Trip Report Part 2

Saturday Morning:

I got up before first light and began to pack up inside my tent as I had crap sprawled out everywhere in hopes to dry some things with no luck. I packed things wet. Outside the tent, others had already gotten up as early risers. The stars were out. It would prove to be a nice sunny day for us. I ate a granola bar for breakfast that REALLY sucked and that I will never buy that brand ever again in my life, finished packing up and hit the trail before anyone else. I stopped at a near by stream to pump water before continuing on. The trail this morning was very tricky to find. You would be on it one moment and not on it the next. Blazes were few and far between with lots of downed trees, broken marks, and lots of game trails criss crossing the hiking trail. I had to do a LOT of backtracking. The trail was not especially steep, but it was difficult footing none the less, that wore me out after a while. The footing was made more treacherous by all the leaves hiding things that wanted you to break an ankle and everything was slick. It was interesting the different things the trail took me through. Sometimes it went through these relatively flat areas where I could go into cruise mode, sometimes, there was lumpy ground, with large puddles to trudge through and lots of downed trees, other times it was strait up hills or down them, along ridges, and along rocky bluffs with views, where I ran into a couple members of our missing group, Hubcap and Chinmusic with his most awesome trail dog Mugsy. One place the trail turned into a very rocky section, and climbed over the bottom of what looked like a rock slide area. The rocks were loose and this is where I tweaked my right knee and fell pretty good. Here i had to sit a while to let the shock of that go away and to wrap my quickly swelling and bruised knee with an ace bandage. I took some pills, some pictures of the crime scene, and forced my way on. It was just shortly after this in a wooded semi flat area that I paused for a moment that a couple of our group caught up to me. Dhutch stopped for a smoke and I took the time to take my pack off and guzzle water. They hurried on and I started again soon after. More and more group members passed me up as I was going a snails pace now, it had to be less then a mile per hour it seemed like.
The trail returned to nice views, crossed a couple streams that I was hoping would be Gleason Falls where everyone had talked about stopping for lunch. No one was stopped there so I continued on until afternoon. Really dragging, I stopped to try to eat something and forced down some dried berries, a piece of cheese and part of a tortilla. It helped some, but I still was going a snails pace. I finally came to a bigger stream and saw most of the group there, either filtering water or exploring the side trail to the falls. I SO wanted to see the falls, I'd been looking forward to them all day but as I dropped my pack to filter water I knew I did not have it in me to use the extra energy it would take to walk up there and back with the way my knee was feeling. At this point I had quit having fun and I wanted only to get to camp. It couldn't be much farther NOW, I said to myself. A few more miles at best....
Those last few miles seemed like hundreds of miles. Hill after hill of poorly marked trail and backtracking. Everyone was way ahead again until I came down a steep hill and saw them crossing a road bellow to a clear cutting area. I called to them bellow and Randall answered, he was drawing an arrow in the road to direct everyone the right way through. I hurried down the slick hill falling only once to catch up to a few at a stream filtering at the bottom of the hill. I followed with then through the clear cut which nearly killed me as I could not bend my leg and climb over the trees very well. I held off cursing a lot, and just gritted my teeth as Jimmy waited for everyone to get through. This last part was what really did me in that day. I knew then I would likely not make it to camp as they all hurried ahead again. I kept lying to myself to keep me going. I'll stop at 4:30 and find a spot, I lied. I'll stop at 5. I'll stop at 5:30 unless I smell camp fire. It's just one more hill.... I could go no farther and it was getting close to sunset so I found a rare but tiny flat spot that was mossy and looked comfortable enough, sheltered from wind. As I pulled out my tent, I realized I was on solid rock under that cozy looking moss. A solid mass, that would hold no stake. I dragged my tent further back butting in between two trees where I could at least get a few stakes in. At this point I didn't care any more. I threw everything inside, changed into dry clothes, tried to eat but barely got anything down again and guzzled more water. It was almost dark when JimmySan showed up at my meager camp. He offered to carry my stuff for me to camp, to convince me to join the group telling me it was .9 trail miles according to his GPS over a stream and a couple hills. I just couldn't, besides, no body carries my gear but me. Could you imagine the grief I would get from Trail Talkers if I allowed anyone else to carry my gear? No way! So Jim went on his way after I told him I'd get off the trail in the morning with Mataharihiker and Dhutch and planned to get an early start to not keep them waiting for me.
It was a warm night, at least and I was comfortable so long as I kept my legs propped high on my pack all night. At one point I heard an animal scream, then coyotes yipping right outside the tent. Soon after some kind of bird started 'laughing' and sounded almost like a hysterical woman. The pills for the pain made me nauseous so about 4 am I had enough, packed up and set out to make it to the real camp.