Inland Route - Flamingo / Cape Sable

[Terry]

Inland Route - Flamingo / Cape Sable

Before Hurricane Andrew the preferred paddle route between Flamingo and
Cape Sable was the Homestead Canal. Avoiding the open bay provided a
wind protected route and separated paddle craft from power boats. It also
guaranteed solitude and remoteness by staying in the back country wilderness.
The 1992 hurricane damaged Homestead Canal with downed trees making passage
very difficult. As it became less traveled, foliage growth accelerated and
the 2005 storms made the canal impassable. After Hurricane Wilma a plan was
created to reopen the canal and a volunteer group headed by Tom Rahill and
Jim Brack took on the project. They cleared the canal to Bear Lake and
reopened the Bear Lake Trail which loops through Mud Lake and comes back
down Buttonwood Canal to the Bear Lake parking lot. The section of
Homestead Canal between Bear Lake and Gator Lake remained impassable,
cutting off the inland route to Cape Sable.

Sue Cocking, Bill Evans, Terry Helmers and Jay Thomas devised a plan to
survey the damage to the canal west of Bear Lake and search for an alternative
passage through a body of land between the waters of Bear Lake to the east
and open water to the west. Previous trips by Thomas had identified
the narrowest section of land between these two waters which was called 64M
but there was another slightly wider area of land that warranted
investigation. If a navigable route could be established through these two
bodies of water the entire stretch of Homestead Canal between West Lake and
Gator Lake could be abandoned. It would also establish a natural route from
Coot Bay Pond to Cape Sable - the ultimate trophy. The group also had heard
reports of a route that went into Bear Lake with a portage over the narrowest
piece of land between the canal and the lake.

On 18 January 2014 the four set out in 3 canoes from Bear Lake parking lot
and went directly to the narrow area between the lake and canal. The last
time Helmers had paddled the canal was 28 years ago when there was nothing
at this narrow spot. This time, the explorers found ruins of what appeared
to be a dock that could have been built to assist portaging. It's assumed
that shortly after Hurricane Andrew an attempt was made to keep the
Inland Route open by using as much of the lake as possible to shorten the
length traveled in the canal. Today there's a small break in the narrow spot,
making it easier to slide a canoe through this slot and back into the canal.
After doing this, the group continued west through near impassable
"jack straws" (a sawyer term for criss-cross piled trees) but after making
headway of only a couple hundred yards in an hour the effort was abandoned
and the canoe party returned to the lake to continue west in Bear Lake and
then across the lake to its' west. Since Thomas had already examined the
narrowest portion of land barrier between the east and west the decision was
made to continue directly to the other narrow spot just south of 64M. After
negotiating mud bars a small creek-like opening was spotted. Although there
was a 3 foot mat of pneumatophore roots to be portaged, the creek continued
west with a hard twist to the north then west again to the open water of the
"other side". After the search party spooked a spoonbill at the west mouth
of the creek it was quickly dubbed Spoonbill Pass. Knowing "this was it" all
agreed to ignore 64M and paddle the shallow but open water to Gator Lake.
How ironic that paddlers spent decades paddling back and forth in a straight
as an arrow canal, how ironic that a large dock was built to go over the
narrow spot between Bear Lake and the canal, how ironic spending the effort to
keep trying to push through the canal between Bear Lake and Gator Lake when
there was a beautiful natural creek waiting for paddlers at Spoonbill Pass.

On 20 January 2014 Terry Helmers launched at Coot Bay Pond to
specifically survey and map the Spoonbill Pass area. Although launching at the
pond meant it took 2 and a half hours to get to the pass, it reduced the
paddle distance in the canal to just 200 yards between Bear Lake Trail and
Bear Lake. Two additional non-portage creeks were mapped with the optimal
route going from 09.858'N and 59.397'W to 09.857'N and 59.447'W. After two
rewarding explorations, a natural route from Coot Bay Pond to Lake Ingraham,
Cape Sable has been established.

To use the Inland Route, study and printout or download maps of the area.
Carry a spare GPS unit. There's a lot of shallow water throughout the trip
but it's all open paddling.

[Swamp Witch]

Yakmaster, in your post you say:

“It got put out there and some folks tried it and while everyone that experienced hell and a half had a very positive attitude regarding the "disaster" we "caused", it could have been real ugly. Then whose "fault" is it?”

 

I’m curious, who are the “some folks” and who are the “we”?

 

The only flak I’m going to give is regarding your arrogance in suggesting that just because the Lost Portage was posted on the EEN, I decided to go out and do it.  So not true.  I had already made plans to go thru there before I even knew this site existed.  Why do you think I’m on this site?  To get first hand experiences and advice from everyone about everything!  To decide if I’m up for the challenge.  To find cool places to discover.  To be able to share stories even when things don’t go according to plan.  It’s awesome I love it.

 

To say that the recent Lost Portage crossings were a disaster is incorrect.  Both I and Rob & Allison made it thru.  It might have taken us longer than you.  Perhaps our conditions were different, or we took a different route, or stopped to enjoy the experience more often.  Neither one of the trips came even close to being a potential SAR event.  IMO, reading a post like mine or Rob & Allison’s would make a person think twice before venturing out there compared to someone’s that said I just breezed thru it in a couple hours.  If my kayak had only been loaded for a day trip & I didn’t take time to sit and absorb the beauty, I could’ve done it in a few hours, too.  By the way, I’d be very interested to hear your Lost Portage story.  Have you gone thru it other than the December 2009 explorations?

 

Wish I could be there for this weekend’s trip.  Would love to meet you all.  Have fun!

[Rob Stevens]

Swamp Witch and Yakmaster

I know we agree that we need to be concerned about people getting in over their heads and also that by posting a trip report that describes a hard slog versus an easy passage helps people plan their trips.

  

  

 
Swamp Witch said:

Yakmaster, in your post you say:

“It got put out there and some folks tried it and while everyone that experienced hell and a half had a very positive attitude regarding the "disaster" we "caused", it could have been real ugly. Then whose "fault" is it?”

 

I’m curious, who are the “some folks” and who are the “we”?

 

The only flak I’m going to give is regarding your arrogance in suggesting that just because the Lost Portage was posted on the EEN, I decided to go out and do it.  So not true.  I had already made plans to go thru there before I even knew this site existed.  Why do you think I’m on this site?  To get first hand experiences and advice from everyone about everything!  To decide if I’m up for the challenge.  To find cool places to discover.  To be able to share stories even when things don’t go according to plan.  It’s awesome I love it.

 

To say that the recent Lost Portage crossings were a disaster is incorrect.  Both I and Rob & Allison made it thru.  It might have taken us longer than you.  Perhaps our conditions were different, or we took a different route, or stopped to enjoy the experience more often.  Neither one of the trips came even close to being a potential SAR event.  IMO, reading a post like mine or Rob & Allison’s would make a person think twice before venturing out there compared to someone’s that said I just breezed thru it in a couple hours.  If my kayak had only been loaded for a day trip & I didn’t take time to sit and absorb the beauty, I could’ve done it in a few hours, too.  By the way, I’d be very interested to hear your Lost Portage story.  Have you gone thru it other than the December 2009 explorations?

 

Wish I could be there for this weekend’s trip.  Would love to meet you all.  Have fun!

[Roger Hammer]

There could be some wind issues out there but the tide is probably negligible. If it's anything like when I tried to make it through to the Cape it's impassable, so I hope everyone realizes that turning around and paddling all the way back is a very real possibility. I wish everyone luck. Glad it ain't ME!!

[vivian]

Yes, the option is to take the HC if there is no water in the prairie. Option C is to paddle back to Coot Bay pond if we can't get through at all.  This is an exploratory trip just to find out if indeed it is true that we can get to Cape Sable via this back route.  We will soon find out..........

[Roger Hammer]

This information will be good to pass on to the rangers at Flamingo so they can advise German and Yankee tourists about the route with up-to-date first-hand experience. I hope to be able to sit down with whomever the new Superintendent is going to be after Dan Kimball retires at the end of March. Hopefully he/she will make access to the backcountry a high priority. There needs to be a chickee at Midway Pass in Whitewater Bay. It used to be a ground campsite back in the 70s. I wouldn't mind seeing another one along the Joe River in that big open pass halfway between the South Joe River and the Joe River chickees.

If you make it 10 or 12 miles and have to turn back facing an east wind...I don't need to explain...! Are you not putting in at the Bear Lake canal launch because of vehicle safety?

[vivian]

I hope they listen to you.

No way I am leaving my car overnight at the bear lake trail. Plus we are trying not to use the HC which is part of this experiment.

[Esther Luft]

Viv - Good luck with that no HC part.  I hate to say it, but I think you have to use it.  It was put in for a reason, and it wasn't aesthetics.  1000000% true that you can paddle from Bear Lake to Cape using inland route.  Interesting to see if you make it without using HC.  Would be great if water was higher, it gets sticky in there.  You'll have a great experience either way.

Roger - Did you get stuck in the canal?  Or on the mud flats?  I love the old topos, it marks the area as "sticky."

Terry - For day trip, I will launch from BL, bringing a few other along.  Right now cutting distance from the trip is a great thing for me. 

[Flex Kayakfari.com]

I was under the impression that the canal (and many others) was dug to also make the adjacent roadbed. They were farming there, there was the Club House, there was even talk of running Flagler's railroad down to the Cape before that among other development plans .. 

I hope we don't have to use it, I hate canals! Anybody have snowshoes??

[Roger Hammer]

There's a book I have that shows a 1940s-era home on Middle Cape Sable with two small Cessna-type airplanes parked on a makeshift runway next to the home. You used to be able to see remnants of an old dock associated with the home. Back then Cape Sable was open prairie and you could literally see clear across it to Lake Ingraham. Cape Sable was once used for cattle farming but the mosquitoes in the summer killed many of them. Yes, William Krome surveyed a route from Miami to East Cape Sable for Flagler's Railroad and from there they planned to build a bridge to Key West. Lucky for us the Everglades proved to be too daunting so Krome surveyed a second route that took the railroad south to Key Largo and then island-hopped to Key West. The great Labor Day hurricane of 1935 took the railroad out.

Esther, I got stuck in the canal not the mud flats. It was all silted in at the time. I'm not certain if Hurricane Wilma helped clear it or made it even worse but the second time I tried taking the route I attempted to cross the mud flats, which I dubbed the Cream Cheese Highway. I didn't make it very far and turned back. When was the last time someone made it all the way to the Cape using the HC?

[vivian]

Using this image, can you tell me at what point you had to turn back and how long ago it was? Esther, have you used the C3 waypoint and tried to go down to the creek instead of using the dam?

[vivian]

Here is past that point:

[vivian]

Esther here is the C3 with creek connection.