Went for another hike in the woods this weekend, same crew, Donna & I and Carol & John, but different trail. I took this of the “gang” as they rounded a switchback in front of me. Carol, who doesn’t like to have her picture taken, will be pleased that I snapped this at just the right moment, as she was mostly hidden behind a tree. 🙂
Steven’s Creek is not too far away from the Horn Creek Trail and is another of the trails Donna & I used to mountain bike back when we did the mountain bike thing. As you can see, the morning started foggy and it pretty much stayed that way for the whole hike. This trail is an out and back 5-1/2 miles one way, but no one wanted an 11 mile hike just yet, so we decided to just hike for about an hour, then turn around and came back.
The trail starts out down hill for a while and after maybe 1/2 mile you come to a creek crossing with out a bridge. I was leading at this point and as I stepped down to approach the crossing, I slipped and fell unceremoniously on my butt. Unhurt, except ego-wise, I got up and continued on.
This prompted a story from the first time Donna & I biked this trail. We had had our mountain bikes for a few months and had been going to the previously mentioned Horn Creek Trail, when a fellow Bike Club member asked if we had ever been to Steven’s Creek. We said no and he offered to take us there the next weekend. He was a much more experience off-road cyclists and while he said this trail was more “technical” than the one we had been riding, we would definitely enjoy it. As we came down the hill approaching this stream crossing, our guide was telling us how to navigate the crossing. He told us the real trick was to be in the right gear for the climb out and not to worry about the actual crossing even though it was on rocks covered in running water. He went first and promptly wiped out on the easy approach (just as I did this morning.) He got up quickly and dusted himself off. No damage to the bike and all he got was a few small scrapes. Donna and I walked gingerly across carrying our bikes. On the way back we all dismounted and carried our bike across.
About two miles into our hike today the trail took a different path from what I recalled from the past. There was a new bridge across a stream we used to have to ride through and the trail headed up hill and to the left of the original trail. This new direction had been in use for quite some time as the trail was well worn. When we came to a tee intersection with the original trail it seemed like a nice time to turn around as we had been out for 55 minutes. I suggested that we turn right and follow the old trail back. The old section was getting quite overgrown, but we followed it along fine for about 1/2 mile, but it was slowly disappearing. Finally we had to stop because there just wasn’t anything to follow anymore. We hunted about a bit looking for where we might have missed a turn, but didn’t find anything. We did the wise thing and backtracked to where we came out, so we could follow the real trail back to the cars.