in the northern area that run trips from Choko to Lostmans. See if they are willing to post on your Everglades Diary website (a good source of info). Maybe entice them by listing their guide or outfitter service for free?

This would be general WWW trail info anything that is off trail should be posted by individuals that experience the area throughout the season.

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