Buck Mountain Loop

On Sunday Berniece, The Girl and I decided to go for a hike.  We haven't been out for a while and we usually go up to Silver Falls about this time of year.  I love Silver Falls.  It's where the Brown eyed Man and I got married.  That's beside the point though because we changed our mind and decided to go to Shellburg Falls. 

So off we go.  For some reason, rather than looking at directions, we decided to listen to The Girl who got half-assed directions from The Boy.  So instead of getting to Shellburg Falls, we found ourselves at the end of a logging road and decided to just walk from there.

It's been a little stormy lately so there were a lot of downed trees to climb over and under.  No biggee.  Clover flew through them.  We made our way through and sometimes around.  After a while we came to another trail and realized we could walk the Blair Witch Project Buck Mountain Loop.  It's 6.4 miles.  Not a bad day hike. 

I started to become worried when we seemed to be doing a lot of downhill.  Not that I have a problem with that but since we're doing a loop, we need to make up that elevation at some point.  Clover didn't mind. 

I would like to pause here and have you look at Berniece's butt.  She is suffering under the delusion that she needs to lose 20 lbs. and I think she's wrong.

So we walk and we talk.  It's great therapy for all of us.  I think The Girl gets to say a lot of things she doesn't normally discuss.  We're safe to talk to and she's comfortable sharing whatever seems to be bothering her.  Usually we end up somewhere around her mother.  The pain of what he mother did, the lies before and after, the lack of responsibility she's shown, the complete denial.  It's amazing that a 19 year old girl can be so mature.  We always told the kids that you can learn from anyone you meet.  Some good examples and some bad.  She learned quite a bit from her mother.  Mostly how to not be like her.

 It was so muddy.  There were a few times that I sunk to my ankle in mud. Just an FYI here, hiking in mud adds a little to the experience.  You slip uphill, you slip downhill, you splash mud up to your thighs and even up the middle of your back. Note The Girl's pant legs and butt.

We saw burls, moss, beautiful trees, and green carpets of vegetation.  We live in such a beautiful area. 

At about our 4th mile, the trail started going up hill.  I lagged.

We started to get back up into the snow so I knew we weren't too far from the end of the loop.  Wrong.  We still had at least another mile.  No biggee.

At mile 6.4, we walked right past our trail and kept walking for another 1/2 mile before we realized we had seen this place before.  Ugh.  That last 1/2 mile was downhill.  Now we had to go back up.  We were no longer bounding over and under the fallen trees.  We were rolling over them and crawling under them on hands and knees.  We made it back to the other trail and found we had more than one choice.  Which one was it?  the right or the left?  The Girl went one way, Berniece and Clover went another.  I stayed in the middle and waited...and waited...and waited...and started thinking about the Blair Witch Project, how you should never separate, how the Brown eyed Man was going to be worried that we were late, that my knee was starting to hurt, that my cell phone didn't get any reception, that it was freaking cold, the I had hand warmers in the car...Then the Girl came back.  That wasn't the right trail.  So, we set off down the way Berniece went.  We walked and walked and walked and I started wondering where she could be.  Mild panic again.  Finally we saw Clover and then Berniece!  Yay! Plus we saw our own tracks from the trip in.  Yay!  Another mile or so and we were back at the car. 6.4 miles had turned into 8.5 miles and we were frozen. 

I'm still sore today.  I'm glad we did it.  I feel stupid about missing the trail.  We weren't in any real danger so we had a little adventure and lived to tell about it.

j