Bailout Points on the Foothills Trail
Hikers new to the Foothills Trail will often ask us about bailout points along the trail, so we compiled this list for someone recently and thought it might be helpful to add it to our website.
We highly recommend purchasing the Foothills Trail Guidebook if you can get hold of one. We also recommend downloading the FarOut App on your phone and then paying $10 for the Foothills Trail Map. It's helpful for finding cell service, water sources, road crossings, official and unofficial campsites along the trail.
Exits off the trail to main roads are easy to find for the first 31 miles:
4.6 miles from Oconee (OSP), where trail intersects (but does not cross) SC Hwy 107 at Jumping Branch Trailhead.
6.0 miles from OSP, where trail crosses SC Hwy 107 at Cheohee Rd.
7.6 miles from OSP, where the trail meets up with the Big Bend Trail that you can take out to Hwy 107 (2.7 miles to Hwy 107)
16.4 miles from OSP, where the trail crosses a gravel lot at Burrells Ford Campground area.
20.3 miles from OSP, where the trail crosses Fish Hatchery Rd.
23.6 miles from OSP, where the trail crosses Hwy 107 at Sloan Bridge.
28.3 miles from OSP, where the trail crosses NC Hwy 281 near Whitewater Falls.
31.4 miles from OSP, where the trail intersects with a trail that leads to the Bad Creek Access parking lot (about 1.5 miles out to the parking lot)
After this point, getting out is more difficult for the next 30 miles. You can either take the Auger Hole Access Trail at mile 43.3 and hike about 7.6 miles uphill to Frozen Creek Access in Gorges State Park where someone can meet you. OR, you can stay on the FHT until mile 47.8 and take the slightly shorter and not quite as extreme 5-ish mile Canebrake Trail to Frozen Creek Access. Your other options to get out in the event of an emergency during that section are by boat, either from Canebrake/Toxaway Campsite area (mile 47.8) or Laurel Fork Boat Access at mile 53.6 via a 900 ft. spur trail down to the lake.
Once you get to Laurel Valley at mile 61.7, we can pick you up pretty easily again. There's a parking lot there, then again at:
63.8 miles from OSP, where the trail crosses the road up to Sassafras Mtn. at ChimneyTop Gap; or at
66.5 miles from OSP, at Sassafras Mtn.
Because of the 30 mile section between Bad Creek and Laurel Valley where it's difficult to get to you, we leave the food cache at the last possible point before that section, which is at mile 28.3. The only other option is to leave a second cache at Laurel Valley, but that's only about 14 miles to the end, so most people don't do that.
The food cache at Whitewater is included in the cost of your stay/shuttle. Most people reach the cache on day 3, so that helps lighten the load on the front end when you are getting your trail legs warmed up. If you'd like to leave a cache, we stop there on the way to Oconee and it adds a about 15 minutes to the shuttle time. The caches are ammo cans cabled to trees. We use a lock system -- so when we drop your food off, we give you the key to the can and then when you pick your food up, you drop the key into the can so it will be there the next time we drop a hiker's food off there. It's okay to leave whatever trash you've accumulated up to that point in the cache box so long as you properly lock the box back when you leave it. There's also a flush toilet and trash cans 600 feet up the road from the gravel lot where the food caches are, so you can take a break there and dump trash. We usually recommend hikers road walk that 600 feet to the Whitewater Falls parking lot anyway and walk up to see Whitewater Falls, then catch the spur trail back to the FHT from the observation deck at the falls. (Your shuttle driver will likely drive through that parking lot to show you what we mean.)
