Pollywogs!

We FINALLY got around to hiking (some of) the Black Forest Trail.  Ever since I hiked the whole loop with Brian Richardson as a kid in High School, I’ve wanted to go back.  That time, I was young and hearty, lots of exercise with gym class in school, so even considering I smoked Marlboro Reds at the vistas and we got high every couple hours on the hike, I don’t remember it being terribly difficult.  Well, the fourth day it ended up being a bit monotonous (as in, most of the stuff we hiked I couldn’t remember hiking it previously…may have been due to only eating ramen noodles and smoking marijuana for 40 miles OR maybe because of ten years of the trail being used haha!).

The first time, my pack was set for four days and three nights, I owned nothing geared towards lightweight backpacking and my pack weighed 42 pounds.  This time, a much nicer “real” pack, lots of lightweight and small gear, and it was only 25 pounds.  Kelley’s pack weighted 15 pounds, and she had an easy time of it.  Girl is in good shape, I’m quite jealous…

I used this website as a resource for deciding to make this our first Black Forest Trail outing.  I was looking for an overnight to hike with Kelley, and that this made the BFT a loop that started and ended at the same parking lot, in a distance that was (barely) manageable over two days…SOLD AMERICAN!  I added the mile markers from the Black Forest Trail Guidebook to my photos so that you can reference what the camping available at mile 30.89 looks like, for example ;)  I also provided a lot of additional commentary on a photo-by-photo basis, so feel free to flip through them one at a time either along with our after reading this account!

The first day started great, if a little scratchy: we wore shorts…more on that in a bit.  Immediately starting out, we passed four middle aged men walking towards us.  We said good day and one of them quipped “it was almost fun”.  Undaunted, we crossed country to the top of the Callahan Run drainage, wishing I had worn pants due to the blueberry bushes growing over the path scratching at me constantly.  We passed two college kids coming the other direction, they looked fucking delirious from exertion and it was still early in the day!   Seeing a trail register entry that correlated pretty well with them, they may have been from a college in New Orleans and when asked “would you hike the Black Forest Trail again” had entered “Hell no!  Never!  Never!” if I’m remembering correctly.  Anyway, we descended into Callahan Run middle fork and AGAIN wished we had worn pants, as the stinging nettles (or as I like to call them “fucking nettles” or “god damn nettles”) were thick and right up against the path.    Thankfully they only sting and itch for a few minutes…

We ascended out of Callahan Run and along a ridge with a couple vistas, then descended into Naval Run.  Naval Run was nice, but a little damp and cool feeling.  It DID have a huge amount of camp sites though.  The ascent out of Naval Run nearly killed me from heat exhaustion, but once up top I was once again dogged, enjoyed all of the vistas except for the White Birch vista, and we headed down into Little Slate Run.  Near the bottom, the trail headed back up the ridge and I nearly burned the place down with rage.  “What the fuck!”  The last thing I wanted to do was climb higher, but sure enough we had a decent climb back up the ridge, then out and down a pretty steep descent into the actual Little Slate Run valley.  By this time it was nearly 8:30 and I was EXHAUSTED.  My body, which had been holding up reasonably well all day, finally failed, and my left knee tweaked.  Thankfully it waited until we were almost to camp and it didn’t bother me the rest of the night.

We set up camp, ate, relaxed a bit and headed to bed, in reasonably high spirits.  I was just glad to be horizontal.  Kelley couldn’t sleep but once I got used to the noises in the woods I napped reasonably for four or five hours.

The next morning at camp was great, we got up around 6am (actually got up with the sun shining in at 5am, but lounged for a bit) and enjoyed how pretty the area was for a bit.  7:10am in the Little Slate Run valley:

I think we were the last sluggards out of the area around 8:30am (the lower camp sites were occupied so we were lucky to find anything available at all).  Took 440mg of naproxen sodium and a 200mg caffeine tablet, and we ascended out of Little Slate Run.  It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated, and my aches from the night before quickly loosened.  After making it back up to the plateau, we had an easy 10 mile hike back to the car.   Well, it would have been easy but the aches slowly started returning.

I took another 440mg of naproxen sodium, and we continued out through a couple forest roads, the Pine Bog Trail, then the Blackberry Trail, and finally returning to the Black Forest Trail.  We rested for a bit at this juncture, had a bite to eat, and I was really wishing we were back at the car and didn’t have nine more miles to hike.  This sensation only got worse as the afternoon progressed ;)

We passed through a really neat open meadow with bogs and ponds in it, an area that was called the Barrens due to the soil having been destroyed by a forest fire, saw a spooky old pump house and a rattlesnake…and my knee finally gave out with about a mile left to go.  We were descending slightly into Yellow Jacket Hollow and it tweaked three times in a row.  The third tweak, it didn’t come back, and started feeling like someone had stabbed me.  We stopped and rested at a campsite a little down the stream from the trail (a lot of campsites available in this general area, this small side stream on the Baldwin Branch of Young Womans Creek).  Thankfully the rest of the trail was uphill as my knee doesn’t hurt nearly as much going uphill or on level ground as any downhill (no matter how moderate).  We made it back to the parking lot and I was never so glad to hear the sound of automobile traffic in my life.   That said, I can’t wait to get my knee back in shape and hike the northern loop.  Hopefully later this year!!!