WARNING: Trails north of Stafford Beach on Cumberland Island are lightly traveled and are not be maintained on a regular basis and therefore may be overgrown. Some can also be extremely muddy and even under water after heavy rains and high tides. Before hiking, ask a park Ranger about current conditions. Furthermore, do not hike these trails without wearing long pants and tick repellent. Ticks are prevalent on the trails, even the ones that are maintained.
The most accurate Cumberland Island National Seashore trail map is available through the Georgia Conservancy. You can download a free PDF version, or you can purchase a tear- and water-resistant printed map directly from the Conservancy or at the Cumberland Island National Seashore Visitor Center. The PDF is great for planning your hiking trips, but I highly recommend purchasing a map for use on the trails if you plan to do a lot of backcountry hiking. A free map is available at the Sea Camp Ranger Station, but it’s not that great, plus it tears up pretty easily. Regardless of your decision, be sure you have some sort of map before starting your backcountry hikes.
Length: 2.25-mile loop (8 miles from Sea Camp)
Time: 1 hour
Difficulty: Easy
You can start the Ashley Pond-Rayfield-Kings Bottom loop hike on either the Ashley Pond Trail or the Kings Bottom Trail, as both have trailheads along Cumberland Island’s main road, Grand Avenue. The Ashley Pond Trail comes first as you travel north from Sea Camp, and this is where I started. It is eight miles from Sea Camp and took me a little over an hour to get there by bike. Day trippers on foot will not be able to do this hike. You cannot ride or even push your bike along the trail, so leave it in the bushes at the side of the road.
The hike along the Ashley Pond Trail starts off through a pine forest, and the surface is gently cushioned with needles. If you have hiked some of the trails around Sea Camp and Dungeness, you will find this terrain different from the live oak forests that dominate the southern end of Cumberland Island. The start of the Ashley Pond Trail is located where the island is at its widest. Far from the water and the resulting salt spray that trees must endure nearer to the coast, the central area of the island is home to many more salt-adverse pine trees. As you walk farther west and closer to the marsh, the live oaks reappear and the forest becomes a mixture of oaks and young pine trees.
Mixture of live oaks and pine trees farther west on the Ashley Pond Trail, Cumberland Island National Seashore
Per the trail map, the Ashley Pond Trail (and the Rayfield Trail) are not maintained, which means that one day they will disappear back into the wilderness. The trail is very faint in places, but for the most part you can still make out the path, and wooden markers appear every so often to keep you heading in the right direction. Other than that, for a non-maintained trail it is not too bad.
At the .4-mile mark is the intersection with the Rayfield Trail. This trail is on both the color park brochure map and the trail map you get at the Ranger station, but the name only appears on the trail map. It runs north, crossing the Kings Bottom Trail along the way, and comes out much farther up on Grand Avenue. You will return back to this point via the Rayfield Trail at the end of the hike, but for now stay to the left to remain on the Ashley Pond Trail.
Up to this point the forest is open and allows in ample sunshine. This is not some deep, dark, dingy woods where you feel like Hansel and Gretel. I love to walk in forests such as this.
No too far from the Rayfield Trail intersection is an unmarked fork in the trail. There is a post with an arrow pointing to the right, but no sign denotes which direction is the Ashley Pond Trail. Right is the correct way to go, and I only knew this because of the trail map.
It is on this stretch of the trail that you pass Ashley Pond, only there is no pond, at least not that can be seen from the trail. The forest has grown thicker since the Carnegie days, so the pond could be hidden behind the trees or simply dry during my visit in mid-March. Winter and spring are known as the dry season in south Georgia and Florida, so the pond may fill with water starting in late May, though I still doubt that you can see it from the trail.
The intersection with Kings Bottom Trail comes at the .9-mile mark on the hike. The Kings Bottom Trail runs east and west from here. If you go around the corner to the right and head east, you will come back to Grand Avenue, which is the way you want to go for this hike. If you continue to the left and head west you will come to another Y-shaped intersection about a hundred yards down where you can pick up the remaining section of the Ashley Pond Trail and hike to the Table Point Trail. If you stay to the left you will remain on the Kings Bottom Trail, which eventually dead ends into Kings Bottom Road approximately .75 mile ahead. Anyway, go to the right at this first intersection to begin the trek back to Grand Avenue on the Kings Bottom Trail.
If you are wondering why I didn’t continue on the Ashley Pond Trail to the Table Point Trail, I did, but I had to turn around. When I did this in March 2016, the Table Point Trail was almost completely overgrown, and I picked up more ticks on my attempt than I had picked up in my entire life of hiking—not an exaggeration. If you want to hike it, be sure to ask about its condition at the Sea Camp Ranger station. On a March 2022 visit, I was told that it was very overgrown and not to attempt hiking it.
As you begin hiking east on the Kings Bottom Trail, you will find that it has its share of saw palmettos. These plants have sharp stems and are essentially Tick Towns, but luckily the trail is wide enough so you rarely have to brush up against them. Even so, I still managed to pick up two silver dollar-size clusters of what were either chiggers or baby ticks. It was hard to tell exactly what they were because they were extremely small, but if I had to guess I’d say that they were ticks. Having worn long pants, I was able to brush them off without further complications. I did not encounter ticks for the rest of the hike. If you are hiking on Cumberland Island and find that the trail gradually narrows until you must bust through the palmettos to proceed, turn around immediately and end the hike. Continuing the hike almost guarantees that you will be covered with ticks.
The trail ends up passing through a swampy area, so you will have a few mud holes to traipse through. Wooden walkways span the worst of them. The Kings Bottom Trail is maintained, and palm fronds had been cut and laid over the mud holes.
The intersection with the Rayfield Trail comes about .6 mile from the Ashley Pond intersection and is marked with a sign. The Kings Bottom Trail dead ends into the Rayfield Trail and you must turn right or left. If you want to continue on the Kings Bottom Trail, take a left on Rayfield and you’ll find the continuation of Kings Bottom on the right just a short ways down. You can take this all the way to Grand Avenue and then walk south on the road to return to the start of the Ashley Pond Trail. The other option is to turn right on Rayfield and take this south to the intersection with Ashley Pond, which you passed earlier at the start of the hike. I chose to take the Rayfield route. Distance is about the same either way.
According to the trail map, the Rayfield Trail is not maintained, but because it runs through a very open section of the forest there is no problem with vegetation consuming the trail. It is pretty much the same terrain as on the Ashley Pond Trail.
When you get to the Ashley Pond intersection, which is .3 mile from the Rayfield / Kings Bottom intersection, take a left to return back to Grand Avenue, another .4 mile walk.
Maybe it is because I had such a bad experience hiking the Table Point Trail that I really can’t recommend this loop hike. The entire purpose of my original planned hike was to cover all of the trails in the area, and with the trip to Table Point out of the question, there’s not much of interest on this shortened version of the hike. It does not lead to any particular destination, and the scenery is nothing special. It serves as exercise only. Your time can be better spent on the beaches or at the historic sites within Cumberland Island National Seashore.
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Last updated on July 19, 2024