Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Sugar Fingers (Part 4 of 4)




On our July hike up the largest of the Sugar Fingers on Sugarland Mountain, Greg Harrell stayed ahead of me, as he usually does, but not too far ahead because he knew that I was really struggling, possibly because he may have heard a little whining from me at some point during the day. Sometimes he was close enough that I didn’t even have to think about what route to take up and over the cliffs and outcrops. I’d just follow his route. Other times, he was far enough ahead that I didn’t know what route he had taken, which was fine. Blazing one’s own path is a fun part of these sorts of trips, if you don’t allow yourself to get spooked by the uncertainty of the challenge. This was one of those trips in which you couldn’t possibly get lost, but you could run into a dead-end every now and then by scrambling up a steep rock face maybe ten or fifteen feet high, only to realize that you can’t finish the last ten feet due to lack of handholds and footholds. You also can’t go easily back down because you can’t see the footholds that you used on your way up. In those moments, you aren’t stuck between a rock and a hard place; you are stuck between a rock and open air… which is just as bad, or maybe worse. It should go without saying that we try to avoid such places. It should also go without saying that those places can’t always be avoided.



This trip was also an adventure because this was all new territory. For the last two or three years, most of my off-trail hiking had been on old, favorite routes – Drinkwater Pool, Trout Branch, Styx Branch, Cat Stairs. Some of these routes are ones that we discovered and created from scratch. Others were old routes from previous generations that were passed on to us, like a torch, which we would pass on to others. I love those standard, familiar trips, but it was good to experience the excitement and uncertainty of terra incognita again, helping to create new paths out of thin air, rock, and dirt.



At the end of our nine-hour day we looked like a couple of coal miners at the end of a long day underground, or maybe chimney sweeps emerging from the fireplace… plus an acre of waist-deep stinging nettle at the end of the trip. My day was miserable. I vowed never to hike again. But now that a few days have passed and it appears that I may live, I’m reconsidering my vow. I may be getting too old for this stuff, but I’ll probably revisit a few of the other Sugar Fingers this fall, when temperatures are friendlier, and I have less grass to cut, and the yellow jackets have died the slow, lingering death they deserve.



And if I find that I’m too old or tired or beaten up to hike up from the valley again, my ace in the hole will be that all these ridges are also accessible from the top, from the Sugarland Mountain trail. I’m sure there are no worn paths yet because this is all too new. But a few hardy souls may find the spots where these side ribs meet the spine, and they’ll wander down as far as their sense of adventure will allow. And maybe I’ll be one of them. Or maybe you.