This blog had lofty aims – I was to trace my development as a human being, exploring my relationship to nature and the adult world. Now, however, with my second trip report, my true purpose has been revealed to me: to document the extent of my idiocy, demonstrating my apparently complete lack of rational decision-making skills in the hope that some other young foolish person might learn from my mistakes. It’s too late for me, but if you read this, you might be able to save yourself.

This latest trip was to Linville Gorge, otherwise known as the Grand Canyon of the East. To an Arizonan, this probably sounds like the Himalayas of Pennsylvania, but in fact, Linville Gorge is an amazing natural wonder worth much longer than I was able to stay. Here’s a representative picture:

My plan was to hike south down the eastern rim, then north along the river, then south again along the eastern rim back to my car. I’m not going to include maps this time, so if you want to follow along, you’re just going to have to get a trail map.

I began, foolishly, in Virginia Beach, which is an 8 hour drive from the trailhead. 8 hours later (during which I listened to Dracula on audiobook, which is a great way to get the blood pumping while you drive across Eastern North Carolina), I arrived at the Spence Ridge trailhead, eager to go. I practically hopped down the Spence Ridge trail to the Little Table Rock trail; it seemed like it took about 30 seconds. Another 30 seconds after that, I found a campsite on a little knoll near a creek. I wasn’t expecting there to be water in this area, and from my knoll I could see both Hawksbill and Table Rock. It was a lovely campsite, although generally I prefer campsites in which you don’t have to rest halfway between the water source and your sleeping bag.

The next morning I set off to climb Tablerock via the Little Table Rock tail. I slept poorly, and so left before 8, happy to be hiking in the cool, clear morning sunlight through a forest of blooming mountain laurel. Mountain Laurel, I’m convinced, has the most beautiful blossoms of any flower, and as I dragged myself up Tablerock, I tricked myself into stopping for breath by stopping to smell the flowers. I was panting heavily, so I may have inhaled some of the blossoms, but it was lovely.

As I dragged my struggling lungs to the summit, I began to notice a twinge in my left heel. I was wearing new, hardcore leather boots, and I suspected that a blister was in the offing. I resolved to wait until the summit, which was quite close. The twinge rapidly increased in pain, and I remembered the many times I had told Outdoor Education Center participants to report their blisters before they became blisters. I continued to guiltily walk up the mountain as my pain increased. Eventually, when I’d decided that being stupid for no reason was a bad idea, I stopped and inspected my foot. There was a blister, but not a severe one, and I taped it up and continued on my way.

I stopped three more times before the summit, applying successively more drastic treatments on my blister. By the time I reached the incredible views of the peak, I was wearing two socks, a piece of moleskin, a piece of duct tape, and several layers of athletic tape over my heel. It still hurt some, but since I had no further treatment options, I decided that what I had would be sufficient.

I turned south, and began my hike along the East Rim. It was an incredible walk along a spectacular rocky ridge. I clambered over rocks and roots, basking in the brilliant sunshine and swaying in the powerful wind. I climbed rock spires, gazed over magnificent vistas, and all in all had a grand time.

Shortoff Mountain was also a fascinating place in its forests of charred trunks and new-growth saplings. Nearly all of the mountain burned in 2007, and five years in, the forest looks like it burned sometime last week, at least to my untrained eye. There was a profusion of toads, lizards, and cliffs. Particularly interesting was the mountaintop pool, which I believe is the only water source on the mountain.

As I hiked south, the wind began to die, and it began to get very hot. Almost unbearably hot. I still had a liter of water, but I drank it almost continually as I walked, feeling as though I was only keeping even with my sweat. I rounded the southern end of the mountain and began to descend, feeling hotter and hotter. There was no shade anywhere, and I yearned for the river. I passed a couple of climbers with a child and a dog who attempted an insane bushwhack to the bottom of Shortoff’s cliffs. I advised them on how to get back to their car, but I didn’t feel very superior – my water, I knew, was about to run out.

The water ran out. I knew it wasn’t far to the river, less than a mile certainly, and all downhill, but I felt almost drunk as I staggered down the mountain. This was mild hyperthermia, which isn’t dangerous in itself but leads to severe hyperthermia which can kill. Unfortunately, in the absence of wind, water, or shade, my only treatment option was to stop moving, which I felt was even more dangerous than continuing, as I wouldn’t be getting any closer to the river.

I reached the river before the situation became dangerous, and only reluctantly stopped to take off my clothes and boots before diving in. The water was blissfully cool and refreshing for about 4 seconds, which is how long it took the nerve signals from my heel to reach my consciousness. It was one of those sudden pains that cause you to clench your fists and open your eyes more widely than normally do.

I inspected my heel. It was bad. The blister took up almost my entire left heel, and it had lanced itself while walking. Now it was a pocket of skin partially filled with river mud. I cut the skin off with my trauma shears, dried my foot, and applied a dressing. The pain was excruciating. I could barely walk, and I could not put on shoes. Unfortunately, I was just about 10 miles and 2000′ from my car.

This is exactly why you treat blisters before they become blisters – when you don’t, you can, in a word, totally fuck yourself.

I set up camp, and spent the rest of the day drinking water and sleeping. I felt terrible, a result of the dehydration, and I couldn’t eat much. I did, however, make a delicious bean and rice dinner, although while doing so, I managed to get jalapeño juice on my testicles. Fortunately, I am a man’s man, so I was able to bear the pain with a minimum of weeping.

The next day, I knew, was probably not going to be very pleasant. There was a piece of private property between my camp and the trail, and while there was a five mile (or so) hike around the piece of property, I thought it would be quicker, if somewhat difficult, to cut right across. It looks something like this:

My route is red, the private property is yellow and the trail is white. The goal was to hit the white trail at its beginning. This, I thought, would be easy, and would save me hours of hiking. As it turns out, it was one of the most difficult mornings of my entire life.

The cliffs began a few hundred yards from the river, but soon they came right up next to it. There was no trail, of course, and the bushes were overwhelmingly thick. Most of these bushes were poison ivy or briars. Beneath my feet were fallen trees, rocks, and more poison ivy and briars.

The best word for what I traversed, I think, is hell. It took me nearly three hours to hike slightly more than a mile on the eastern side of the river, and by the time I finally gave in to the idiocy of my plan to avoid trespassing prosecution, and crossed the river, exhausted and bleeding profusely, I found the trail in less than a minute. This discovery led me to the conclusion that I had missed the beginning of the trail, making my cliff walking not only the hardest and most dangerous hiking of my entire life, but totally unnecessary. I could have crossed the river at any moment and hiked that same distance on the trail. The rest of the day was a bit of a blur. I was still exhausted (and probably hungover from the diphenhydramine I’d taken the night before to make myself not care about the black flies), and the hiking was lots of ups and downs in one of the most overgrown green tunnels I’d ever hiked in.

By this point I was limping fairly obviously. My heel, now an enormous open sore, had caused me to change the way I walk, giving me all sorts of pains in my left leg and foot from my altered gait. This reaffirmed a fact I first discovered during my abysmal youth soccer career: my left foot has always had a problem getting with the program.

Camp that night was at a little campsite next to the river. I spent a wonderful afternoon swimming in the river and meditating on a sunny rock. My thoughts focused around a species of tiny insect whose M.O. seems to be running around frantically on the edge of rocks in swift moving rivers, occasionally getting swept away, presumably to be eaten by trout or bigger bugs. I had no earthly idea what these bugs were doing; they didn’t seem to be eating, and I couldn’t imagine that their lives are sustained by edible things washing up on the rock. How often could that possibly happen? And why do they let themselves get swept away so often?

I slept well that night, except when a toad hopped across my face. I’d gotten used to ants and other insects crawling on me as a I slept, walked, sat, or did anything in Linville Gorge, but this toad actually hopped down the length of my body on his way to some no doubt very important event. What the hell toad?

My next day was supposed to be an ambitious one, but any more hiking than the bare minimum required to get to my car was obviously impossible given the state of my heel. I was worried that my blister had become infected; though I’d cleaned it often, and frequently replaced my bangages, one can only keep a wound so clean in the woods.

Even the shortest route back to the car was just about five miles. It wasn’t an easy five miles either – as one heads north in Linville Gorge, the gorge continually tightens, shifting from a broad, slow river with flat land on either side to a plummeting mountain rapid squeezed between sheer cliffs. The trail has steep scrambles. At one point I had to clear away a newly fallen tree, and I often had to pause to scout the almost entirely unmarked route.

My biggest concern, however, was crossing the river. Ordinarily, I would have simply walked across the footbridge at the intersection of the Spence Ridge trail, but this had been washed away in the spring, and I was becoming increasingly worried, given the cliffs on either side of the river, that crossing would prove to be prohibitively dangerous.

When I arrived at the out bridge, I saw that the crossing was probably possible, but not easy. I unbuckled my hip belt and sternum strap, and threw my stick across the first bit of stream to a large rock. It bounced off the rock and was promptly swept into the churning rapids, never to be seen again. This seemed to be a bad omen, but my heel was killing me, and I was willing to accept some risk against another 5 miles of hiking. The first three hops were easy, but the fourth and last hop was intimidating. It was broad, within jumping distance, but the landing was uncertain and the river quite strong. If I fell in, it would not be easy to swim to shore safely.

I decided that it wasn’t possible to make it with my pack on, and so I took my pack off and threw it across the gap, nearly tipping myself into the water in the process. Then it was my turn, and I took a mighty leap, landing safely, but painfully, on the other side.

From there it was a short, but excruciating walk back to my truck. I missed my stick, but I was thrilled to have made it out without any serious injury. Linville Gorge is a thrilling, remote, wilderness area – one that I look forward to reencountering when my heel has healed.