View on Map Wayne NF is an extreme example of how aspirational our National Forests can be. Congress declared the boundaries at nearly a million acres, but the actual holdings are about a quarter of that. It’s further broken up into three distinct pieces, separated from each other by several hours of driving. Each of those three sections is a patchwork of public and private land ownership. If you hike far at all you’ll inevitably end up on a road…
View on Map The northern part of Sumter NF is in a region known as the foothills, the high hills that mark the edge of the Appalachian chain. Fork Mountain is therefore something of a misnomer. At 3255 feet it falls short of what most would consider a mountain. Nevertheless, the terrain is steep with plenty of elevation change. Another oddity of this area is the Fork Mountain Trail, which avoids the actual Fork Mountain for the most part. Not…