Creek Walking Day

7/5/20

Jerry, Sully, Brandi, Andi, Letti, Renae and me.

We were to meet at Looking Glass Rock overlook at 9 am. On the way past Frying Pan Tower a bear crossed right in front of me. He tried to run up the rock wall and slid down. Then he ran alongside the road till he could climb up. That was cool. I just sat there and watched. 2 bears in one month!

Jerry was scouting this hike for the GHC. He invited us along and to say I was excited is an understatement. It combines 2 of my favorite things, climbing rocks and water.

We walked up to Skinny Dip falls and just got in the creek and started walking. It was a gorgeous river.

We kept walking, rock hopping and climbing up the river. We were all litterly having a blast! I told Jerry this wouldn’t be like the GHC we would take much longer! That’s not because we hike slow, but because we like to play and take pictures. Although, I’ve hike with the GHC and yea we do hike slow compared. 😁

At times in my head I heard “the ants go marchining one by one hurrah.” I took a few pics where we were in varying stages of climb.

After about a mile we came to the base of Yellowstone Falls. It was pretty cool.

From here there was a crazy bushwhack straight up the right side of the falls. it was short but steep. This brought us to the middle level of the falls where we stopped to have lunch.

We took a group photo here. Then crossed to the left and took a sort of tunnel through the rhodo’s. It was pretty cool. It came out above the falls and we jumped back in the river and creek walked. Everyone had hiking poles except me. The creek walk was a little hard without poles because unlike the first half these rocks were slick.

I finally had to find a stick to use. The rocks above the falls were small rocks below huge boulders.

We followed this up to the base of Second Falls at Graveyard Fields. The minute we got close we could tell because of the amount of people around. A couple of us stopped short of the crowd. I was the first to go straight to the falls. I dropped my pack, asked a girl how deep it was and jumped in! OMG it was sooooo cold! It was deep too. As we walked upstream I would not say the water was cold but now? This water was cold. Andi arrived and didn’t hesitate to jump in with me. Then Lettie arrived and jumped in too.

After a bit everyone changed their shoes except me. I brought a change but didn’t. We were trail walking now. We hiked up towards Upper falls and now that Jerry was on dry land he was hauling ass! We had done 3 miles in the river and I was getting tired. I exerted all my energy and excitement on the way up. 🤣🤣

We got to upper falls and crossed it. We took a small trail-ish up up up till we came to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I must say we were doing a little whining about now. Jerry and Cathy were out front and was still going fast!

We crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had no idea there was a trail that paralleled the parkway all the way back past Graveyard Fields. It was an nice easy trail with but had only a few views.

Then at some point we went across the parkway and walked the rest of the way back to Skinny Dip falls. It was almost all downhill. The hike was about 8 miles.

We had a great group and I really enjoyed this hike. I have to figure out how to contain my excitement and save some energy for later because I was done way before the hike was!