Wednesday, June 26, 2019
South Arm Road to Highway 17
13.2 Miles
Well, the four of us weren’t sure
we could do 13.2 miles, but we decided to give it a go since we would be
slackpacking. We started at a little
after seven and finished at 6:15, but we did it.
We made it up old Blue with
little effort, we thought we had it made.
However, the day turned into a very exhausting day mostly because of the
distance. We have not done 13 miles for two years!
The trail was just normal ups and
downs over Bemis mountain, nothing unusual.
Rocks, roots and mud. We climbed
several rung ladders. Wait-up slid down
a small rock descent and bent his pole and scratched his arm. I caught my arm on a small broken off branch
of a tree on the side of the trail and pulled the skin back. Daisy slipped down on a rock-face and skinned
two fingers. Sounds rough, huh?
We neglected to get water at the
last shelter and suffered for it at the end of the day. Daisy forgot her food bag containing hers and
Blue Feather’s snacks, so they had only lunch items, no snacks. We shared a few items with them but by the
end of the day they were in poor spirits especially after she fell.
Trail Magic! About a mile from
the road crossing was a cooler with two cold ginger ales, water and a variety
of sweet snacks. Just what we needed to
get us to the end.
The most grueling section was the
last incline before hitting the road. We
were already exhausted and it was pretty steep.
I was never so happy to get to the top of that incline and go to the
car.
We had a late night since it was
quite late when we finished the trail.
Luckily our shuttle driver from the hostel waited on us, we were quite a
bit later than we expected to be.
