Canoe Trip into Hells Bay - Everglades National Park

Well January is about shot and February is ready to begin anew.  It has been a busy month for me.  I haven’t been able to do any really cool trips lately.  Between my two week vacation flying home to upstate New York and work once back in Florida, I haven’t found any time to get out and enjoy myself in the backcountry.  However, I was thinking of dedicating this post to an overnight canoe trip I went on here in South Florida Christmas Eve and into Christmas day of this past 2012, so just over a month ago.

Hells Bay… its quite a name.  Hells Bay is a beautiful flat water bay on the outskirts of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness in the southern part of Everglades National Park.  This was my first experience inside a mangrove forest and it was truly a maze ing (amazing and a maze to navigate).  The destination was a trip along the 6 mile wilderness canoe trail back into the bay where a Double Chickee campsite resides.  This may be a new term for some people, the Hells Bay Chickee looks like this:

Pretty cool huh?  Chickees are what you tie your canoe to and setup a tent on for the night.  Its exposed, it’s cool, and it’s a few feet off the water.  Back to the trip…

Being a ranger in Everglades, I felt it was my duty to get out and explore this particular area seeing that it is a well visited overnight spot.  I was working most of Christmas week and had already scheduled my vacation for January so, with most of my friends gone on vacation and no family in the area, my lone buddy (Colin) who remained and I decided to head out Christmas Eve and spend the night and Christmas morning out on this Chickee in Hells Bay.  First things first, I just packed like any typical overnight canoe trip, a couple small dry bags and a cooler is really all ya need, nothing special.  The cooler was by no means necessary but I thought I’d have a couple cold beers while paddling under the hot Florida sun.  

Now the entrance to this wonderland is pretty far south into Everglades National Park and if you’re contemplating this trip, here is what you will need to know.  First you have a fee at the park entrance station to get into the park… unless you come in before the ranger is on duty, then it’s free.  You WILL however need a backcountry permit and the place to get that is at the end of the road, all the way south at the Flamingo visitor center.  You will be passing the trailhead on your right along the way south so take note of where it is for your return.  There is a fee for the permit, you fill out the information and hand the ranger some money, and you are on your way, it’s pretty simple… make sure you listen to everything the ranger has to say, they have good information, even if you think you know it all.  For up to date details on hours, fees, alerts and directions… I refer you to the excellent government website www.nps.gov/ever.  Also to note, for your safety its important you get yourself a nautical chart.  These are sold in Flamingo at the marina and in other places in the park including the Ernest Coe and Gulf Coast Visitor Centers.  The chart you’ll need for Hells Bay is Chart No. 11433.  The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness is 1,296,500 acres, so get yourself a map so you don’t get lost among the millions of mangroves!

Now that I got all my ranger safety messages out there, I will continue on with the story of my trip.  Colin and I drove down and got our permit, grabbed our park canoe, and parked along the road at the trailhead by 10:30am.  After loading up the canoe and launching, we enjoyed the next few hours of navigating through beautiful mangrove tunnels and forest mazes, and through huge expansive shallow bays.  Again this is a six mile trip one way into Hells Bay so make sure your prepared with enough water for the entire trip and have all the proper sun protection including sunglasses… that sun reflecting off the water is bright!  The mangroves were so cool though, turning left and right and making some dead stops just to turn the canoe to the odd angle in which we had to traverse was an amazing canoeing experience that I’ve never encountered elsewhere in the country.  There were some sections we could really get the big boat moving but in the end we usually had to slow down to turning speed to avoid crashing inside the thicket of branches.  It was of course a learning process for us and being in the front of the boat, I have a nice little scar on my left arm that still lingers, to prove that point.  Even crashing through the vegetation was fun though and as we laughed our way like a pinball from one sharp corner to the next, we were constantly on the lookout for the next piece of PVC pipe sticking out of the water.  You see, the National Park has placed these pvc pipes on all the corners marking which way the trail goes.  Most of the time you really don’t see them until you are at the corner.  I thought it was well marked though with only a couple spots that could use some clarification, but like several other canoeists, we made it just fine with what was out there and it was half the fun being in the front of the boat to lean forward and scout out the next pipe in order to yell LEFT or RIGHT to signal which way my partner was to turn us… and fast!  Most of the time, like I mentioned before, the turns are so tight and with negligible room, the directions I gave were almost always at the last moment to control our turn without scraping through the branches, but we saw it as a challenge to work on our timing… and of course we liked going fast.  There is nothing like it though and we thoroughly enjoyed the trip back to Hells Bay!  With our trip in I had begun feeling that backcountry buzz that you get being in the wilds, learning new things, laughing with a friend, and enjoying the quiet among nothing but birds, fish, and gators.

 It was an amazing night out there, perfectly quiet and serene.  Colin and I made some dinner with my camp stove, and settled in for a night of playing cribbage, fishing off the platform, and listening to the subtle sounds of the wildlife.  Over certain periods of time, all you could hear were fish jumping and splashing, making a racket all around you on the raised platform, even underneath the tent!  I was lucky that night, sunset was stunning, which isn’t that uncommon in South Florida.  We had pretty good timing with the moon too, it was pretty bright and lit up the night fairly well.  Next in line to join the symphony was the owls which echoed across the bay for what seemed like miles.  I couldn’t tell how far away this bird was because the sound seemed to carry on forever.  Around 2:00am I woke up to a chorus of alligators making this deep, throaty, prehistoric growling noises from all over the bay including along the bank of mangroves that align the chickee 25 feet away.  It was fascinating listing to these monsters communicate all around me and amazing that they were so loud.  Overall, an awesome night.  After dark, the mosquitoes made their appearance but we were playing cards in the tent by that time and they didn’t really affect the camping.

The paddle home was similar to coming in, only went by a little quicker because we had a better idea on which direction to travel most times.  We exited the wilderness and dropped the park canoe back off.  It was a Merry Christmas indeed, I went home and was well satisfied… I had got my much needed fix of nature and backcountry.  Writing about it now makes me think I should start planning my next expedition to a new location.