Our first stop in Cade's
Cove was to find a virtual geocache. We didn't know what we were
looking for but we had GPS coordinates and knew that whatever we
found would be cool.
We were watching the GPS
and right as we got even with the cache we saw a pull over spot and a
trail leading up the side of the mountain.
This must be the spot.
We were 400 feet from the
cache so up the mountain we went.
About 100 feet in the
trail stopped. Literally. No more trail, no remnants of the trail,
nothing.
We stood there for a
minute while Dad looked at the GPS and pointed straight up the
mountain from us.
Should we go back to the
truck and find a real trail? Or should we just bushwack on up?
As a geocacher you can be
assured that there is always a trail. There are a lot of times that
we can't find the trail so we bush wack in but once we find the cache
we can see the trail out.
So we looked up the
mountain and then back down at the car and I said “It's only 300
feet, let's just go.”
The area wasn't dense so
it looked like we'd just walk on up. Dad agreed and up we went.
Except, that was a really
bad idea.
Bush wacking up a mountain
is absolutely NOTHING like bush wacking in a flat state.
There were ravines, rocks,
massive downed trees, steep climbs and what we would call log jams
back home. Except these log jams weren't in a creek they were
everywhere!
Snakes love log jams so I
go around them at home but there was no going around some of these so
we had to make our way through them, which was really sketchy.
Around this, over that,
down a ravine, up a ravine – it was intense.
I have to give massive
credit to my Dad. He's 81 years old and had major back surgery 8
weeks ago but he has more stamina than most 40 year olds. And
definitely more than I have.
You don't see many people
his age that can do the things he does and even fewer that could have
made it up that mountain like he did.
After not quite 2 hours we
were still 100 feet from the cache and there was still no sign of a
trail.
We sat down to rest and
Dad starts talking about park rangers finding a Jane Doe years ago,
which immediately made me want to write my name on my arm in sharpie.
Then he says “Do you
know what a Bot Fly is”?
“Isn't that the fly that
lays it's larvae in dead bodies and is a way to tell how long the
body has been dead”?
“Yep – and they're
circling my head right now”
This was supposed to be a
30 minute, there and back, hike. I don't know the mountain version of
Gilligan's Island's '3 hour tour' but we were damn sure on it.
Dad thought he saw a
navigable path in one direction and I saw one in the other, both of
which would end on a ridge we could see above us, so we split up. It
took about one minute after he disappeared into the trees for me to
regret that.
I knew he was close but
still, I was suddenly alone on the side of a mountain. A mountain. I
don't know diddly squat about being alone in the woods on a mountain.
Luckily, I heard him
crashing through the woods and I wasn't alone any more.
Onward I went and then
stepped in a hole. It was covered with leaves so I didn't see it and
my entire foot went in. It was only about 8 to 10 inches deep but it
was just enough so that all of my weight landed hard on my hip.
Great.
My hip is screaming and
I'm limping along when I hear voices coming from the ridge we
were trying to get to.
I'm going to be completely
honest here and tell you that I almost yelled “HELP”
Instead I called out to
Dad that I'd heard voices.
Hearing me yell must have
given whoever it was a Banjo moment and I saw a flash of color. The
must have turned around because their voices were suddenly getting farther
away and they were moving pretty fast.
But I'd seen them so I
knew where the trail we were looking for was and there was a good
chance we'd make it to the trail and live to tell the tale.
Dad made his way over to
me and about 20 minutes later we burst out of the woods onto the
trail and at our exact destination.
A couple were standing
there and we gave them a good startle when we burst out of the woods.
We were also standing in
front of the virtual cache – which was really pretty but I can't
tell you about because that ruins the “secret”.
And of course we walked
back down a ten minute REAL trail and found that if we'd have driven
another 100 feet we'd have seen this trail and would have been done
hours ago.
In hindsight, I am SO glad
we did it the hard way. We'd seen and done so many amazing things on
this trip but this was truly an intimate look at what it's like
there.
Walking a path is one
thing but you really learn a lot about an area when you just head off
into the woods.
We were battered but not
beaten and we still had Cade's Cove to explore so back into the car
and off we went.
Labels: Done
