The
rock faces that I continued to encounter pushed me further and further away
from the cascade and up the slope of the creek valley. I hated to lose contact
with the cascade because I had visualized myself following it all the way to
its source, but the ridge that I was ascending was too comforting to pass up.
Although I had never been on this particular ridge before, it felt very familiar.
It was steep but not dangerously so. It was heavily wooded so I knew there was
enough soil to support the trees – another sign of manageable terrain. There
would be less rock and more dirt than what I had been crawling on for several
hours. Although I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, I knew there
was an end of the tunnel up ahead.
This
ridge was thick with trees, Mountain Laurel, briers, and other obstructions,
but it was a pleasant relief from the cliffs and cascade. My sissy gene liked
this route better, so I followed the one main rule of hiking up a ridge – when
in doubt, go up. My partners and I had become well acquainted with this rule.
It’s one that never fails, and it didn’t fail me this day. Later on, after we
were all reunited at the top, Greg said that he spent a few minutes sitting
among the bushes, wondering what to do next, when he heard me pushing and
crashing along the ridge less than 100 yards away. He watched me make my way
toward the top. Once again, being a guy of few words, he didn’t say whether
this gave him comfort or more frustration at his own plight.
Keith
and Charlie had apparently crossed a rocky scar at a different place than Greg
did which highlighted how much luck is a part of this process of picking your way
around rocky scars and faces and through mountain laurel thickets. In this kind
of terrain, you tend to hike in ten or twenty foot segments. You don’t usually
have the luxury of looking far ahead and seeing the big picture. You just try
to get from point A to point B, and point B is rarely more than a few yards
away. Only after you arrive at point B can you begin to look for point C.
Sometimes the route you take leads to the end of the tunnel, sometimes it runs
you into another wall. It’s a lot like rolling dice. Sometime you get lucky and
sometimes you don’t. Keith and Charlie managed to find a path of least
resistance that evaded Greg. At one point he was in such tight quarters that he
had to take his pack off and tie a rope to it so he could climb over a rocky
spot and pull his pack up after him. I think that was one of those spots that
he didn’t want to be in. If he has a sissy gene, it was probably causing him to
wonder – like I had – if there really was a path to the top and how much a
search and rescue mission costs, and who pays for it?.
About
an hour after we had split up – yes, it took us about an hour to travel that
final 300 feet – Keith and Charlie reached the top, a mere 100 feet from the
northernmost overlook at the top of the Jumpoff. At about the same time, I
pushed through the bushes at the top of my nameless ridge. As I stood on the
trail at the top, it seemed too small to be the AT or the Boulevard. Could it
actually be the thin trail that runs along the edge of the Jumpoff? After walking
a minute or two, I passed the southernmost overlook of the Jumpoff. Somehow my
ridge had topped out not near the AT as I had expected, but about 200 feet from
the southern end of the Jumpoff.
I
went to the middle of the Jumpoff overlook and yelled for Greg, wondering where he was.
[To be continued]
