Thursday, October 11, 2012
Post #2
This weekend I traveled with my university's BCM on their fall retreat to Coker Springs Retreat, which is about an hour past Sweetwater. The retreat center was pretty quaint and rustic. There was no cell service, plenty of land, and to my excitement, plenty of hiking trails. On the second day of the retreat I decided to hit the trails with a group. For about half of the hike, I was thoroughly unimpressed by the trail. It was a bland double wide trail, nothing impressive. I felt like there were more impressive trails at the family center in my hometown. Then things got awesome. The trail suddenly cut to a single wide trail, and it became covered by fallen trees. What had started out as a boring hike had turned into a trek through a forest of overturned trees. Eventually we came to a point where we could no longer press forward and had to turn back. On the trip back down, we went a little ways off the trail and found a small cave. To get in the cave we had to slide down through the mouth into the bottom. Once at the bottom we could see that the cave tunnel continued as far as the eye could see. We went as far as we could down the cave, until we came upon a plethora of bats. Turning around to avoid disturbing the bats, we decided to come back later in the night when the bats were gone to explore the rest of the cave. When night fell our return group had dwindled down to me and one other person. We decided to continue with our adventure and embarked upon the trail. As we reached the bend in the trail where we had to venture into the forest, we heard something around us. The howls of coyotes. Ignoring the howls, we pressed on towards where we thought the cave was. After about five minutes of walking, we realized we were too far into the forest and decided to turn back. We became utterly lost and wandered the darkness for what seemed like an eternity, with the coyotes prowling around us, just waiting for our flashlights to die. We eventually stumbled out onto part of trail and made our way back to civilization unscathed.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Post #1
This is pretty much going to be a blog of the backpacking trips I take. It'll probably have a bunch of random posts thrown in as well, but I'll try to keep it mostly about backpacking/hiking. I don't really have a ton of experience backpacking, but I'll probably be spending a lot of time doing it in the future. Anyways, the rest of this post is going to be about my last backpacking adventure.
I went on this trip over Labor Day weekend with a few of my friends. Our target location was along the ridge line of Bird Mountain, which was about an hour east of Cookeville. The hike to our campsite was 7 miles, so it shouldn't have been to bad. Unfortunately, the first four miles of the hike was straight up the mountain, which had a murderous incline and endless cutbacks. We eventually made it to the top and continued on the rest of the three miles across the ridge line to our campsite. As we started the last leg of our journey, the sky opened up and just drenched us with a downpour. The storms from Hurricane Isaac had finally made their way over the mountains just as we decided that we would backpack through them. So we pressed on, battling the elements, until we arrived at our campsite. What we found was not what we expected. The space was barren, except for a few trees, and contained a tall wooden table and a crumbling brick fire pit. It's pretty much how I expect a apocalyptic wasteland to look like. The torrential downpour decided to relent so we could set up our tents and explore the area. We traveled to the highest point around, about a half mile away, which was supposed to have a lookout tower on top of it. It would have been awesome and the view would have been stunning, had we been able to see five feet in front of us. The entire area had been blanketed with fog. You could hardly even make out the tower through it. I mean it was pretty cool, and kind of Lost-esque, but we felt like we were cheated out of the view. After we returned to camp and decided to settle in for the night, Mother Nature decided she was curse us again with a thunderstorm. So there we were, on top of mountain, in the rain, wind, and lightning, completely soaked in our tents. I don't think I'd ever felt so miserably wet, nor so manly. The hike down and the subsequent lunch at Sonic were made so much sweeter due to the misery we endured on top of that mountain. It was both the greatest, and worst, backpacking trip I've ever been on.
I went on this trip over Labor Day weekend with a few of my friends. Our target location was along the ridge line of Bird Mountain, which was about an hour east of Cookeville. The hike to our campsite was 7 miles, so it shouldn't have been to bad. Unfortunately, the first four miles of the hike was straight up the mountain, which had a murderous incline and endless cutbacks. We eventually made it to the top and continued on the rest of the three miles across the ridge line to our campsite. As we started the last leg of our journey, the sky opened up and just drenched us with a downpour. The storms from Hurricane Isaac had finally made their way over the mountains just as we decided that we would backpack through them. So we pressed on, battling the elements, until we arrived at our campsite. What we found was not what we expected. The space was barren, except for a few trees, and contained a tall wooden table and a crumbling brick fire pit. It's pretty much how I expect a apocalyptic wasteland to look like. The torrential downpour decided to relent so we could set up our tents and explore the area. We traveled to the highest point around, about a half mile away, which was supposed to have a lookout tower on top of it. It would have been awesome and the view would have been stunning, had we been able to see five feet in front of us. The entire area had been blanketed with fog. You could hardly even make out the tower through it. I mean it was pretty cool, and kind of Lost-esque, but we felt like we were cheated out of the view. After we returned to camp and decided to settle in for the night, Mother Nature decided she was curse us again with a thunderstorm. So there we were, on top of mountain, in the rain, wind, and lightning, completely soaked in our tents. I don't think I'd ever felt so miserably wet, nor so manly. The hike down and the subsequent lunch at Sonic were made so much sweeter due to the misery we endured on top of that mountain. It was both the greatest, and worst, backpacking trip I've ever been on.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)