After the group of 6 to 8 of us finished our 3 to 5 day hike on the GA Pinhoti last month, I need to make one comment about the GA sections that needs to be made.
"They", meaning the people in charge of maintaining the GA sections, must have bought a lifetime supply of diamond shaped, turkey track, white plastic trail signs to blaze the trail with. The problem is that those little signs are too easy to be stolen, vandalized, knocked off by bear, squirrel, wind or other unknown act of God or man, and the lifetime supply must be exhausted, or else they can't nail new ones back on fast enough.
This is a very bad way to blaze a trail compared to painting blazes on like we do in Alabama now. There were several spots at trail and road junctions where there were no plastic signs anywhere around. And no other way to tell where the trail was except to look closely for the mountain bike tracks in the nearest "soft spot". Hikers that do not pay attention to their surroundings carefully will miss turns, as we had happen even in our larger group. I would have wasted a lot of time myself in one spot where I saw no signs after the logging road split into two options, except that I had Mr. Parkay's gps track loaded in my handheld gps. You can also figure the correct way with map and compass, but only after you walk 100 yards or so to be sure of which option is going the correct heading from where you think you are on the map.
So it will be nice to get a reply from someone familiar with the maintenance of the GA Pinhoti to see if they are consdering buying some paint that would last longer than the plastic diamond signs.
Edwin