Alachua County High Point Trip Report
Date: December 23, 2001
Author: Ken Jones
We used Fred Lobdell's October 1999 trip report. We agree with Fred that the fourth spot, in Section 2,
need not be visited. The parking area for the state reserve required a $2 fee in December 2001.
Although the fee is self-service (no enforcement obvious when we were there), the fee is required to enter the reserve
whether you park in the lot or elsewhere and the HP possibilities are all in the reserve. I'd advise paying up.
Note that the 5-foot contours make a ridge a lot more obvious on the map than on the ground.
The southern HP possibility is fairly easy to discern by taking the path from the parking lot and looking for
(ever so slightly) higher ground. The spot we decided on was in easy sight of the highway in a wooded area just
north of the path.
On the north side of the highway, the other two spots are in thicker woods. There is a trail across from the
parking lot which leads to the old road shown on the topo map. This old road is now part of a trail system
in the area. There are maps available, but they're not much help to a highpointer. We used a GPS to find
our way to the correct two areas - the northern one had a faint feeling that we might be on a high point,
the middle (of the three) was so topographically undistinguished that we spent a fair amount of time guessing
what might be higher and stepping there.
The two northern areas are characterized by thicker woods near the trail (old road); once through a thicker
screen cross-country travel becomes mostly fairly open. If you don't have a GPS to locate yourself, carry a
compass and be prepared to pace out distances. These spots are very hard to identify as highpoints by visual means.