An Alabama Dirt Roadwalk
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of work on the website that I’ve created for the Eastern Continental Trail. As I continue to think about the subject, one of the things which comes to the forefront of my mind is the Alabama Roadwalk, which sticks out as the only portion of the ECT between Key West and Québec where a thru-hiker is continuously on paved roads for almost 200 miles. While pondering this, my curiosity got the better of me when I had the question “How much of the Alamaba roadwalk could be done on dirt roads?”. This Google Earth file is the result.
The two main appeals of dirt roads for hikers is that the dirt is softer than a paved road and therefore causes fewer problems for the feet, and there are fewer people in the area in general, meaning fewer cars passing by. The areas that dirt roads travel through are of course more remote as well, which is often a desirable aspect for thru-hikers. That being said, this same remoteness comes with the disadvantage that there are very few services in the area. Most importantly, issues like uncontrolled dogs and suspicious homeowners would be more of a problem in remote areas where people are not used to seeing thru-hikers.
Mapping out a dirt roadwalk took considerable time, as I needed to have a global sense of which regions of Alabama had plenty of dirt roads going North-South. I also had to backtrack several times as I found myself mapping a section that led into an area with no dirt roads at all. My goal was to put the roadwalk on dirt roads as much as possible, while still keeping it generally in line with the route between the Florida and Pinhoti trails.
The result is a 50 mile increase over the original 200 mile roadwalk, as dirt roads are much less direct. In total, I would estimate that about 200 of these miles are on dirt roads. Certain portions of the state have no dirt roads, and as Montgomery and the Alabama River form a big obstacle that must be bypassed on either the East or West. My choice was to head West and go through Selma, then come back East across the Coosa River and take the path on the Coosa Trail as the current Alabama Roadwalk does.
On its winding path, the Dirt Roadwalk avoids any cities or towns, with the exception of Selma, which must be traversed to cross the Alabama River to the West of Montgomery. It specifically goes through sparsely-populated areas and rarely passes by a store of any kind. It would make for an intesting walk in theory, though in practice it’s unclear how encounters in the deep backcountry of Alabama would play out for a thru-hiker.