When all is said and done, the Palmetto Trail will travel 425 miles across South Carolina, from the mountains to the coast. It will be one of only 13 cross-state trails and will offer some of the most varied hiking in the Southeast. What hikers don't know is that half of the trail already complete, waiting for foot traffic.

“There’s a lot of South Carolina to see along this trail,” says Nancy Stone-Collum of the Palmetto Conservation, the non-profit responsible for planning and building the trail. “It travels through marshes, rural areas, civil war battlefields, rugged backcountry. But it’s still waiting for people to discover it.”

Two key passages of the Palmetto recently opened. The new Poinsett Passage travels 6.6 miles along mountain ridges and gaps along the Blue Wall, while the 7.2-mile Wateree Passage is a multi-use trail traveling from “the Hills of Santee” to the swamp lands of the Wateree River. More passages are slated for completion in the near future, but will the Palmetto Conservation meet their goal of a complete mountains to coast trail by 2010?

“There are still some really big gaps to fill,” Stone-Collum says. “The hard part is negotiating with private landowners, convincing them to let hikers access their property.”

Regardless, with 240 miles of the trail already complete and the next passage scheduled to open within the Sumter National Forest, the Palmetto Trail is ready to be discovered.

www.palmettoconservation.org