My Wildest Adventure Yet?

This past weekend I had the interesting adventure of basically roughing it all the way down the side of a mountain. I went with some friends of ours, though I was the only one from my family on the trip. I must say it was very fun and fulfilling in a way. While it may not be the absolute craziest thing I've done, it was probably one of the more ambitious adventures I have taken on.

We started at the trail junction of the Appalachian trail on Richard Russel Scenic Highway. There may be more than one of those but unfortunately the name of it is failing me right now. Either way, it's the one closest to Helen. We went up the trail to Cow rick, like normal hikers, which I have done several times, but that it where the real adventure started. We knew the trail going from that junction over to the old Kellum Valley toll road went straight down through the valley below Cow Rock, so we figured, we'll just go straight down the mountain and run into it, which is exactly what we did.

Te main challenge of the excursion was finding the smoothest route down and getting through all of the various foliage. There were definitely some slick spots along the path down as well. There were several rock faces on the mountain, most of the minor, but there was one humongous rock face that were luck to have hit on the side of. We would not have been able to get down if we had hit somewhere in the middle without making some serious side-tracking. We continued on down the side all the way till we hit a tributary to the creek that paralleled the trail we were looking for. We followed that tributary all the way to the main creek and then most of us went right all the way to the toll road, while two went the other way back up to the road to fetch the car. The plan was for us to be picked up somewhere along the way but we just about got back to the cabins before the vehicle could get back around to the other side.

It was not a multi-day excursion or one of the great adventures of the Appalachian Trail, but it was certainly a great outing that even further helped me appreciate the beauty of nature. I may elaborate on this some more later but I have some AP reading that is pressing my attention.