Excerpt: “THIS is all virgin trail,” said Shad Baker, a connoisseur of hiking in the steeply slanted backwoods of eastern Kentucky, as he dropped me off at the start of my adventure there on the new Pine Mountain Trail. “This is probably the most remote place you can get that exists out here. You are five miles even from the nearest house.”

We said goodbye. He drove off. And then I slipped into woods so thick they looked like an American jungle.

It was only a year or two ago that the high-ridge forests of Pine Mountain, at the western edge of the Appalachians, were for all practical purposes sealed off by their own forbidding density and ruggedness — impenetrable to everyone but ginseng harvesters and squirrel hunters. This is Daniel Boone country, and as I set out that morning it was easy to imagine Boone hacking his way through it with a homemade hatchet and a long flintlock firearm. But I had markers to follow — squares of pale-yellow painted on trees at eye level…”
Read full article at New York Times:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/travel/escapes/03pine.html

Pine Mountain Trail Map
Difficulty: ++++
Scenic Views: +++
Elevation Relief: 2,100ft ^^^
Ownership: Private, Kentucky SP, Jefferson NF
Google to Elkhorn City trailhead

photos by Boyd Shearer

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The Pine Mountain Trail is one of the most challenging trails in Kentucky. The elevation change, distance, and the undulating, serrated ridge together make a hard, but rewarding backpacking trip. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the trail are the many intersecting jeep and ohv trails. Even with a good map and navigation tools, you will loose the trail and hopscotch down this trail or that. No worries though, since the trail essentially hugs the knife edge of the ridge, you will eventually, if arduously, retake the trail.

Hikers will find fantastic outcroppings along the linear summit, sand and gravel pits in dry gaps, and limestone karst features further down the mountain. Faulting displaced the northwest base of Pine Mountain approximately 2,000 feet higher than land immediately to the north. This movement also titled the rock layers on Pine Mountain so that they “dip” to the southeast at about 40 degrees. Erosion since has lowered the height of Pine Mountain and removed most of the coal seams that are so numerous in the surrounding mountains.

Finding water after Gold Fish Pond can be an issue in drier months, but in the worst case, you’ll follow a dry gap or draw in the mountain until you reach a spring, which are common at lower elevations. A nice spring gurgles up in a wet area with tremendous ferns just north of Skegg Gap. Bear are active on the mountain and it is recommended that you hang food at night.

The trail is signed (sporadically) with yellow/white rectangular blazes. You will lose the blazes, especially between Skegg Spring and benchmark Cumberland (which is the centerline survey for the park), but use the map and follow only the blazes.

Park at the Elkhorn police and fire station located just before the bridge across the Russell Fork. Hike the gravel road past a fenced-in pay fish pond until it ends at a large river campsite. Follow the narrowing road up the mountain with a hard-right turn here. It will intersect a quad-track road. Take a left. You’ll start seeing blazes now as the ohv trail slowly ascends the mountain. Technically, you can drive up the mountain, and you might hear, then see, folks doing that. Just discretely step off trail, fading into the forest, and they’ll pass you without even noticing.

Photographs: http://www.outragegis.com/pixel/070527-28_PineMtnTrail