Spring Camping in the Sipsey Wilderness

I had listened to the weatherman talking about some possible storms for the weekend, so I thought, "What a great time to get into the woods!" Seriously ... I know some would think that is absolutely the best time to stay home, but I'm a little strange that way. The storms weren't due for until the next day, so that would give me a day to get to a bluff or a cliff overhang of some kind and be able to stay dry. Besides, some of the wildflowers would be blooming, so I really needed to get my lens to the woods to capture some of that wild beauty.

Since the next morning was supposed to be sunny and cool, but the rain was supposed to move in the next afternoon, I had the great idea to wait until my wife got home from work, tell her goodbye, and head to the woods for a night time hike-in. 

For some strange reason, when I know the trails I'll be hiking and I know in the general area I'll be setting up camp, I love to hike in at night. There is an added mystery to the woods hiking at night. A night hiker has to pick his/her steps a little more carefully, listen to the night sounds a little harder, and feel the comfort of what he/she cannot see in the surrounding woods. There are feral pigs, coyotes, a few deer, a turkey or two, and of course, opossums, armadillos, and always the sounds of owls declaring their hunting territories. I think the experiences and mysteries of the woods are illuminated by hiking at night.


So, I left the house about 6:00 PM or so and arrived at the trailheads of FT 208 and FT 206 about 9-ish ... a perfect time to begin a trek into the Sipsey Wilderness. I needed a base camp and knew of a little bluff down the trail that would give me some shelter if the rains moved in the next night, so I headed that way. I stopped a couple of times along the trail and turned off my headlamp to marvel at the beauty of the forest at night. It's amazing how some of the landmarks that are so familiar during the day look entirely different at night. I found my landmarks and after negotiating a creek crossing or two, arrived at the bluff which would be my home for the next three nights.


I contemplated building a small fire in a fire-ring, but decided to spend my time setting up my camp. I pitched my MSR Hubba-hubba and thought about not putting on the fly so I could see the moon and stars which were glorious. However, since the late night weather was a little iffy, I decided just to put on the fly and roll back the vestibules. I love to lie in the mesh tent on a crisp, clear night when I can see the sky. One of the great things about my trips into the Sipsey Wilderness with its steep walled canyons is that I can usually find a bluff large enough to sit under and cook. I have no problem pitching my tent out in the rain, but I prefer not to have to arrange some type of shelter under which to cook, or, even worse, to cook under the vestibule of my tent. Thus, I usually have in mind a bluff or two I can get to for a base camp. I can think of seven or eight bluff overhangs where one can seek shelter from a storm. I'm sure there are many more.

It didn't take me long to snug my down bag around me and fall asleep. I had on some new down socks I'd just purchased, so my toes were warm. I had on my little fleece hoody, so my ears were warm. And I had on my favorite Buff, so my head was warm. The sounds of the nearby creek were my "white noise," and I knew I'd sleep soundly. I'm sure I had a smile on my face when my eyes closed for the night.

The next morning I awoke with the sun shining on my tent. It had been after midnight when I'd finally crawled in my tent, so I slept later than I usually sleep back in the world. It was crisp and sunny and an ear worm of Willie Nelson's "Good morning, America, how are you?" boiled out of my brain as I looked at the woods for the first time in the daylight. Good grief, it was all green. (Well, duh! I had last camped before anything had leafed out, so the spring colors were new to me there.) The woods look so luscious in the spring when I've been camping all winter with bare trees. 

Ah, camp coffee on a beautiful morning. Does it get any better?. I quickly fired up my Soto Regulator stove and had water boiling quickly. After savoring half a cup of Via I pulled out a breakfast of eggs, ham, and various peppers. When I opened my little cook kit box, I was shocked to see that my spoon was broken. Granted it was a 15-year old polycarbonate that had seen a lot of trips and scooped a lot of meals, but I still had never thought about it breaking (unless I stepped on it or something). I always thought that polycarbonate stuff was virtually unbreakable. Anyway, I struggled to eat my breakfast holding the fat part of my spoon with the tip of my thumb and forefinger and knew that I didn't want to eat like that the next three days. Something had to be done ...

My cooking area under the bluff

Okay, so I had to be my own MacGyver and make a spoon from something I had available. After looking around at my stuff, I decided to take my hiking water bottle--actually a 20-oz green tea bottle that I carry on my pack strap--and cut it to make a spoon. I really didn't want to tear up something that would cost me to replace, and I had several other bottles back in my camping gear tub. I cut and I trimmed and I tried it out. I trimmed again and tried it again. Finally--tah-dah, I had something that would work to eat the remainder of my meals without dumping most of it on my old grey beard. It wasn't beautiful, but it would work to shovel some food into this old mouth.

My MacGyvered spoon

After breakfast I decided to take a wee walk in the beautiful sunny and clear morning. A few wildflowers were blooming along the trail, though I had already waited too late to catch the flame azaleas. The mayapples were not yet blooming nor were the trilliums. I don't know the names of many of the wildflowers, but I do love to look at them. I guess I should get a Wildflowers of Northern Alabama book and take it to the Wilderness with me, but that may be too much information for my old brain.

Afternoon brought increasing clouds and I thought the rains were on their way. However, it sprinkled for about ten minutes, then stopped. I spent most of the afternoon trying to pull some dry wood up under the end of the overhang so I could have enough for my evening fire. I don't have to have a fire, but I do love one when I can build one. 

For the evening meal I pulled out my WhiteBox alcohol stove and decided to heat my supper water with it. I hope to section hike on the AT in a couple of months and I'm still trying to decide whether to take my Soto Regulator and a couple of canisters or my WhiteBox stove and a bottle of alcohol. So, for base-camping when I only hike in a couple of miles, I'm hauling in both to play with. I have a 1.5L MSR Titan titanium pot in which I boil, and I eat in the nestled 1.0L titanium pot. It works out well, but I can't decide on which stove I like best. I have figured out that the alcohol stove takes just under two oz of fuel to bring the l.5L to a complete boil (in warmer weather), so I can figure out how much alcohol to take for the number of meals I have to prepare. The 1.5L is a lot of water, but I have enough for a freeze dried meal, a hot cup of tea/coffee, and enough to rinse my eating pot. I've also figured out that one small canister of fuel will produce a boil six times for my 1.5L pot (in warm weather). I am NOT going to carry both on my section hike, but I have yet to decide which to carry.


That night the temperature was considerably warmer, so I wouldn't need quite so many layers in which to sleep; but the warmer weather portended of things to come. After I fell asleep I was awakened by someone shining a flashlight into my tent ... wait ... no, it was not a flashlight. I was awakened by the sounds of a foraging feral pig about 20 yards from my tent, but sounded as if he was chomping on the rain cover on my pack. I was  pretty sure he didn't have a flashlight, and, after yelling at him to get away from my stuff, I realized that the light was actually lightening coming in from the west. The lightening got closer and the thunder rolled up and down the canyons of the Sipsey Wilderness. I lay there and watched and listened to about 45 minutes of lightening and thunder followed by a brief shower ... and then it was done. The next morning I could tell that it had not rained long, but the completely overcast sky told me that the rainy weather was probably not over.

I cooked oatmeal that morning and ate with my new spoon. After scraping the corners of my mouth for the tenth time, I decided to trim the spoon down a little more. I had trimmed it the night before, but had not quite gotten it where I wanted it.

I took a couple of hikes that morning and afternoon, but didn't get too far from my camp expecting the rains to begin at any time. I camp a lot and always read the forecasts before I hit the woods, but because predicting the weather is not an exact science, I've tried to learn to read the weather better, but I don't seem to be having a very good record. I would have taken bets that it was going to rain several times that day--and it did sprinkle a little--but the storm that I had thought was going to come in never came through.

Dinner that evening was country music on the iPod, chicken fajita wraps with some fresh jalapeños, some good Tillamook Extra Sharp Cheddar, and some strong lemon zest tea ... and, at a break in the music, I sang the Jalapeño Chorus, thanks to Handel's composition which I once sung, and I could almost heart the harmony part. Fortunately, no one was around to hear it, but I may have served to scare the pigs away. I wished I had had something sweet for desert, but I hadn't planned well for needing sweet after a Mexican dish. I had also wished for an adult beverage, but because the Sipsey Wilderness is within the Bankhead National Forest where they frown harshly on such things, I didn't pack that in ... however, I could almost imagine the taste of a margarita or a glass of sangria. Too bad they don't make exceptions for old men camping by themselves ... what could it hurt?

It was really muggy during the night and I woke up to a couple of long rolls of thunder up the river canyon. It rained sometime during the night but was not raining when I woke up. After a breakfast of Four-Cheese Potatoes with lots of jalapeño bacon bits, I started to gather things together and pack up for the trip out. Just as I was struggling to get my tent fly folded the sky opened and the flood began--just in time for the hike out ... well, that's spring camping in most of the country.

I got my gear packed up and thought about sitting under the bluff for a while to see if the storm would blow over. The thunder and lightening had started up again in earnest and I was a little concerned about using my trekking poles on the hike out. Oh, well, I thought to myself, the Sipsey Wilderness isn't the worst place I could think of to get zapped ... not that I was hoping to turn in to a crispy critter that day, but figured the lightening was more likely to hit one of the hundred thousand oaks, hickories, magnolias, or pines which were way above my head, so I headed out to my car. It rained most of the way and as most backpackers know, when it rains while you're hiking you're either going to get wet from the outside or from the inside, if not both. Fortunately, I had brought dry clothes into which to change and drive back. Once on the way out when the rains let up a little, I pushed the hood on my jacket back and looked back on the forest behind me and thought, Wow! God really did well in dressing up this forest! Its beauty almost takes my breath away.

It's probably all my fault ...

The first time I took my son, Jeff, on a campout he was barely old enough to sit up. He and I went car camping at Rocky Springs on the Natchez Trace. It was just us guys ... and I know he was only barely old enough to sit up because while I was putting up our pup tent, he didn't sit up. In fact, even though I had sat him safely in the middle of the picnic table while I put up the tent and when I turned around he wasn't on the table any more. He was on the ground in the gravel and dirt. Oops!

As I remember--and it was probably 35 years ago--he didn't cry or scream or whimper; in fact, he made no sound at all. (I like to think that he landed on his hard head, so it didn't hurt him.) And I was glad his mother wasn't with us to scold me for being so careless ... So, it's probably all my fault that he's the way he is now ...

Sometime about that time, we put him in a backpack and hiked through Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. I figure when they turned out the lights and we stood there in the pitch dark, the trauma of the darkness probably worked on his young head. And in the winter we used to hike in the Smokies with him in the backpack. Maybe the cold got to him when we'd put him in the creek.

A couple of years later, his mother and I decided to take him on an overnight canoe trip on the Strong River from D'Lo to where the Strong runs into the Pearl River. We stopped at a sandbar that afternoon and scrambled up the side of the hill from the river to find a place to set up our tent. I think we cooked and ate down on the sandbar, but that night--his first campout in the woods--he "heard a bear" during the night. Of course, there weren't any bears in south-central Mississippi--probably an armadillo--but he was convinced that a bear had walked by our tent. I know he slept, because I was awake off and on during the night listening to the sounds of the woods and the river flowing below us.

The next morning we loaded the canoe and headed on down the river. We came to a section of riffles (there really aren't any navigable rapids in Mississippi) and I saw an inner-tube that had washed up on the side of the riffles. I asked Jeff if he'd like to ride the rapids on the inner-tube and he said he would, although his mother wasn't sure it was such a good idea. We got out of the canoe at the top of the riffles and got the inner-tube and read the river to see how he would float. Then I scrambled down to the bottom of the riffles so I could catch him when he came floating down to me. I signaled to my wife to turn him loose and all was going well until his inner-tube went left when I had thought it would go right. He quickly caught the current and went to the opposite side of the river from where I was standing. Did I swim after him? No! I just stood there with my mouth open wondering why I had mis-read the river. Suddenly, I thought I'd better go after him, but by that time he was past me and floating on down the river and the canoe was at the top of the riffles. By the time I got to the canoe, my wife and I had paddled through the riffles, and caught up with him, he was well down the river, just floating and watching the scenery, seemingly not worried about a thing. Maybe the trauma of that made him the way he is ... and it's probably all my fault.

I remember several car camping events after that and another trip down the Strong River, but nothing that would serve to shape him until we sent him to a summer camp in North Carolina. At that summer camp, he slept in a cabin with screens for windows  all summer, hiked on the high mountain trails, swam in cold lakes or the ice cold creeks, learned to build fires with one match and no paper, and camped in the rain and under the stars in some of the most beautiful parts of our nation.

When we lived in Colorado for a few years, he and I once skied with backpacks up to Tennessee Pass near Leadville in January and camped on six feet of snow at 13,000 feet at -15 degrees ... maybe it was the thin air, or the cold night, or something else that made him the way he is now ... and it's probably all my fault. Or maybe it was the backpacking down to Horseshoe Mesa in the grand canyon, or rock-hopping above Moraine Lake in Canada, watching for grizzlies while hiking in Glacier NP, or watching shaggy mountain sheep in the little town of Waterton Lakes. There was bound to be something we/I didn't foresee to make him like he is ...

So, several years ago, he and his new wife moved to Oregon where they can hike, backpack, raft, and bicycle at least every other week. The get to gaze on Mt. Hood everyday. They've hiked the 90 miles of the Wonderland Trail around Mt. Ranier, snow-shoed around Crater Lake in January, climbed Mt Adams in Washington (three times) and South Sister near Bend, rafted Hell's Canyon in Idaho, canoed on unimaginably beautiful lakes in Oregon, and now he wants to climb Mt. Hood. What is wrong with this guy? He even gave his wife an engagement ring at the top of Multnomah Falls, and when he gets lazy she pushes him to get out on the trails ... I know it's all my fault! 

He keeps inviting me out to Oregon to hike with him and his wife ... and we went out last summer for a short backpack up to the Green Lakes area. He remembers going with me when I could do 15 or so miles a day ... but not any more, especially at altitude ... but he can ,,, And does ... And he really loves it!

I've ruined him, haven't I? And all because I left him on the table while I was pitching the tent. Do you think I'd do it all again? In a heartbeat ... his head is a lot harder now!

Bushwhacking to a new area (for me) in the Sipsey Wilderness

I had been reading some posts about the Clifty Creek falls area of the Sipsey Wilderness so I decided to try to find a base camp site and the falls. When I got out of my car mid-morning on a Monday, it was still raining, but not pouring. I had driven in the Bunyan Hill Road entrance to the north end of FT 200, where the bridge crosses Borden Creek. There is a gate at the bridge, so I parked my vehicle along the road with a couple of other vehicles. After changing from driving shoes to my hiking boots and getting all of my rain gear on--no small feat in a Miata--I headed up FS 224, formerly known as Bunyan Hill Road. Water was running down the gullies, so I had to be careful not to overtop my boots in the mud. That trail is also a horse trail, and since the horse people usually ride on weekend, this Monday's trail was severely mucked up.

After I had hiked up the trail a couple of miles to just east of the intersection of the FS 226 (old Cullman Motorway on some maps) where, judging from my GPS, the bushwhacking would be mostly downhill to where a feeder stream enters Clifty Creek. The first couple of hundred yards of the woods was thick with briars and blowdowns, so I had to be careful not to tear my pack cover. The going was slow and the briars were nasty. As I got to the feeder stream and the little valley began to widen out, the valley floor opened up some to make the traveling easier. The stream was pretty and growing from the rain and I soon came upon a small waterfall that was about ten feet high. After getting a photo there I worked my way along a steep hillside and down across the creek.

As the stream got even wider, I hoped that I was on the side of the stream where I could find a good campsite, because the farther down the valley I got crossing the stream was going to be problematic after the amount of rain that was still falling. Fortunately, I crossed to the south side of the stream before it got too wide and before I encountered another feeder stream coming in from a little valley to the north. Even in the rain the streams were beautiful in sight and sound. I love to find a campsite near enough to a stream to hear it running noisily throughout the night--doesn't everyone? And as these streams were growing from the rains, I was going to be able to hear running water from almost anywhere in the creek valley.

And because the rain was still falling, I began to look up on the sides of the bluffs to see if I could find a space large enough to get out of the rain for my cooking and relaxing by a fire. I had studied my GPS and topo maps and the area looked promising for a bluff. I can pitch my Tarptent Rainbow on almost any small level space, but I prefer to find a bluff under which to sit when I cook. Always more pleasant that way. I was prepared not to find a bluff, however, and wait out the rain in my tent if necessary. The forecasts had predicted an end to the rain late that afternoon and it did seem to be letting up a little.

I followed the feeder stream down to where it intersected with Clifty Creek and found a nice level campsite with lots of room for a group to camp--plenty of fairly level tent sites; however, I wanted to find a bluff if I could and began to backtrack up the draw to find an overhang large enough under which to sit. It was still raining and I was beginning to get wet inside my rain gear--which is usually the case, as most backpackers know. After about half an hour I found an overhang up the hillside. There was a good place for cooking and a great place to build a fire. Then I began looking around for a place not too far away to pitch my Rainbow. Well, that was going to be a problem ... the hillside in front of the bluff dropped down pretty steeply and the only place I could find was under the drip line of the bluff. I didn't really want to climb in and out of my tent with the bluff dripping on my vestibule. Then I remembered that I had brought along my 9x9 Noah's Tarp, so I pulled it out and strung it between two trees and pitched my tent right in the (former) drip line. Now I could get in/out of my tent without being dripped on.

I followed the bluff around the side of the hill and was able to pick up enough dry wood to build a pretty good fire until I could dry some other wood. I stacked some of the wet wood around my campfire to dry. I pulled up a couple of flat rocks to use as a cooking table and I was set for the three days.

I had recently purchased a Platypus Gravity System water filter and I went to the nearby small water fall to fill up my dirty water bag. After filling it, I filtered my water into a clean bag and then refilled the "dirty" bag. It took only about three minutes to filter four liters of water into the clean bag, so I pulled out my second "clean" bag and filtered another four liters. Then I refilled my "dirty" bag and figured twelve liters of water would be way more than enough for the next three days. I probably wouldn't take the Platy Gravity Sys if I were covering the miles, but for a base camp, it was perfect! 

I spent most of Monday afternoon/evening getting my base camp fixed up just right and heard my stomach growling for supper before it got dark. I started my fire and opened my MSR Titan 1.5L cook kit with the 1.0L pot inside a DIY cozy. Supper was done shortly and I wished for a bag of wine, but sadly, had to settle for decaf Via and cool water. I pulled out my Kindle and read a few pages in a Jeffrey Archer novel and decided I would read some more in bed. I brushed my old teeth and made sure the remaining coals of the fire were covered with ashes so that I might find a red coal the next morning. I climbed in about 8:30 or so and read for another 30 minutes before realizing that my Kindle had shut off and was resting on my chest. I listened at the creek gurgling down below and heard a distant owl hoot, and don't remember much after that.

The critter's nest

While brushing my teeth down the bluff from my campsite my head lamp shined up on a nest of some kind. It was made of pretty big sticks and there was no evidence of bird poop around, so I figured it was a critter of some kind rather than a crow or other bird. I looked at the nest over the next couple of days and, although it looked as if some of the sticks had been rearranged and more had been added, I never did see or hear a critter. The nest wasn't the kind of nest a bird would sit on but one something would tunnel into. It had a small opening and was about five feet off of the ground, so whatever it was climbed up there to get in the nest. Of course, the critter may have been hunkered down back in the back side of the nest, asleep. I kind of wanted to know what it was, but at the same time, didn't want to disturb it enough so that it would leap out on my while I was brushing my teeth.

Tuesday morning I awoke to a cloudy, but not rainy morning. I stirred my fire enough to uncover some red coals and with a little blowing and some dryer lint was able to get my fire going without a spark from my flint/steel. I was definitely cooler than the previous day, but not so cold that I needed gloves.

I cooked some oatmeal and made some good, strong Via and sat enjoying the view from my little home in the woods. I love the adventure of being alone in the woods. I guess I'm a throw-back to older days, but I am rarely uncomfortable by myself in the woods.


Tuesday, I had decided that my main goal would be to find a better way to get out of the woods than bushwhacking back up through the briars and inclines. Across the feeder stream by which I was camping I spotted some red markers tied on to limbs. These markers seemed to be marking an old road of some kind. Over the years I have found that the Sipsey if full of old logging roads and sometimes following them has been part of an adventure. (Once I happened upon the remains of an old still.) I crossed the stream and decided to follow it west--and up--to see if it led back to old Bunyan Hill Road/FS 224. I followed the old road about a mile and a half and could tell that it did indeed work back to an intersection with FS 224. It was not a particularly easy road to follow, but I was easier than bushwhacking back up the creek ravine down which I had come. If you've hiked in the Sipsey Wilderness you know what kind of old road about which I'm referring. It's a leveled out roadbed grown over by 30 year old trees. The roads could never actually be used as roads anymore, but sometimes make it easier to bushwhack. I knew that I could get back to my car if I followed Clifty Creek to an intersection with Brazeil Creek, and then Braziel Creek to an intersection with Borden Creek, and Borden Creek back to the bridge, but I estimated that to be about 4.5 or more miles, and I wanted to shorten my trip and experience a new part of the Wilderness.

After satisfying that I could follow the old road back to an intersection when I hiked out Thursday, I followed the sounds of water down another ravine to see if there was a waterfall there, but only found a noisy series of riffles amplified by the walls of the ravine. It was a beautiful little area, though, unspoiled by any trails except those made by coyotes, deer, and pigs (ugh!). I often follow game trails when I'm bushwhacking in the Sipsey. Most of them are easier ways to get around the woods. 

Let me interject here that I often bushwhack in the Sipsey. I almost always carry a GPS with waypoints set for my campsite and my car, and I always carry a topo map should something not look right on the GPS. And I have a pretty good sense of direction and knowing where I am in relation to the streams and creeks. I study maps of the area I'm going to hike in before I ever set foot on the trails. I often have to re-orient people I run in to that seem to be confused about where they are. I ran into three college students once near Auburn Falls that didn't have a clue where they were and had been hiking around for a day and a half trying to find Thompson Creek--that was about 75 yards from where they were standing. I showed them on my map where they were and they thanked me and headed off ... in the wrong direction! Oh, well ... some people get more of an adventure than they signed up for.

Clifty Creek Falls

Back to my narrative ... I headed back to my campsite and established where I would cross the feeder stream to keep from crossing two feeder streams when I hiked out in a couple of days. I also spent some time--as I often do in the Sipsey--walking along the bluffs looking for a good campsite under an overhang. My current campsite faced northeast and I wanted to find one that faced southeast if I could. Should a really cold front blow through when I'm back down in this area next winter, I wanted to be more protected than my current campsite might be. So, it was late afternoon when I finally got back to my campsite and I spent the remaining daylight gathering wood for the evening fire the next couple of nights. During the summer I never build fires, but during the late fall through early spring, I almost always build a fire if there is a good place.

Tuesday evening and night were uneventful except I woke up cold during the night realizing that the temp was dropping more than I had anticipated. I had enough sleeping clothes and a warm bag. I just had to put on another pair of socks, pull my hoodie up over my head, and zip up my bag ... which I did and was quickly back to sleep.

Wednesday morning I again used a little dryer lint to start my fire, which I needed to warm up the morning as I fixed my breakfast coffee. Getting water for my coffee I noticed ice in the bottom of my Platy bags--not solid ice, but enough to let me know it had gotten several degrees below freezing.

After a lazy breakfast I studied my topo map a little to see if I could see an easy way to hike up Clifty Creek toward the falls at the end of a canyon. I couldn't see anything particularly inviting, so I just decided to follow CC up its west side to see how far up I could get. After a half mile or so, it seemed that I had stumbled onto an old road that paralleled the creek. I followed it for a while until it seemed to disappear where the side of the ravine had washed out, then followed a game trail. The sides of the creek's valley got more narrow and more steep the farther up stream I went, but the sound of water falling was getting louder. The first waterfall I spotted seemed to come into CC from the west side feed into the creek and there was still a lot of water coming down the creek past that waterfall. It was a beautiful waterfall, though, falling about 100 or so feet in a noisy drop. I wondered if that was the CC Falls I had read about, but it didn't much look like the pictures I had seen on a Sipsey Hiking Club blog. A little voice told me that the main falls were up the ravine some more, so I kept hiking. Hiking now was pretty rough because the sides of the valley were so steep.

As I hiked I suddenly realized that I was hearing a bigger waterfall, and then I saw the end of the canyon and a larger waterfall that I recognized from some pictures. I'm not sure it was any more beautiful than the waterfall I had first spotted, but there was a lot more water coming over it than the first one. As I pushed on around the end of the canyon trying to get a good photo spot, I spotted a third falls coming over the edge of the bluff. So, three waterfalls at the end of Clifty Creek canyon ... not a bad spot to have a little picnic. However, after looking for a place to sit and be able to enjoy some jerky and juice, I spotted a sunny spot with some grass ... however, it was on the other side of CC. Making my way over was an adventure, but with the help of some large, house-size rocks and a fallen log, I made my way across, climbed up the steep side of the ravine, and flopped down in the bright sunshine. Ah, what a day!

Eventually, though, I had to make my way back down the creek and up to my bluff home. My old legs had gotten stiff and it took a few minutes to scoot back down the sides of the ravine to the creek, get across the rocks and log, and back up to the game trail on which I had traversed to the three falls. 

Eventually, I was able to find the old road bed and follow it most of the way back down to where the feeder streams flowed into the Sipsey. Right at that confluence of the feeder stream and CC, the campsite there was inviting and I pledged to return in the fall before the cooler nights came in. I tend to camp at the lower elevations and bottoms of the valleys during the warmer climes and up on the hillsides when it's cooler and the colder air is settling in the bottoms of the valleys. I learned that by camping in Colorado when I lived out there.

Wednesday nights supper was very pleasant as I reflected back on my three water fall find that afternoon. I'm pretty certain that only during the wetter periods would a person find all three waterfalls flowing. If you want to see waterfalls in the Sipsey you have to go in the late winter/early spring or after torrential rains. A lot of the smaller falls don't do their thing in the depths of the summer. The past couple of summers even Thompson Creek has dried up. White Oak Creek stayed dry for a long, long time.

Thursday morning I packed up and headed up the old road bed I had checked out on Tuesday. It was a pleasant and easy hike winding up around the hillsides until I got just past where I had turned around on Tuesday. As the road got to the top of the plateaus that led to the ridge line of Bunyan Hill Road, I found hundreds of blowdowns and struggled to keep on the old road. The previous year's two storms and tornados had really done some work to the large trees. It was not easy going and I had to use my GPS often to keep heading toward FS 224. Eventually, after many, many extra steps, almost like bushwhacking, I found 224 and wasn't certain that the way out I had chosen was any shorter, easier, or faster than just bushwhacking back up the way I had come down. However, as I journeyed back down Bunyan Hill Road to my vehicle I saw a lone wildflower and was again reminded of the immense beauty of the Sipsey Wilderness.