This promises to be a tough day. We had a tough slog through overgrown vegetation a week ago, but that was just a half mile or less. I fear this one will go on all day. I hope I haven't built it up too badly and psyched myself out.
As we descend Harrington Mountain, the trail vanishes, and the brush closes in. We slowly pick our way down, but it really is not that bad, not as bad as the last couple of miles last night. I'm glad we got those out of the way yesterday. Next, we start the climb up Baldy Peak, which is pretty much straight up. The trail is horrible, just steep. We take a break at the top, munching Fran's homemade peanut butter cookies. So far so good.
After Baldy Peak, the trail deteriorated. The brush closed in and swallowed up the trail. Michael had recently flagged a route through the brush, tying flagging tape to the top of the brush every ten feet or so. Our task was then to climb up some brush branches to get a view of the next flagging tape, drop back into the dense brush and push forward toward the tape. Once we found the tape, then we would climb up again and spot the next flagging tape, and repeat the process.
The trail was completely insane. I added new rips in my skin and pack. We shoved, pulled, pushed and forced our way through the vegetation. If we were just five feet apart, we couldn't see each other. We barely made any progress. As WILDCAT says, "and then it got worse." We just kept on pushing through.
Eventually, the brush thinned out, though the trail was still invisible until we were near the Gunbarrel Slide. At the bottom, we took a nice break at Harrington Creek, cleaned up and cooked dinner. We talked about what a crazy trail this is, and how insane it is to hike. Who would we recommend this to? Not very many. Yet we both are loving it. Maybe it is not just the trail that is crazy.
With just seven miles for the day, we decide to hike some evening miles and head down the South Fork Smith River Trail. But as always, to go down, you must go up. We take switchbacks up and down, and up again.
The trail gets fainter and fainter. We expected simple trail after Gunbarrel Slide, but we underestimated The Bigfoot Trail again as it became overgrown and strewn with the downfall. As it hung to a cliff, it became narrower and more difficult. Once again, "and then it got worse." It didn't feel right. I flipped on my GPS and discovered that we had missed a turn - we were on the old, abandoned trail and a new one had taken a switchback up higher. But we were almost halfway through, so going back or forward were about equidistant, and either was likely to take a long time. We continued on, but the trail got worse. Eventually, we reached a stretch just a few inches wide at the top of a cliff a few hundred feet down. That was too dangerous. We reassessed, turned around, and slowly backed our way out.
We finally returned to the missed turn and discovered why. A tree had fallen over the new route right where it turned up the hill, obscuring the switchback. I broke off some of the branches to clear the new trail a little and piled it on the old path. It was still not great, but maybe the next hiker is less likely to get in trouble.
We hiked for a few more miles and found a flat spot to pitch my tent. The mosquitoes again are bad. WILDCAT has permethrin treated clothing that works well with moderate mosquito populations, but these are pretty thick. His tarp won't shield mosquitoes, so I've been offering him to join inside my tarptent the past few nights. Tonight he accepts the offer. The evening is hot, and our two bodies are both radiating lots of heat. It takes a few hours before it cools down enough for good sleep, but at least the mosquitoes are kept at bay.
10 miles to South Fork Smith River, to mile 323.
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