Neil
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- Apr 26, 2004
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We overslept. It was 6:18 when I checked my watch. I hadn’t heard the alarm because my wrist was inside my sleeping bag. I hauled my ass out of the warmth and went to get water from Wilson Pond in barefeet. The cold, cold ground numbed my feet painfully. I would have worn my boots but they and my only socks were wet. Stupidly, unthinkingly I dipped my entire Jetboil into the drink and that was the end of our morning coffee.
At 8:00, with 10 pounds of water plus 15 pounds of food and gear on our backs, we were underway, en route to Blue Ridge 90. In my pre-trip, behind the keyboard fantasy I thought we would be underway, under headlamps, at 6am. However, it was 1am the night before, after a few Coors Light, when we hit the 3-mile trail to the Wilson Pond Lean-to. We were crushing that trail when we hit deep water, tried to follow a dead-end herdpath, put the map, compass and gps to work and realized we had no choice but to wade, mid-shin deep through a broad creek. Luckily, the powerful headlamp beams picked up the DEC reflectors on the other side. So much for crushing the trail and keeping our feet dry.
The forecast Saturday was for sunshine, and indeed, my gps’s weather radio said it was sunny just then but we were socked right in. The woods were dripping wet and so we got soaked to the skin. As we crested the first of the 2 Blue Ridges after a couple hours of bushwhacking I heard a branch crack and a doe bounded away. The sun came out and stayed out for the rest of our trip. The route along the ridge over to the other Blue Ridge was pretty and open. At one point we left the ridgeline to avoid a little elly gain and loss and we must have been dozing because we walked right into a major fir wave, which slowed our progress to nothing for what seemed to be a long, long time as we crawled over and through a mess of blowdown and young balsams. Don't it always seem to go that the blowdown is at a 90 degree angle to your line of travel?
The 2.3 mile-long ridge walk came to an end on the summit of Blue Ridge 99 and I was surprised at how long it had taken us to reach it. It was close to 2:00. As we traversed the ridge we had caught some glimpses of Wakely Mountain and it looked very far away. BR99 was our first potential bailout but we dialled Wakely into our compasses and began the long descent to the ominously named Lost Brook. I thought we would fly down the mountain but the terrain underfoot made for very slow and tiring progress and the woods remained thick and coniferous until we had lost most of our elevation. The brook was nearly 2 miles from the summit and even on flat terrain we were unable to acquire a rhythm of any sort. We found a trickle of water and while filling Doug’s bladder the pump had a malfunction, which still allowed it to work but required submerging the casing while pumping. I still had some so I decided to wait until Lost Brook and make use of my Iodine tabs.
After crossing the brook, which flowed through a grassy clearing drenched in late afternoon sunshine we began the long climb (with 10 more pounds of water on our backs) up to Wakely. Between the poor footing and the accumulated fatigue the going was quite slow and we debated whether we would be bushwhacking with headlamps. We had several options and the most appealing was to lay our sleeping pads out below the summit, crash for the night and hit the summit in the morning. But slowly, very slowly and steadily I watched the distance to the summit decrease on my gps. We had made very little use of the gps on the trip so far but now it served as a morale booster as it showed our progress. I was lost in thought and followed Doug a little closely as he pushed his way past a tree. He bent the tree until it was loaded with potential energy and once past it he released it. I took it right in the mouth. We had a short pause while Doug apologized profusely and I insisted that I had been following too closely while spitting blood onto the ground. What a wallop!
It was just after sundown when we staggered out of the bush onto the summit clearing. There was a young man and his girlfriend still hanging out on top. We must have looked like wild men, soaking wet, filthy and scratched up. I probably had a fat lip. I whipped off my shirt and this conversation ensued:
Doug: We just bushwhacked from route 28.
Me (to the girl)- Would you mind brushing the pine needles off my back?
The boyfriend- OK Sue, it’s getting dark, time to go
Doug (to the girl, reading something on her sweatshirt) Hey! I’m from Oswego too!
The girl, brightening: What bars do you go to?
The boyfriend: c’mon, it’s getting dark
The girl, giggling: Oh my god! You’ve got pine needles all the way down-
The boyfriend, impatient: It’s time to go, NOW.
Doug: to no one in particular: Can you imagine what it would be like to eat breakfast up here tomorrow morning?
The boyfriend: we’re leaving now.
The couple have no packs and it’s getting darker by the minute.
Doug, to the girl: Why don’t you take my headlamp, I’ll give you my number and you can call me in Oswego and I’ll get it back from you.
The boyfriend, on his way down the trail: Good-by!
(Reporters note: The above dialog is pure fabrication on my part . It springs from Doug and my conversation afterwards with us saying to each other, “you should have said, what if I had said etc. The rest of the TR is factual.)
We made use of the picnic table in order to cook and eat a freeze-dried meal and then we headed NW until we got ourselves down to below 3500 feet. We found a semi-level spot and threw our stuff on the ground. I think I was asleep in less than 5 minutes.
The next morning we headed for Cellar and for this portion of the trip the gps was pressed into constant service. The logical route from Wakely to Cellar is along a ridge but most of the route is across a pointed wedge of private property. I had the property lines connected by waypoints and showing as an active route on my gps screen so it was easy to continue our end run around it. Thus, at 9am (I can’t believe how long we slept) we headed NW for another 3/8 of a mile (instead of SW towards our goal). Then we sidesloped SW for 1.75 miles, turned the corner and headed SE to Cellar Brook and a much needed water re-fill.
It turned out to be a beautiful walk in the woods on a beautiful sunny fall day so we slowed right down and savored every step. Little Moose, which was to be our 5th summit, could wait for another day. I was pretty tired but elated on the final 600 foot climb up to Cellar. It was the end point of a wonderful adventure. We looked around for a summit sign or remnants of a canister but all we saw on the highest point was a small circle of bare ground and some rubbed off moss on the final step up. From there it was all downhill, 30 minutes worth, to Doug’s car which we had spotted on Friday night and a cooler with chilled orange juice, rich and creamy espresso coffee and sandwiches.
All along our entire route we kept a constant lookout for signs of previous hikers. I felt that Twin Blue Ridges was a likely candidate for a herd path because of the obvious route up from Wilson Pond and the ridgeline between the two summits. We saw absolutely nothing. The actual route, even on the ridgetop is very broad and the openings are so infinite that in many places we had to check the compass regularly. Even using a gps tracklog I doubt I could cover the same passageway twice, even if I tried. A thick layer of leaf litter covers the ground every year and at higher elevations there is a never ending, continuously renewed supply of blowdown that ensures that bushwhackers take ever-changing routes.
At 8:00, with 10 pounds of water plus 15 pounds of food and gear on our backs, we were underway, en route to Blue Ridge 90. In my pre-trip, behind the keyboard fantasy I thought we would be underway, under headlamps, at 6am. However, it was 1am the night before, after a few Coors Light, when we hit the 3-mile trail to the Wilson Pond Lean-to. We were crushing that trail when we hit deep water, tried to follow a dead-end herdpath, put the map, compass and gps to work and realized we had no choice but to wade, mid-shin deep through a broad creek. Luckily, the powerful headlamp beams picked up the DEC reflectors on the other side. So much for crushing the trail and keeping our feet dry.
The forecast Saturday was for sunshine, and indeed, my gps’s weather radio said it was sunny just then but we were socked right in. The woods were dripping wet and so we got soaked to the skin. As we crested the first of the 2 Blue Ridges after a couple hours of bushwhacking I heard a branch crack and a doe bounded away. The sun came out and stayed out for the rest of our trip. The route along the ridge over to the other Blue Ridge was pretty and open. At one point we left the ridgeline to avoid a little elly gain and loss and we must have been dozing because we walked right into a major fir wave, which slowed our progress to nothing for what seemed to be a long, long time as we crawled over and through a mess of blowdown and young balsams. Don't it always seem to go that the blowdown is at a 90 degree angle to your line of travel?
The 2.3 mile-long ridge walk came to an end on the summit of Blue Ridge 99 and I was surprised at how long it had taken us to reach it. It was close to 2:00. As we traversed the ridge we had caught some glimpses of Wakely Mountain and it looked very far away. BR99 was our first potential bailout but we dialled Wakely into our compasses and began the long descent to the ominously named Lost Brook. I thought we would fly down the mountain but the terrain underfoot made for very slow and tiring progress and the woods remained thick and coniferous until we had lost most of our elevation. The brook was nearly 2 miles from the summit and even on flat terrain we were unable to acquire a rhythm of any sort. We found a trickle of water and while filling Doug’s bladder the pump had a malfunction, which still allowed it to work but required submerging the casing while pumping. I still had some so I decided to wait until Lost Brook and make use of my Iodine tabs.
After crossing the brook, which flowed through a grassy clearing drenched in late afternoon sunshine we began the long climb (with 10 more pounds of water on our backs) up to Wakely. Between the poor footing and the accumulated fatigue the going was quite slow and we debated whether we would be bushwhacking with headlamps. We had several options and the most appealing was to lay our sleeping pads out below the summit, crash for the night and hit the summit in the morning. But slowly, very slowly and steadily I watched the distance to the summit decrease on my gps. We had made very little use of the gps on the trip so far but now it served as a morale booster as it showed our progress. I was lost in thought and followed Doug a little closely as he pushed his way past a tree. He bent the tree until it was loaded with potential energy and once past it he released it. I took it right in the mouth. We had a short pause while Doug apologized profusely and I insisted that I had been following too closely while spitting blood onto the ground. What a wallop!
It was just after sundown when we staggered out of the bush onto the summit clearing. There was a young man and his girlfriend still hanging out on top. We must have looked like wild men, soaking wet, filthy and scratched up. I probably had a fat lip. I whipped off my shirt and this conversation ensued:
Doug: We just bushwhacked from route 28.
Me (to the girl)- Would you mind brushing the pine needles off my back?
The boyfriend- OK Sue, it’s getting dark, time to go
Doug (to the girl, reading something on her sweatshirt) Hey! I’m from Oswego too!
The girl, brightening: What bars do you go to?
The boyfriend: c’mon, it’s getting dark
The girl, giggling: Oh my god! You’ve got pine needles all the way down-
The boyfriend, impatient: It’s time to go, NOW.
Doug: to no one in particular: Can you imagine what it would be like to eat breakfast up here tomorrow morning?
The boyfriend: we’re leaving now.
The couple have no packs and it’s getting darker by the minute.
Doug, to the girl: Why don’t you take my headlamp, I’ll give you my number and you can call me in Oswego and I’ll get it back from you.
The boyfriend, on his way down the trail: Good-by!
(Reporters note: The above dialog is pure fabrication on my part . It springs from Doug and my conversation afterwards with us saying to each other, “you should have said, what if I had said etc. The rest of the TR is factual.)
We made use of the picnic table in order to cook and eat a freeze-dried meal and then we headed NW until we got ourselves down to below 3500 feet. We found a semi-level spot and threw our stuff on the ground. I think I was asleep in less than 5 minutes.
The next morning we headed for Cellar and for this portion of the trip the gps was pressed into constant service. The logical route from Wakely to Cellar is along a ridge but most of the route is across a pointed wedge of private property. I had the property lines connected by waypoints and showing as an active route on my gps screen so it was easy to continue our end run around it. Thus, at 9am (I can’t believe how long we slept) we headed NW for another 3/8 of a mile (instead of SW towards our goal). Then we sidesloped SW for 1.75 miles, turned the corner and headed SE to Cellar Brook and a much needed water re-fill.
It turned out to be a beautiful walk in the woods on a beautiful sunny fall day so we slowed right down and savored every step. Little Moose, which was to be our 5th summit, could wait for another day. I was pretty tired but elated on the final 600 foot climb up to Cellar. It was the end point of a wonderful adventure. We looked around for a summit sign or remnants of a canister but all we saw on the highest point was a small circle of bare ground and some rubbed off moss on the final step up. From there it was all downhill, 30 minutes worth, to Doug’s car which we had spotted on Friday night and a cooler with chilled orange juice, rich and creamy espresso coffee and sandwiches.
All along our entire route we kept a constant lookout for signs of previous hikers. I felt that Twin Blue Ridges was a likely candidate for a herd path because of the obvious route up from Wilson Pond and the ridgeline between the two summits. We saw absolutely nothing. The actual route, even on the ridgetop is very broad and the openings are so infinite that in many places we had to check the compass regularly. Even using a gps tracklog I doubt I could cover the same passageway twice, even if I tried. A thick layer of leaf litter covers the ground every year and at higher elevations there is a never ending, continuously renewed supply of blowdown that ensures that bushwhackers take ever-changing routes.
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