Everglades National Park: Snake Bight Trail (Blog Hike #241)

Trail: Snake Bight Trail

Hike Location: Everglades National Park

Geographic Location: northeast of Flamingo, FL (25.20084, -80.87459)

Length: 3.6 miles

Difficulty: 1/10 (Easy)

Dates Hiked: May 2008, October 2014

Overview: A flat hike to an observation platform yielding excellent views of Florida Bay.

Trail Information: http://www.nps.gov/ever/planyourvisit/flamingo-trails.htm
Hike Route Map: http://www.mappedometer.com/?maproute=118592
Photo Highlight:

Directions to the trailhead: The trailhead is located on the main park road 4 miles north of Flamingo.  Trailhead parking, which consists of a paved pullout on the side of the road, is marked with a brown park sign.

The hike: For my general comments on Everglades National Park, see the Anhinga Trail description.  Most visitors to the Everglades stick to the main park roads, the tram rides, and the short boardwalk trails, and much good wildlife viewing can be had that way.  However, if you want to see the Everglades without the crowds, you will have to leave these easier alternatives and head for the backcountry.

            In most of the Everglades, visiting the backcountry would require rafting in a canoe or wading several miles of knee-deep water.  Fortunately, the park maintains a trail system just northeast of Flamingo that allows visitors to access the undeveloped backcountry without this trouble.  While the trails are easily accessible from the main park road, their length and the lack of immediate rewards mean that the crowds do not flock to these trails as they do to the shorter boardwalks.  Most of these trails yield a similar hiking experience, but I have chosen the Snake Bight Trail because it is the shortest trail leading to Snake Bight, an inlet of Florida Bay.

Trailhead: Snake Bight Trail

            Begin by walking around a vehicle gate and following the wide two-track dirt trail.  This trail is also open and easily accessible to bikes, though on my visit I had the trail completely to myself.  Don’t be scared by the trail’s name: a bight is simply an inlet of a larger body of water, and encountering snakes is very rare in the Everglades.  The entire trail is dead straight, as are many of the roads in the area. 

If you look to the left, down the entire length of this trail is a borrow pit filled with water.  Since the Everglades are so flat, any road or trail built at land level would become submerged during the wet season.  The solution was to create a small dirt dike by digging a hole nearby and using the dirt from the hole to create the dike.  You are walking on the dike, and the hole, called a borrow pit, is the area to the left.

Hiking toward Snake Bight

            The standing water in the borrow pit leads to the one warning about this hike: to continue a play on words, while “Snake Bite” would not be an appropriate name for this trail, “Insect Bite” would be, as the water in the borrow pit makes ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes.  Thus, even if it is 95 degrees, you will want to wear long pants and a long sleeved shirt with a collar on this hike.  I learned this lesson the hard way: even though I used a double layer of insect repellent on my arms, I still ended up with 43 insect bites (it took a couple of minutes to count them).  Don’t repeat my mistake; come prepared.

            At 1.3 miles the Rowdy Bend Trail, another two-track hike/bike trail, enters from the right.  In another 0.5 miles, you arrive at the boardwalk/observation deck that marks the trail’s end.  Watch your step on the ground just before the boardwalk; it will likely be muddy and slippery even if the rest of the trail is not.  The boardwalk offers a nice view of Snake Bight, the open waters of which lay out to the south.  Watch for shore birds, which on my visit consisted of egrets and herons.  Take a few minutes to sit and rest on the bench at the boardwalk as you admire the bay, and then retrace your steps back along the trail to your car to complete the hike.

Wading bird at Snake Bight

Snake Bight