Agile Trekker: River Trail Loop, Congaree National Park

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
3/24/2024	12.0 miles	6 hours 1 minute	93'	2.4 mph	179.3 miles

Parking:

Congaree National Park Visitor Center

Map:

CONG-Trail-Guide-2.pdf (nps.gov)
Gai Gps app

Directions:

Take the boardwalk trail from the visitor center. Where the boardwalk splits, turn right. Turn right on the Sims Trail. At the intersection with the Weston Lake Trail, keep right. At the intersection of the Oakridge Trail, keep right. Where the River Trail splits, keep left to take the River Trail Loop clockwise. Follow the loop around and return back to the visitor center using the same route.

Day 2 at Congaree. We headed over to the visitor center to start our hike. We were discussing our plans, when a park volunteer came over to talk to us about our chosen route. The route was listed as flooded. He was not recommending the route, and did try to discourage us, but said we could try if we were prepared. He did ask if we had a navigation app.

We partially repeated our hike from yesterday but turned off onto the River Trail. The trail was muddy, but certainly doable. It was definitely not flooded. The biggest challenge were the blowdowns. We had to climb under, on top of, and around them. It was sometimes challenging to find the trail. It was really helpful to have Gaia to help get us back on trail after the blow downs. We got off trail multiple times. This is a much less visited part of the park. We saw 3 women who looked very clean on the trail. We wondered where they came from, because we were covered in mud. Later, we saw one woman with a border collie, who got off trail on the wrong route just like us. Otherwise, no other people. Which is good, because navigating would be a challenge for most people.

We did have some wildlife excitement. First, we saw 2 wild hogs, who ran away from us. Then we saw a group of 4 wild hogs, who again ran away from us. They were huge! Then, while we were sitting down eating our lunch, we had 3 baby hogs running right at us! Maybe they wanted our lunch? They looked like 3 brown puppies (as opposed to the adults who were black). They were squealing and incredibly cute, but we had to scare them away. Who knows if their mother was close by. No photos of the hogs or hoglets, as we had to make sure they didn't come towards us. We did see a lot of damage from the hogs rooting in the soil. We also saw one hog trap, which surprised us, because we wondered how often it would even be checked.

When we finished our hike, we saw the same park volunteer again. He was surprised we were able to do our route. They didn't update their trail conditions board based on what we told him... He did mention that the park has not been able to clear the River Trail for 3 years. So that's why the trail had so much blowdown. They just don't have enough staff. Another park volunteer said the last time he hiked the trail (last year), he saw 35 hogs on the River Trail. And that sometimes the hogs come on the boardwalk trail.

Our hike ended up being 12 miles. Luckily my foot did okay. Longest hike yet since 2022. It was very level, so maybe that's why it was less irritating to my foot.

We had a really quiet evening in the campground. The campground was pretty full, but the partyers had left, and the remaining people there were very quiet. The forecast was for 35 degrees at night, so we started a campfire after dinner. I'm so paranoid about being cold at night, that I had 2 sleeping bags in my tent: a 20-degree bag and a -20-degree bag. Plus, I wore my puffy pants and used a hand warmer in my bag. I was able to stay nice and cosey.