Tarp Camping Kentucky’s Most Difficult Trail | Pine Mountain Trail – Highland Section

In Southeast Kentucky lies one of the state’s finest and most difficult backpacking trails, the Pine Mountain State Scenic Trail. The PMT is currently a 44 mile footpath that runs along the Pine Ridge and will eventually be 120 miles when completed and will connect Breaks Interstate Park to Cumberland Gap National Historical Park as well as be a key connecting link to the Great Eastern Trail (GET).

I had the opportunity to hike this trail with two other fellow YouTubers in late February, Samuel Janes from Bluegrass Backcountry and Nick Harrington from Smokey Bees Natural, both haling from the state of Kentucky. Their channel links are below.

We encountered some of the most rugged and difficult trails Kentucky has to offer as well as some of most spectacular and rewarding views. This was quite a change from the flat Florida Trail that I had just come off of a few weeks prior. Little did we know that the recent ice storm had caused hundreds of blow downs along the trail that we had to navigate around making for quite the adventure!

On this trip I used my Lite AF Curve 35 backpack, Zpacks Duplex and took my Atra Olympus 4's on their final excursion before replacing them with a new pair.

Here are the two fellas that invited me on this trip, check out their channels!

Bluegrass Backcountry:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoSbbYvZk1JNnGeVZ3KleIQ

Smokey Bees Natural:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYfmj6dQjSO93E42C8aiKkw