A 30-mile day hike through the Great Cyprus Swamp

This morning, Slide and I woke up and started packing on Thank God Island. Today is a swampy day! We will spend the entire day in Big Cypress Swamp. We have about 27 miles of swamp left. Technically in Far Out, Big Cypress Swamp is only listed as 30 miles. But when I walked here in January, Punisher’s watch told us it was more than 33 miles. And I think that might be accurate. Honestly, it’s hard to judge the distance because you spend a lot of time wandering around in the swamp. I wouldn’t be surprised if the swamp was a little over 30 miles long. I guess we’ll see what the grand total will be today and I can try to compare it to the miles we covered in the swamp yesterday.

This morning I woke up absolutely hungry because I didn’t eat anything for dinner last night. And I knew it was going to be a pretty hungry day. I’m usually the type of person who eats while I walk. But you can’t do that when you’re walking through the swamp! I needed both hands on my trekking poles to maintain stability. And although the water wasn’t as deep as it was in January, the mud was a much bigger problem this time. I ended up not eating anything to start the day because we headed straight to the swamp. The mud moved incredibly slowly and honestly made me wish there was more water. I think I could have made better time through the water than through the mud. The first 2.3 miles of the day took just under two hours! That had me quite nervous. If the swampy conditions are like this for the rest of the day, we will be walking like crazy until late into the night.

Enjoying a beautiful day in the Great Cyprus Swamp.

For those first few miles, we were only walking a little over a mile per hour. Barely more. That was quite discouraging and worried me a little. But as the morning progressed conditions began to improve slightly. It was really those first few kilometers that had the worst of the mud. I was just hoping we could get to the same part of the trail, about 15 miles into the swamp heading south, where the trail was completely dry earlier in the year. I know I can’t compare the swamp between seasons and years, but I still had high hopes that the last 15 miles of the swamp today would be mostly dry land. If that were the case, we could still make up some pretty decent time today.

Walking through a shallower section of the swamp.

Even though the trail conditions were holding us back, Big Cypress Swamp is beautiful. The trees are covered in small air plants and jut out through the dark water. If you are the person walking in front, the water is crystal clear and you can see everything! We had some stretches of swamp that were knee-deep. Other sections were much more superficial. I was hoping there would be deeper portions but they never came. When I was here in 2023 there were sections of swamp that practically touched the bottom of my shorts. And my shorts are pretty short! This whole area is so unpredictable. Because of how bad the mud was, I was actually very grateful for the deeper, wetter parts of the swamp. Besides having to watch your step and avoid holes in the ground, we were able to make good progress in the water. Then we’d hit another stretch of mud that sucked at your feet and you’d slip and slide all over the place. That was quite exhausting.

These short stretches where the swamp dried up and we were walking mostly in tall grass were a relief.

Shortly after 9:00 am we reached one of our first pieces of dry land. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I also wanted the dry land to last. It would be really nice if the rest of our day were easy. But this can’t be easy. It took us almost four hours to cover the first six miles of the day, which is saying a lot. I think it might be helpful to get a little context on how slow the trail conditions are. I can usually easily go 3 or 3.5 miles per hour under standard trail conditions. But that just wasn’t happening today. Once I gave in and knew it would take us a long time to get through the swamp, my soul started to hurt a little less.

Sure, the swamp can be exhausting. But it really is a unique and beautiful environment.

As the day progressed, the condition gradually improved. The dry land segments lasted longer, there were less continuous portions of deep swamps, and the mud was much better. Around 11:00 am I was hopeful that the rest of the water was behind us. And at noon we were back in continuous water for the next two hours. Some sections of the Great Cyprus Swamp have many holes in the ground, while others do not. At least the last part of the day had much more solid ground. Walking through shin-deep water on dry land doesn’t take that long. In reality, just walking through significantly deeper water and walking through water with a lot of holes in the ground, that takes a lot of time. But we were just making the most of it!

Around 4:00 pm we still had seven miles left. But at least I knew that the last two kilometers would probably be completely dry. Shortly after the sun began to set and we still had to navigate through some water and some mud. But at that point we were going at a much faster pace and the conditions didn’t matter as much to me. We had a couple more sections of trail where we had to walk through continuous standing water. We were actually heading to an area that I had such strong memories of. In years when the water is particularly deep, there is often a section towards the end when you go south where the water can literally be waist-deep. Furthermore, the trees are very scattered and there is almost no land around. I have a really cool photo of 2023 standing in this scary deep dark water. I kept expecting us to get to that section of the trail and have to go into even deeper water. But today that simply never happened. The deepest it ever went was only to our knees. And those stretches didn’t last long.

It’s only 7 miles to the Oasis Visitor Center.

Somehow, we managed to get out of all the standing water before the sun completely set. As it started to get dark, there were only a few small puddles to wade through and some mud to wade through. We were getting very close to the Oasis visitor center next to Big Cypress. This is a visitor center that is usually open, sells some drinks, has information for hikers, and has bathrooms. Honestly, the part I was most looking forward to is that there was a water spigot and hose right next to the building. This is placed there intentionally so that people can wash their shoes outside after leaving the swamp. So at least I knew we could wash our socks and shoes and get a little clean before we started walking down the road.

You can take a look in this photo at the sandstone on the ground. When there is no water, it is easy to avoid holes in the soil and sandstone. But when the area is more flooded, it is sometimes difficult to see where cracks in the sandstone begin and end.

We arrived at the Oasis center around 7:30 pm and it was completely quiet. It was really nice to be able to use the bathroom and explore the place a little. I had a vague memory of vending machines and wanted to check it out. In fact, they still had vending machines, but only the kind that sold soft drinks. So I ended up having a soda and then washing my shoes and socks. Honestly, the worst part about washing my shoes and socks was the amount of mosquitoes around. They ate me alive while I tried to rinse my feet and clean my socks and shoes. I knew I could wear my Montbell wind layers to keep the bugs away. But first I wanted to clean all the mud off my legs and feet! In the process I received many insect bites.

This was one of my favorite sections of the day. The sun was starting to set and the reflection in the water was really impressive.

Then Slide and I went out and took a quick break at the Oasis Center. We were also trying to figure out where we were going to camp for the night. When hiking the Eastern Continental Trail heading south, the end of the Florida Trail in Big Cypress is the beginning of your entire hike. The only thing left for us for the rest of the year is to walk on the road! But much of the road is surrounded by canals on both sides of the road. Therefore, there are certain areas where camping is literally not possible. We wanted to try to make at least a smooth plan for the night. Just so I wouldn’t have to walk around like crazy late into the night, sleep on private property or something.

An alligator peeking out of the water with its bright, reflective eyes.

I remembered there was some sort of camp just down the road. So we ended up deciding to just walk a couple more miles until we reached this campground. Then we could probably just set up our tents there for the night and wouldn’t have to worry about camping on private property or getting stuck along the way. This actually ended up working perfectly! We walked along the road a few more kilometers until we reached the campsite. We were then able to go to their specific non-RV sites and get ready for the night. If you are doing the ECT, I would recommend making online reservations for this type of campsites. Surprisingly, they can book up very quickly because of how close they are to the Everglades. But you can also camp next to the Oasis Visitor Center! So, that’s always a great option. We just wanted to get a little more mileage done tonight.

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The southern terminus of the Florida Trail. We have officially completed our time along the Florida Trail. All that remains now is the 200 miles of walking to reach southern Key West.

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