vituperation

January 16, 2005

Many thanks to all who took advantage of the offer in my last entry and contributed money to the Red Cross. Together, we raised $2700.

And now, my hike from yesterday, in pictures.

I started at the bottom of Monte Sano, at the edge of a neighborhood.
Fagan Creek makes me think of Gatlinburg.

The wet fall and winter have made for plenty of greenery on the rocks.

On the aptly named Sinkhole Trail.

Another sinkhole on the Sinkhole Trail.

From Sinkhole, I hit Alms House, where I passed Pulpit Rock.

And then to the Waterline Trail, one of my favorites.
Up, up, up — but not quite to the Heavyside Layer.

Your choice on Waterline is to go up the rocks,
or try to cross them and go up the earth.

Either way, it was wet and muddy yesterday.

Just as Waterline gets fun, some runners training for the
Mountain Mist 50K coming up in the next couple of weeks passed me.
When I asked the guy in yellow if they were practicing for the race,
he told me it felt more like the race was practicing on them.

The best part of Waterline, especially because it was wet.
You have to use the trees to get up this, and the bigger
ones have eyescrews in them if you have rope.
It’s pretty steep.

And once you get up that, you find that the trail
continues to climb.

And then it gets really tough to walk up.
Pretty much this part makes you reel around and
pant rather dramatically.

And here’s the final push up Waterline.
Your legs are begging for a break once you make it up this.

But it’s nice at the top, on the Bluffline Trail.

This section of trail was the whole goal of my hike — I’d never been on it
before. My plan was to take this segment and do Waterline a second time.
Because I’m a freak.

This trail was especially wet, and looked like it didn’t get used a lot.
What sort of person goes on a trail just to do Waterline for fun?

The trail wandered through huge boulders.
When I got to Waterline, I saw that the trail crossed it.
While I knew it would from my map, I made the executive
decision to go ahead and cross over instead of going up Waterline
again, because I was on new trail.

Remember, I have a winter goal: to hike every trail on Monte Sano.

I’m glad I crossed Waterline, because I found some awesome stuff
on the other side (the Annandale Trail).

A stream cascades down the rocks, aiming for the bed below…

Where it joins a second stream.
My wife would most likely yell at me if she knew what I did
to get this shot.

I was trying to zoom on the spill but the camera focused on the branch
in the foreground. I thought it made for a nifty picture.

And then I saw it.

A piece of trail that wasn’t on my map.

Going my favorite direction.

Up.
If you look to the right of the center, you can see a piece
of pink ribbon tape around the sapling there. Those marked this
trail, all the way to the top. It looks easy here, doesn’t it?

Except the trail doesn’t go up that rock bed. It just goes across it.

And up the right side. If you look, you can see another piece of ribbon tape
in the upper right.

This trail made me do something no other trail has: I had to crawl up part of
it because it was so steep and slick.

Truly it was the best part of the day.

At the top, I found that the trail ended in a long green
fence, with a cleared area. For a couple of minutes I was
concerned I’d have to go back down the trail, which I didn’t want
to do. Steep up kicks ass, steep down sucks.

Then I realized there was a road at the end of the fence, and
understood where I was. The road was Monte Sano Boulevard, and the fence
surrounded Burritt Museum. I’d come from the bottom north side of the mountain
to the top south side, almost all the way to Governor’s Drive.

I plodded along the fence to the road, and followed it to the far end
of the Bluffline Trail. I called my wife to tell her I’d be a little longer than
expected.

Near the far end of the Bluffline Trail a mudslide sheared off a section
of the mountain a few years back, and has now been replanted.

The rest of the way back to the car was uneventful, and I went home tired.

And ready to try that bad boy hill again next week. Right now it’s far and away
the best thing I’ve found out there. Next time, I want to try it without doing Waterline
first, to make sure it’s as bad as I think. Waterline might’ve softened me up this time, and
made it seem worse than it was.

And finally, if you’re ever wondering why your bean soup dinner tastes funny…

A bean in the beans.