Since 2006 I’ve kept track of my barefoot hikes (and this keeps track of only those hikes in which I’ve been truly barefoot). During yesterday’s hike at Cantwell Cliffs, that accounting went over 2000 miles.
I know I don’t put on mileage like barefoot runners, but this is what I do. I don’t get out as much as I’d like, but it’s still something. (It’s also not like I can really just walk out my door—it usually takes a 30-60 minute drive to get to a decent hiking location.)
But I have hiked barefoot all over. The hikes include the South Dakota Badlands (gumbo), Yellowstone (Hoodoos), the Grand Canyon, Chaco Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce National Park, and myriads of locations around Ohio. The 2000 miles doesn’t include all the barefoot hiking I did before I started recording it, including Florida and the Shenandoah mountains. (I’d guess I did at least a 1000 miles barefoot before I started recording it.)
Anyways, yesterday I went to Cantwell Cliffs, where I’ve been exploring the state forest at the north end. I actually haven’t written about some of those hikes because I was traveling light and didn’t bring my camera. But I did bring a camera yesterday.
We’ve had a lot of rain here lately, to the point where people have had to be evacuated from some parts of neighboring counties. When I arrived at Cantwell Cliffs I heard the mother of all waterfalls going on.
However, when I approached one of the overhangs, it was just drippy. Drippier than normal, but no massive waterfall. I kept going and the noise got louder. Finally, I decided to look over a hill to see what was going on.
First, note that while I had a camera, it wasn’t my good one. This camera is better than a cell phone, but not by much, I guess.
That picture is at either a gas well, or a pipeline access point, and what you see in the middle there is a tremendous venting of gas. I don’t think it was a blow-out, since there were trucks there monitoring it. It also didn’t smell of natural gas, so maybe they were cleaning or inspecting this. But it sure pierced the ears.
A little farther down the trail I met a good omen for the hike.
That’s a black rat snake. There are a lot of these in Ohio. They are nicely non-venomous and I always like it when I come across one (and it’s been a while, for some reason).
I then passed over into the state forest. This was pure bushwhacking territory.
Indian pipe was growing everywhere.
(Again, crummy camera—in dim light; it took way to long to take the picture.)
The last time I was down in this gorge, I got lost. Not lostlost, but just lost. The first time there was last April, and there wasn’t much vegetation, so I was able to see the gorges and cliff faces pretty easily. When I was there in mid-June, I took a route that had me cross a creek and then head up the other side to a cliff-face and follow that cliff-face. So there were easy markers to keep me on track.
The trouble with that mid-June bushwhack was that it had me on the north side of the gorge, which means it was south-facing. And south-facing meant a lot of green brier, which is hell to bushwhack through. There was also a fair bit of stinging nettle on the north side of the creek, and I think I hate that even more than green briers.
So when I got lost last week, I was trying to get to a particular point via a less-than-ideal route on the south side of the creek, by keeping track of side valleys. That’s somewhat difficult when you cannot see very far.
It’s always interesting when you realize that you are lost, that is, you are not where you think you are. You’re moving along thinking you do know where you are, and suddenly the terrain does not match up at all.
Oh, and did I mention that I didn’t have a map? I went down there with a map, but it was so humid and wet that the map soaked it all up and the printing rather quickly ran.
So I pushed on. I knew generally which way to go to get back, even if I didn’t have a clue which particular gorge I was in (or next to).
Let me also mention panic. The survival shows talk about how panic can ruin things and how you really have to keep it under control. The funny thing is, I felt panic. I found myself pushing ahead, trying to go faster than I should have, wanting to get back to a familiar place quickly. I also got a few thorns in the process because I was going too fast for conditions and not watching carefully enough.
The thorns were actually a good reminder that I was pushing too hard. I had to stop to get them out and that’s when I realized what my brain was doing to me. From then on I knew to keep an eye out for panic.
Let me also mention lostlost again. I was trying to get back by going more-or-less directly, just on generally ideas of the area. If I was really lostlost (not just lost), I would have employed a different strategy, following streams downhill to make my way out. So I was never in any real danger of truly getting lost. (And this is Ohio, after all.)
I did eventually hit a road about where I expected it (heck, I could hear the cars on it) and rejoined a main trail. I was even, after-the-fact, able to figure out where I’d been (just now what I’d misread to get there).
Anyways, back to yesterday’s hike there.
This time I wanted to try again. This time I tried to keep better track. I stayed down near the creek. In fact, after a while, I actually walked in the creek. There was just too many stinging nettles elsewhere down there.
Of course, bare feet are perfect for creek-walking.
I kept pushing up-creek and at one small fork, took a closer look around.
And then suddenly recognized a rock. This rock. (Picture from last April.)
Oh, crap. I wasn’t where I thought I was at all. (I thought I was in a gorge north of this one.) I’d missed, yet again, the access to the more northern gorge and taken a wrong turn.
On this map from last April, I recognized that I was at point “E”.
Hey, but at least I knew exactly where I was, and could figure out where I wanted to go from there. I decided to take the opportunity to explore the recess cave at Point “G” again, but this time see if I could get there, not from high up, but by staying in the creek.
Along the way there was another small recess cave, to the west of Point “F”.
Yes, I was able to stay in the creek bed and get into the Point “G” recess cave. As a reminder, this is what I saw from the top back in April.
And this is what was in there.
(Again, it was so dim in there the crummy camera took way too long to take the shot, so you can see camera motion. Next time I’m there, it’ll be with my good camera).
So, from there I was able to plot my way back out again. Here’s a map showing my misadventures.
The blue marks where I went in mid-June. In my subsequent hikes I was trying to get to that unvisited gorge to the west there. However, red marks what I did last week. You can see how I crossed the creek at one point and then lost track of exactly where I was. The orange shows where I was yesterday. (The reason I can make this map so accurate is that, after I emerge, I know where I’ve emerged and can backtrack in my mind where I must have been.)
(By the way, if I were a surveyor really trying to get it right, I’d stay down there, and traverse back and forth. But I was just there to have a nice hike, and keep progressing. In most ways, one hike is as good as another.)
I think I know what I’ve been doing wrong. Next time I’ll get it right.
For sure. 🙂
Well done 🙂
Hi Bob, Where in Florida have you hiked? And how do you read those maps, cuz I can’t make heads or tails of them. They just look like a bunch of squiggly lines too me? 🙂
Ward, each line shows a constant elevation. If they were painted on the ground and you followed them, you’d go neither up nor down. Thus, when you cross them, you ARE going up or down, and from the map you can tell which because streams (lower and lower) end up meeting. Also, as a corollary, the closer the lines are together, the steeper (so those really brown areas are cliffs).
I haven’t done a lot of hiking in Florida, but I’ve done DeSoto National Park near Bradenton, some place near Ocala, and (maybe) Wakulla Springs near Tallahassee. (After my father died I went with my mother on an Audobon tour.)
Thanks for the reply, I can understand them better.
I may go to Orlando sometime in August and on my way back I may stop at the Highland Hammocks State Park, which is off of US 27 near Sebring. I saw pics of the park and it looks like a great place to walk around barefoot. I don’t know yet if I will go because during that time, it will still be summer and the place may be crawling with lots of mosquitos. It would be great to go to a lot of these state parks and just explore them in my barefeet.